United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-11-04

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 4 November, 1998

HEADLINES

• Secretary-General expresses concern about reported use of force in Tajikistan.
• Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia reaffirms its jurisdiction over Kosovo.
• Top UN Management official says United States' $197 million payment will save it from losing voting rights.
• World Bank presents plan for management of forests to Conference on UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
• Heads of United Nations agencies call for international response to Hurricane Mitch in Central America.
• High Commissioner for Human Rights urges States to provide resources for World Conference against Racism.
• UN expert on religious intolerance calls on international community to condemn religious extremism.
• Human Rights official reports widespread denial of human rights in Iraq; representative of Iraq denies it.
• United Nations official says reported violations of right to life persist in certain countries.
• United Nations bodies responsible for auditing and oversight agree on balanced approach to accountability.

Forces under a former Tajik officer have taken over parts of Leninabad Province, according to the reports.

"The Secretary-General is firmly opposed to this use of force and calls on those concerned to pursue their aims by peaceful means," said his Spokesman, Fred Eckhard. "The peace process in Tajikistan must be safeguarded," he added.

Meanwhile, the Security Council was briefed on Wednesday morning about those events.

The mandate of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) is set to expire on 15 November. Among its tasks, the Missions assists in the implementation of the peace agreements signed by the Government and the Tajik opposition. It also reports on ceasefire violations and helps to facilitate the delivery of international humanitarian assistance by the international community.

The allegations concerned wilful killings, including a number of summary executions; wanton destruction, including the use of disproportionate force in attacking an area and devastation not justified by military necessity after the attack has been successful; attacks against civilians, including reprisals; and plunder.

"There has been protracted armed violence, between Yugoslav authorities and organized armed groups in Kosovo throughout most of the year," noted Justice Arbour. She maintained that an internal armed conflict existed in Kosovo, and that the Tribunal has jurisdiction over persons committing serious violations of international humanitarian law during that conflict.

The Tribunal has jurisdiction over a wide range of offences which may have occurred in Kosovo, according to its Prosecutor. These include crimes against humanity such as murder, torture, rape and persecutions. They also include violations of the laws or customs of war such as attacks on the civilian population, murder, torture, cruel treatment, taking of hostages, outrages upon personal dignity, wanton destruction of towns and villages, and looting.

Joseph Connor told reporters in New York that the United States had so far this year paid $586 million for the United Nations regular budget and for peacekeeping. But the country's overdue payments stood at $1.28 billion. "It is hoped that this regular budget payment by the United States is followed by the removal of all impediments that have precluded the legislation and payment by that Member State of its arrears," he said.

As a result of the United States' payments, the Organization's need to cross-borrow from peacekeeping cash to fund the regular budget shortfall during the last quarter of 1998 would be greatly reduced, Mr. Connor said. He added that 107 Member States have fully paid their contribution to the regular budget for 1998 and for all prior years, and encouraged the remaining States to make every effort to pay their dues.

The United States Acting Permanent Representative, A. Peter Burleigh, said his country was committed to meeting its obligations. "The Administration is continuing to assiduously work with Congress to enable us to resolve the issue of arrears," he said.

Forests act as carbon "sinks" by absorbing carbon dioxide. When forests are cleared or burned, that gas is released into the atmosphere.

The World Bank plan aims to the international community create mechanisms to study the forests' ability to absorb carbon dioxide, according to a report on United Nations Radio.

Under the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention, some countries can include changes in net emissions from certain activities in the forestry sector, but calculating the benefits of those sinks is methodologically complex and needs to be clarified.

Ken Chomitz, an environmentalist with the World Bank, told UN Radio that the Bank's plan would respond to this need. "We think that we can help in resolving this technical issues and that the parties can then decide their advantages and disadvantages."

Tia Nelson, of the Nature Conservancy, a non-governmental organization, participated in the presentation of the World Bank plan. She explained a project that was held in Bolivia to save a forest area that surrounded a National Park. "The loggers who had legal right to log outside a national park called the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park were exercising their legal right to remove timber," she said. "What we did was raise the money, to compensate for not logging." In response, the logging was terminated and the loggers left the area.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of WHO and representatives of the five Central American countries affected by the devastating hurricane called for international support to address both immediate needs and longer- term restructuring of the health sector.

