United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-09-04

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, 4 September, 1998

HEADLINES

• Rwanda tribunal imposes life sentence on former Prime Minister convicted of genocide.
• Executive Director of UN Iraq Programme urges expeditious delivery of spare parts for oil infrastructure.
• United Nations refugee agency says ousted Sierra Leonean rebels continue to brutalize refugees in Guinea.
• UN World Food Programme warns that Somalia's worst harvest in years threatens the country's food supply.
• Office of United Nations human rights commissioner condemns attacks against Vietnamese in Cambodia.
• United Nations human rights experts express concern about Malaysia's actions against one of them.
• For first time, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights will visit China.
• International Atomic Energy Agency to help establish Internet database on best forms of nuclear medicine.

Mr. Kambanda who appeared before the tribunal, based in Arusha, Tanzania, had pleaded guilty to genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Prosecutor of the tribunal, Justice Louise Arbour said that the guilty plea of Jean Kambanda, his conviction and the imposition of the life sentence, closed the first chapter in the history of the tribunal.

"This completed process will serve to keep alive the memory of the thousands who died, for the whole of the international community to remember," she said. She expressed the hope that this development would also offer a measure of peace and security to those who survived.

Justice Arbour said that national, ethnic, racial or religious intolerance was the plague of the modern world. She added that it was also the driving force behind the crime of genocide, where victims were targeted as part of an effort to eradicate an entire group of people.

The repair is needed, Benon Sevan said, in order to allow Iraq to pump the full amount of oil authorized under the current phase of the oil-for-food programme. Falling oil prices have resulted in a shortfall in funding for the oil-for-food programme, which was expected to receive $3.1 billion in the current phase but will receive only $1.79 billion instead.

The enhanced distribution plan cannot be fully implemented "unless and until" Iraq is provided with the capacity to enhance its production and export of oil, Mr. Sevan told reporters. He noted that Iraq's capacity to export oil had been adversely affected by years of neglect of its oil fields.

Mr. Sevan spoke to the press after briefing the Security Council. He urged the Security Council Committee overseeing the sanctions against Iraq to proceed "most urgently" with the approval of contracts for spare parts. "With oil prices so low, with expected revenues far below the minimum requirements for the implementation of the programme, unless spare parts and equipment are approved most expeditiously, the credibility of the programme will not only be affected adversely, but may also jeopardize the effective implementation of the programme," said a statement by Mr. Sevan to the Council which was distributed at his press briefing.

Explaining the delays, Mr. Sevan said that some of the supplies that were requested under spare parts should have come under different sectors, "so there is not much in terms of the argument regarding the contents of the contracts but rather as to under what sectors they should have been requested." He expressed hope that discussions under way to resolve the issue would succeed.

Mr. Sevan pointed out that there was a "suspicious atmosphere" surrounding the issue of spare parts, making matters more difficult. "But the more everybody talks to each other, I remain confident that we will be able to succeed in trying to push the issue of spare parts," he said.

He noted that the Secretariat would provide assurances, using its monitoring systems, that what was arriving in Iraq would be used for its approved purposes.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday that the rebels attacked a village inside Guinea earlier this week, killing seven women refugees and three Guineans as they forced other refugees to carry stolen food back across the border into Sierra Leone.

UNHCR said that it sent a mission to camps near the affected village on Thursday in response to reports of the incursion which happened in the night between Monday and Tuesday. The local authorities and security forces also travelled to the area to investigate the reports.

The members of the mission found refugees who had been previously abducted by rebels, including a girl who said she had been raped repeatedly and a boy who had the letters RUF carved into his chest and forehead, according to UNHCR. RUF is the acronym for the Revolutionary United Front.

Quoting witnesses, UNHCR said that fighters from the Revolutionary United Front had raided local food stores killing anyone nearby. Three refugee women were apparently shot when they refused to continue to Sierra Leone across a bridge the rebels had built across the river. The three seriously wounded refugees were taken to a nearby hospital run by Medicins Sans Frontiers, the United Nations agency said, adding that one of the injured was a baby boy who had his throat slit.

The majority of Sierra Leonean refugees are in areas where access is extremely difficult, especially now because of rains, which threaten food deliveries, vaccinations and regular visits to an estimated 180,000 refugees from Sierra Leone, the refugee agency said.

UNHCR and Handicap International are planning to set up a programme to aid the victims of the violence, the agency said.

"The already precarious food supply situation will continue to deteriorate, leading to a dramatic increase in malnutrition for hundreds of thousands of Somalis over the months to come," said Burke Oberle, the agency's representative in Somalia.

