United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-09-14
DAILY HIGHLIGHTS
Tuesday, 14 September, 1999
This daily news round-up is prepared by the Central News Section of the
Department of Public Information. The latest update is posted at
approximately 6:00 PM New York time.
HEADLINES
Latest Developments
- Worsening conditions and poor security force UN to evacuate staff from
besieged compound in East Timor.
- Thousands of East Timorese are forced from homes and deported to West
Timor, UN refugee agency reports.
- Secretary-General launches international effort to promote "a culture of
peace" at UN ceremony.
- New UN-sponsored research provides insights into spread of AIDS in
Africa.
With its mission in East Timor facing worsening living conditions and
mounting security concerns, the United Nations has relocated all
international and local personnel from the mission's headquarters in the
capital city of Dili to Darwin, Australia, a UN spokesman announced
Tuesday.
Also evacuated were more than 1,400 refugees who had sought shelter in the
Dili compound of the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). According to the UN
Security Coordination Office in New York, Indonesian military personnel
were looting the UNAMET compound, carting away office equipment and
computers and trashing vehicles.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters in New York this morning that
the decision to pull out UNAMET staff was made to take them to safety and
"give them a bit of rest."
"We've kept a core staff there and will be going back shortly," Mr. Annan
said.
A dozen staff members from UNAMET, the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) remain in Dili at the Australian consulate, which has electricity
and water.
At UN Headquarters today, the Secretary-General held talks with the Foreign
Ministers of Australia, Indonesia and Portugal as the Security Council
began consideration of a draft resolution authorizing an international
security force for East Timor.
Yesterday, the Council was briefed by the Secretary-General on his talks
with Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and heard the report of the
Council's high-level mission to Jakarta and Dili.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday
there are persistent reports and growing evidence that East Timorese are
being deported to West Timor and that anti-independence militias are
hunting down independence supporters in the neighbouring province's capital
Kupang.
The UN agency said reports from various sources speak of men being
separated from women and children and of families being separated while
forcibly taken to West Timor. "UNHCR is adamant that no one should be taken
away from East Timor against their will and that all those already deported
must be allowed to return," the agency said in a statement released in
Geneva.
UNHCR said the overall degree of displacement in East Timor is not known
but could go into the hundreds of thousands.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) in New York, about three-quarters of the territory's 800,000
residents are in need of food, primary health care and shelter.
Humanitarian organizations are deploying personnel and prepositioning
stocks in Darwin, Australia, as a temporary centre of operations for
programmes targeting civilians in East Timor. They are also reinforcing
staff and stocks in Jakarta for relief operations in West Timor, OCHA said.
The newly-appointed UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Ross Mountain, is in
Jakarta discussing with UN agencies and donor governments the feasibility
of air drops to East Timorese in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
On the day traditionally marked as the International Day for Peace,
Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday officially launched a worldwide
programme aimed at promoting the transition from a culture of force,
imposition and violence to a culture of dialogue and understanding.
Achieving peace around the world may be a daunting challenge and a
painfully slow process that requires action on a deeper level, but "we can
do it", the Secretary-General said at the Peace Bell ringing ceremony
outside UN Headquarters in New York, a yearly tradition on the opening day
of the new General Assembly session.
This year, the Peace Bell ceremony coincided with the launch, on the
initiative of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), of the International Year of the Culture for Peace in the year
2000.
The Secretary-General noted that over the years, the world has come to
realize that although peacekeeping and peace-building efforts and
preventive diplomacy are essential work, they alone are not enough.
"We need, in short, a culture of peace," he said, because war, violence,
poverty and prejudice "are the daily experience of millions upon millions
of people throughout our world - as they were when the United Nations was
founded, as they were when our bloody century began."
The Secretary-General stressed that even though it might sometimes seem as
if a culture of peace does not stand a chance against the culture of war
and violence, peace nevertheless was "in our hands. We can do it."
Results of a multi-site study in Africa released today by the Joint United
Nations Program on HIV/AIDS spotlighted the urgency of changing male sexual
behavior in order to curb the spread of the disease.
The study - conducted in 1997 and 1998 in Kenya, Zambia, Benin and Cameroon
- provided the strongest evidence yet that dramatically high HIV levels in
teenage girls are linked to sexual contact with older men.
According to the study, 15 to 23 per cent of girls between 15 and 23 years
old are infected with HIV, while only 3 to 4 per cent of boys the same age
are infected. However, among men 25 or older, the rate of infection of HIV -
the virus which causes AIDS - was between 26 and 40 per cent.
"The unavoidable conclusion is that girls are getting infected not by boys
their own age, but by older men," Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director,
said upon the release of the study's highlights in Lusaka, Zambia.
The results spotlighted the urgent need for changing male sexual behavior
to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS, according to Dr. Mahina Kahindo of Kenya,
one of some 30 international investigators on the study. Social pressure
must be put on men to stop seeking out young sex partners, he said.
The study, designed to explore why HIV/AIDS has spread at different rates
through different African communities, was conducted by the Study Group on
Heterogeneity of HIV Epidemics, with the support of UNAIDS and the World
Health Organization (WHO).
For information purposes only - - not an official record
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