Noting that together, the governments of Canada, Sweden and the United States had already donated $1.3 million to relief efforts, Dr. Brundtland said that more would be needed to ensure reconstruction of health systems in the longer term.

On Wednesday WHO launched in Geneva an appeal for $10 million for emergency health aid to the region. The agency said that the funds were urgently needed for emergency repairs to hospitals and health centres affected by the hurricane, surveillance systems to detect diseases and to purchase health supplies, insecticides, water containers and chlorine.

Making a similar appeal, the Director-General of UNESCO, Federico Mayor called for the same amount of resources used for military alliances to be devoted to creating early and rapid intervention networks.

"It is our duty to make comparable investments to contain the death, destruction and suffering caused by current natural disasters which, unlike war, cannot be prevented," UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor said on Wednesday.

Noting that the international community only rallied after natural disasters, Mr. Mayor said that there were available means to anticipate and avert some of those disasters or, at least, to reduce their impact.

The head of UNESCO announced that his agency would immediately give $150, 000 for urgent relief assistance to serve as seed money for further assistance, notably to repair schools destroyed or damaged by the hurricane.

At least 3,000 people have died, close to 3,000 are missing, at least three quarters of a million have been displaced and approximately 3.3 have been affected by the hurricane in Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Mrs. Robinson told the General Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural (Third) Committee that the World Conference against Racism -- "the first important human rights event in the next century" -- would make a significant contribution to the elimination of racism and racial discrimination.

Stating that the United Nations was born with the acute understanding of the terrible ravages of racism, Mrs. Robinson observed that "racism can begin with small acts of exclusion in daily life, build on economic and political insecurity and the need for 'scape-goats,' be fanned by unscrupulous leaders and culminate in war, ethnic cleansing and genocide." She added that through the Internet, the international network of hatred was multiplying.

"If apartheid is dead, racism is not," said the High Commissioner. "It is with us in all regions, in developed and developing countries, and the present economic situation makes vigilance even more urgent.

Mrs. Robinson also appealed for funds to allow her Office to function at full capacity. She said that in spite of dedicated efforts, the staff of the High Commissioner's Office was unable to fully discharge its responsibilities, nor could it undertake new initiatives.

"In the public eye, human rights is an important part of the work of the United Nations," noted the High Commissioner. "The human rights community, the general public, victims of violations hoping for a hearing, and the often over-extended staff all look to the General Assembly for decisive leadership."

Addressing the General Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural (Third) Committee on Wednesday, Abdelfattah Amor noted that no religion was without extremism, and stressed that tolerance of extremism was "tolerance of the intolerable." He called for States and the international community to condemn extremism "without ambiguity and to combat it without yielding, until, as I hope, it is finally condemned by history."

The Special Rapporteur also called for attention to the status of women in regard to religion. "In particular, it is not admissible that the obscurantism of the Taliban in Afghanistan should reduce women to a status which is an affront to the wisdom of God and which is condemned by human intelligence," he said.

The United Nations expert recommended that his title be changed from Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance to "Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief," saying that the present title occasionally made dialogue difficult. The proposed change would emphasize the positive, he observed.

Mr. Amor also proposed that all of the Organization's human rights experts join together to produce an annual special United Nations report on human rights. "This report, without selectivity and without being influenced by circumstances, would systematically cover all States, taking account both of their positive contributions and also any other phenomena which might characterize their policies or their legislation," he said.

Introducing his report to the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, Max Van der Stoel, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Iraq said that the Government of Iraq did not respect the fundamental rights to life and physical integrity. Mr. Van der Stoel added that the Government of Iraq had denied its involvement, had refused to accept its responsibilities and, to his knowledge, had not conducted any serious investigations into assassinations.

Equally disturbing, he said, were the reports alleging mass executions in prisons. He noted that cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments such as amputations and other unusual punishments, which had been decreed in 1994, remained in force, despite their incompatibility with the prohibition of torture. Iraqi authorities had argued that those forms of punishment were exceptional measures needed to deter crime, and that they had not been imposed for some time, the Special Rapporteur said.

