United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-05-13

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday, 13 May, 1999

HEADLINES

• Secretary-General convenes high-level meeting in Geneva on UN's response to crisis in Balkans.
• Top UN human rights official says Belgrade must end abuses in Kosovo and allow refugees to return.
• UN refugee agency receives new funds for its Kosovo operations.
• Prosecutor of UN tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia urges speedy action on International Criminal Court.
• "United Nations in the twenty-first century" proposed as overall theme for UN's Millennium Summit.
• Secretary-General urges help for struggling families as UN marks International Day of Families.
• UN-hosted conference in London focuses on ways to reduce poverty through investments in health.

Mr. Vieira De Mello was speaking at a press conference on the results of first day of a high-level meeting convened by Secretary- General Kofi Annan to discuss the UN's response to the crisis in the Balkans. There was also agreement on the need to address in a coherent and inclusive manner the political, social, economic and developmental aspects of the crisis, said Mr. Vieira De Mello.

At the two-day high-level meeting, the Secretary-General's two Special Envoys for the Balkans, Carl Bildt and Eduard Kukan, joined the heads of UN agencies and programmes dealing with political affairs, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, human rights and development.

At a press encounter before the meeting, the Secretary-General introduced his Special Envoys, who, he said, would help intensify the search for peace. "We need to plan for peace, we need to have preparations and make sure that, once you get an agreement, the implementation will be smooth and you know where and how to begin," said Mr. Annan.

Speaking after meeting earlier in the day with Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic, Mrs. Robinson said the Government must commit itself to the unconditional and safe return of refugees and internally displaced persons.

The High Commissioner said she had told the Foreign Minister that the accounts of Kosovar refugees pointed to "a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out with cold-blooded determination by Government military and security forces."

"After hearing these harrowing accounts, I believe it is appropriate to come to the place where these stories lead and bring the issues to those directly concerned," said Mrs. Robinson, who had just ended a tour of countries affected by the Kosovo crisis.

The High Commissioner said she had also come to Belgrade to see for herself the effects of the bombing. She expressed concern over the considerable number of reported civilian deaths, and urged that diplomacy and peacemaking take centre stage.

A 20 million Euro contribution by the European Community Humanitarian Office on Wednesday put UNHCR's funds for its emergency Kosovo operation at $100 million. The agency said new contributions from Canada, France and Ireland, have also helped ease the cash shortfall.

UNHCR had appealed for $143 million for its Kosovo operations for the first six months of this year, but had received only $71 million and all of that had been spent.

Meanwhile, the agency continues to assist thousands of desperate people fleeing the violence in Kosovo. In a late day surge on Wednesday that lasted until nearly midnight, an estimated 4,000 refugees crossed the border into Albania, said UNHCR. The new arrivals reported recent heavy fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, which subsequently urged people to leave the region because food stocks were extremely low.

UNHCR is also trying to move people away from the overcrowded camps near the Kosovo borders. In the northern Albanian border area near Kukes, agency field staff continued an "information campaign" to try to persuade some of the 90,000 refugees in the town to leave for safer regions elsewhere in the country. However, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the border area at Blace was practically empty for the eighth straight day.

To date, nearly 800,000 people have fled Kosovo to neighboring countries and 43,000 of them have been evacuated to other countries. On Wednesday, in the largest one day departure, nearly 2,500 refugees were airlifted out of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia under the humanitarian evacuation program. UNHCR expects evacuation flights to increase in the coming weeks.

Speaking in The Hague at the launch of a campaign for a speedy ratification of the Rome Treaty creating a permanent International Criminal Court, Justice Louise Arbour stressed that there was "a fin de siecle urgency" to this endeavour since international criminal justice has become an inseparable component of the international efforts to make and keep peace and security.

The issue of authority, Justice Arbour said, was particularly critical to the adoption of the Rome Treaty. She noted that the two UN tribunals were powerful judicial institutions explicitly supported by Security Council resolutions that made cooperation with the Prosecutor's investigations binding for all States. Despite this empowering environment, the Prosecutor said, she and her investigators had been systematically denied visas for Kosovo and she had been turned down at Yugoslavia's border when she attempted to conduct an on-site investigation two days after the Racak massacre.

Addressing the question of universality, Justice Arbour stressed that irrationally selective prosecutions undermine the perception of justice as fair and even-handed, and therefore "serve as the basis for defiance and contempt." The ad hoc nature of the existing Tribunals is a "severe fault line" in the aspirations of a universally applicable system of criminal accountability, she said.

"Sad as they are, the recent events in Kosovo have created an unanswerable precedent in favour of a broad-based application of international humanitarian law, enforceable before an international forum," said Justice Arbour.

The launch of the global ratification campaign by the International Criminal Court Coalition, in which Justice Arbour took part, was held as part of The Hague Appeal for Peace -- an event organized by non- governmental organizations to mark the 100th anniversary of the first Hague Peace Conference.

"The occasion of the third millennium presents a timely opportunity for the only global organization, in terms of its membership as much as of its areas of work, to identify the challenges that it will face in the future and to engage in an imaginative exercise to strengthen a unique institution, " Mr. Annan writes in a report. The report contains proposals for the Millennium Summit to be convened during the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly -- designated as "The Millennium Assembly of the United Nations". The fifty-fifth session will begin in September 2000.

Stressing that he has benefitted from a wide range of consultations with Member States, members of specialized agencies and observers, the Secretary- General proposes that the overall theme of the Summit should be "The United Nations in the twenty-first century". He also suggests four sub-topics for the Summit: peace and security, including disarmament; development, including poverty eradication; human rights; and strengthening the United Nations.

The Secretary-General notes in his report that although the intergovernmental deliberations on the Summit's thematic framework are still ongoing, he felt it worthwhile to submit his recommendations now "with a view to prompting further intensified discussions".

In his message marking the International Day of Families, officially observed on 15 May, the Secretary-General said that as families have become increasingly diverse, the obligation to protect them as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights required societies and States to recognize and respect that diversity.

On Thursday, the programme for the observance at UN Headquarters in New York included a keynote speech by the First Lady of Venezuela, Marisabel RodrĄguez de Chavez, who is also President of the non- governmental organization Fundaci˘n del Ni¤o (The Children's Foundation). The event was sponsored by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Department of Public Information and the New York non- governmental organization Committee on the Family.

This year's theme for the annual occasion was "Families for all ages", selected in the context of the International Year of Older Persons to provide an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of older persons to families and societies, as well as to highlight their role and the inter- generational dimensions of families.

Meeting on the theme "World Health Opportunity", Ministers and senior officials from the health, development and foreign ministries of 15 of the world's largest aid donors and several developing countries as well as representatives from the World Bank and European Commission focused on ways to significantly reduce poverty through health intervention and investment.

"There is solid evidence to prove that investing wisely in health would help the world take a leap out of poverty," said WHO Director- General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The meeting follows the publication Tuesday of the WHO World Health Report, which set out a health agenda for the first decades of the 21st century. According to WHO, despite great health achievements over the past 50 years, more than one billion people still do not have access to even basic health care.

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

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