According to WFP, Somalia is experiencing a dramatic decline in maize and sorghum production. In order to help bridge the country's significant food gap, WFP will be increasing its food aid to Somalia to over 20,000 tonnes for the period from August 1998 to March 1999. The aid will go towards feeding some 630,000 people. Non-governmental organizations and bilateral donors are also expected to contribute to the increased food needs.

In August, WFP urgently appealed to donors for $12 million to feed some 470, 000 people, but no contributions have been received to date.

"We urge the international community to come forward and pledge donations to assist these people," said Mr. Oberle. "Without help, the situation will get worse," he warned.

The Office said that its investigation into the deaths of three people showed no evidence implicating the Vietnamese who have been attacked. It said that it was also investigating reports of eight other cases of people who had been attacked as a consequence of the poisoning scare.

The Office of the human rights commissioner said that it was particularly regrettable that this issue of food poisoning had begun to acquire racial and political overtones. "That Vietnamese members of the community have been murdered or beaten by mobs on suspicion that they are behind this is a tragedy," the Office said.

It called on all political leaders, parties, demonstrators and their followers to exercise heightened responsibility and to avoid making statements which might incite violence against persons of Vietnamese origin.

The Office called on the Cambodian authorities to condemn the acts of violence against Vietnamese people and to clarify through public media the situation regarding the alleged poisoning. It also urged the authorities to appeal to the public to remain calm and to refrain from any violence, and to instruct police to take firm action to arrest the perpetrators of these murders and beatings.

Mona Rishmawi, Chairperson of the Fifth Meeting of Special Rapporteurs and Experts of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, issued a statement on Friday expressing alarm about the fact that Malaysia is proceeding with a case against Mr. Cumaraswamy, despite calls by the Economic and Social Council to stay the matter pending an opinion which has been requested of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

"We are concerned that the decision of the Economic and Social Council has been ignored," she said. "It is essential that Malaysian courts do not pre- judge issues which are at this stage before the ICJ."

On several occasions, the Special Rapporteurs have emphasized that undermining the immunity of one special rapporteur constitutes an attack on the entire United Nations human rights system.

Mr. Cumaraswamy, a Malaysian jurist, is being sued by two commercial companies and a lawyer in Malaysia as a result of an article based on an interview he gave in November 1995 to International Commercial Litigation, a magazine published in the United Kingdom but circulated also in Malaysia. In the interview, Mr. Cumaraswamy commented on certain litigations that had been carried out in Malaysian courts. The two companies asserted the article contained defamatory words that had "brought them into public scandal, odium and contempt."

The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations is designed to protect various categories of persons, including experts on mission for the United Nations, from all types of interference by national authorities.

"The Rapporteurs continue to call upon the Government of Malaysia to abide by its international obligations that stem out of the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations," said Ms. Rishmawi. "We also urge the Government of Malaysia to respect the decision of the Economic and Social Council."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson is scheduled to be in China from 6 to 15 September this year.

In a press conference in Geneva on Friday, Ms. Robinson emphasized that the visit was not planned as an event in itself but as part of a process of entering into a long-term approach to addressing issues of promotion and protection of human rights in the country. "This visit is a very visible and important part of that process, but it will continue afterwards," she said.

Ms. Robinson said that during her visit, she would sign a Memorandum of Intent with the People's Republic of China on 7 September. "We will be having discussion on practical plans to follow up on that Memorandum," she added.

She also said that during her visit, she would have "frank, constructive and informative" discussions with Government officials, traditional authorities, representatives of women and workers' organizations and individuals. Clearly, she said, as High Commissioner, she hoped to contribute to the awareness of human rights amongst the Chinese people and to demonstrate her interest in support of issues of concern to them.

The Human Rights Commissioner also said that she was looking forward to travelling to Tibet on 10 September. She added that she was committed to meeting a wide number of representatives of civil society and the authorities. She also expressed the hope that she would link with projects of some of the partner agencies of the United Nations such as the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Children's Fund.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology, and the Cochrane Collaboration are joining forces to establish, for the first time, a "Cochrane Field in Nuclear Medicine." The principal aim is to prepare systematic scientific reviews of the best-quality practices in nuclear medicine, including reports of controlled clinical trials, and to incorporate them in a database library accessible via the Internet and on CD-ROM.

Researchers and doctors in developing countries who have limited access to updated literature will particularly benefit from this initiative, according to the IAEA, which will serve as the secretariat for the project and will maintain the database. The Agency and the World Federation will make use of their pool of experts in the nuclear field to form a global network of work groups reviewing specific issues.

The initiative will benefit all involved in nuclear medicine, including patients who want new information about their care and possible treatments. Collaborators from developing countries will be actively sought, with the aim of ensuring that questions important to these countries are answered.



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