According to the Rapporteur's information, however, such punishments were still being imposed, without due process and by persons with no judicial or similar competence. The existence of such a law was in itself a serious violation of human rights, he added.

The Special Rapporteur also said that more than 150,000 persons of Kurdish origin had been evicted from the oil-rich regions, where the policy of "Arabization" continued. That number did not include the problem of more than 200,000 internally displaced persons in the rest of the country, mainly in the southern regions of Iraq.

Responding to the statement of the Special Rapporteur, the representative of Iraq, Mohammed Al-Muhaimidi, said that the bulk of the statement had been a repetition of allegations and fabrications to which he had become accustomed, and were irrelevant to human rights.

The Iraqi representative said that the allegations were part of continuous attempts to discredit the regime in Iraq. The sources from which the Rapporteur had obtained his information for his report were certain parties that were hostile to Iraq and had a vested interest in discrediting the country the representative of Iraq added.

Referring to the so-called prison cleansing campaign, Mr. Al Muhaimidi said the Special Rapporteur had grossly exaggerated the numbers. The murderers who had been executed had been tried under the law, with all legal guarantees, he added. Under the harsh conditions suffered by Iraqi people because of the cruel economic embargo, the Government of Iraq would not compromise on elements that undermined security, and would punish those who undermined the safety and stability of society, the Iraqi representative said.

He said the cruel punishments referred to in the report, which had been imposed for a certain period in the past, had been totally discontinued. The Special Rapporteur, the representative of Iraq pointed out, should have scrutinized the information that was given to him, if he did not want to be a party to lies.

He accused the Special Rapporteur of deviating from the guidelines of his mandate and of deliberate abuse. The Iraqi representative said that the Special Rapporteur had even used his mandate as a pulpit for calling for a change of the legitimate Government of Iraq. That represented a flagrant violation of the right of the Iraqi people to self-determination.

Ms. Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions told the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee that she had transmitted more than 450 individual complaints about violations of the right to life to the governments concerned. In addition, she added, 61 urgent appeals to prevent imminent loss of life of individuals had been addressed to the governments concerned. According to Ms. Jahangir, affected persons included more than 130 women and children, as well as human rights defenders, humanitarian aid workers and members of the judiciary.

The human rights official said that the international community should take stronger steps to ensure greater respect for the right to life. From the recent death of Semira Admau, a 20-year old asylum-seeker who died while in the custody of the Belgian immigration police, to the killings of a large number of civilians in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, this tendency bore testimony to the gravity of the issue, she said.

According to Ms. Jahangir belief, colour, ethnicity, political opinion, gender or sexual orientation were often regrettably the factors behind the violence. She said that even where the perpetrators of violence were non- state actors, the blame in large part must lie with the government concerned which has the responsibility to protect the life of its people.

The Special Rapporteur said that an important requirement of her mandate was country visits and that she had requested a number of Governments for an invitation to visit their countries, including Mexico, Bahrain, Sierra Leone, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in particular the province of Kosovo, to probe allegations of large-scale killings there. Ms. Jahangir said that the situation in Afghanistan was particularly grim and that she was pursuing a request to visit the country, particularly in view of the killings of nine Iranian diplomats and a journalist and the "horrible massacre of the Talibans" last year which may trigger off continuous reprisals.

The United Nations Board of Auditors, the Joint Inspection Unit and the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) met on Tuesday to enhance their cooperation. They agreed that oversight agencies should not focus purely on punitive approaches, but should promote the concept of managers being empowered to take responsibility for their actions.

Participants agreed that the current coordination mechanisms were working well, although there was also a need "to strive constantly to avoid overlap, while recognizing the separate and distinct role of the individual oversight services," according to a press release issued on Wednesday. It stated that the three bodies also agreed to share information on technological developments and their impact on oversight.

The meeting was hosted by Vijay K. Shunglu, Chairman of the Board of Auditors and was attended by Karl Paschke, Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services and Francesco Mezzalama, Chairman of the Joint Inspection Unit.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

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