United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-09-17

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, 17 September, 1999

HEADLINES

• Security Council strongly condemns deliberate targeting of civilians in armed conflict and agrees to review measures to end such practices.
• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says overwhelming evidence of systematic campaign of human rights violations in East Timor.
• Top UN official for refugees to visit Jakarta as humanitarian effort for East Timorese gets under way.
• General Assembly adopts agenda for current session, including new items on Democratic Republic of the Congo and East Timor.
• President of General Assembly tells NGO conference world should not retreat from globalization but pursue cooperation for "best possible results."
• New UN report says global finance too important to be left to chance.
• UN honours workers at Millennium Staff Day.

Saying it was gravely concerned by the hardships borne by civilians, particularly as a result of violent acts directed against them, the Council stressed the need to address the causes of warfare in a comprehensive manner in order to protect non-combatants on a long-term basis.

After two days of debate, the Council expressed its willingness to consider how peacekeeping mandates might better address the negative impact of armed conflict on civilians and noted the importance of including special protection and assistance provisions for groups requiring special protection, including women and children.

By today's action - coming on the heels of last month's resolution in which the plight of children in armed conflict was highlighted - the Council also singled out for attention the demoblization and reintegration of child soldiers and promised to consider the effect of economic sanctions on the needs of children.

Noting that civilians account for the vast majority of casualties in armed conflicts and are increasingly targeted by combatants, the Security Council urged strict compliance with international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law and called on countries that have not already done so to consider ratifying the major international treaties in those areas. The resolution emphasized the responsibility of countries to end impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and serious violation of international humanitarian law.

In remarks to the Council prior to its vote, Sergio Vieira de Mello, Under- Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs said the initiatives taken in the Council were heartening and that the plight of civilians should be of central concern. "The best way to protect civilians is to prevent conflict, " he said, "and in this context, development and combating poverty are indispensable tools to achieve sustainable peace and stability in conflict and post-conflict areas."

"I condemn those responsible in the strongest possible terms," Mary Robinson said in her report to the bureau of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

The High Commissioner said she has urged the Indonesian authorities to cooperate in the establishment of an international commission of inquiry into the violations so that those responsible are brought to justice. Mrs. Robinson said she is ready, if needed, to take the initiative in launching such an investigation.

"To end the century and the millennium tolerating impunity for those guilty of these shocking violations would be a betrayal of everything the United Nations stands for regarding the universal promotion and protection of human rights," Mrs. Robinson said.

Meanwhile, a report from East Timor said that a UN and Red Cross convoy came across a military operation in which about 50 mostly uniformed Indonesian military personnel were torching a village and driving its inhabitants away. "While this kind of thing is common, what was unusual was that the Indonesian military, or TNI, were openly involved," a UN spokesman said.

There also continued to be reports of large truck convoys carrying looted goods towards West Timor, as the TNI gradually pull out of East Timor, the spokesman said. About two battalions, or 4,000 troops, are expected to stay on to secure essential utilities for the arrival of the multinational force, which is expected to arrive as early as this weekend.

According to reports reaching UNHCR from the border town of Atambua, pro- independence East Timorese who were forcibly relocated to West Timor are scattered in groups of up to 1,000 people in the hills without shelter, food, medicine and adequate water supplies. Militias are reported to be seeking pro-independence activists and taking them away to an unknown fate.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said today it air dropped 15 metric tonnes of desperately needed rice, enough to feed 30,000 people for one day, and blankets to tens of thousands of people hiding in the mountains.

WFP said it planned to use the "snow drop" technique next week for 350,000 plastic packages of high-protein biscuits, which are en route to the UN's staging area for humanitarian programmes in Darwin, Australia.

A UN official said an inter-agency assessment mission is scheduled to go into East Timor early next week, and that security and logistics are the biggest concerns.

Upon the recommendation of its General Committee, the Assembly will consider for the first time cooperation between the UN and the preparatory commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization and the granting of observer status to both the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization.

The Assembly will also commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 15 November.

Seventy-three items will be considered directly by the entire Assembly while the others have been referred to one of its six Main Committees: Disarmament and International Security (First); Economic and Financial (Second); Social, Humanitarian and Cultural (Third); Special Political and Decolonization (Fourth); Administrative and Budgetary (Fifth) and Legal (Sixth).

The Assembly's general debate will begin on 20 September and run through 2 October. A special session of the Assembly will be held 27 to 28 September to review the implementation of the programme for action for small island and developing States. The main part of the session is scheduled to end on 17 December.

In his closing address to the annual Department of Public Information/NGO Conference late Friday afternoon, Theo-Ben Gurirab, Namibia's Foreign Minister, said that although globalization is not new, the process today has very distinct features and consequences that require serious reflection.

"The challenge for the future is to ensure that the opportunities and benefits resulting from this worldwide phenomenon are shared among all the nations and peoples of the world," Mr. Gurirab said. "This can only be achieved through cooperation and mutual understanding."

The President said the UN, and especially the General Assembly, has played a very important role in providing a forum for serious debate on globalization and urged the Conference to recommend practical steps to alleviate the fears and uncertainties of those "who are at the disadvantaged end of globalization."

While economic liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has significantly advanced the capacity of the financial sector to amass and allocate capital, the new report warns that it is "positively dangerous to expose underdeveloped domestic financial structures to the ebbs and flows of global finance." Oversight, regulation and a progressive strengthening of financial institutions, especially banks, will be critical if world financial needs in the near future are to be safely and effectively met, the report observers.

"Public oversight is needed to make financial systems fair as well as effective," Secretary-General Kofi Annan stresses in his preface to the 1999 "UN World Economic and Social Survey" released Thursday.

Speaking at a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, Ian Kinniburgh of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), underscored the report's conclusion that global finance was too important to be left to financiers alone, and that governments had to play a role. "Putting it crudely, with regard to liberalization, one can have too much of a good thing," Mr. Kinniburgh said.

The report recommends that governments curtail excessively risky behaviour and fill gaps in the availability of financial services through policy incentives, direct provisions, and by acting as a catalyst by paying for set-up costs or training. Non-governmental organizations also have an important role to play in such areas as establishing micro-finance lending institutions for the poor, the report says.

This year's Survey will be the basis for discussions leading up to a high- level UN global forum in 2001 on financing for development.

In his remarks on the final UN Staff Day of the millennium, the Secretary- General said UN employees continued to ease the suffering of countless people, even at a time when the Secretariat faced severe budget restrictions and its staff was repeatedly asked "to do more with less."

The Secretary-General commended staff who faced great difficulty and risk while serving the Organization in the field, highlighting the heroic acts of UN personnel in East Timor, who in recent days had housed and protected some 2,000 local residents at the UN compound following the outbreak of violence in the territory.

"Beyond East Timor and Kosovo, if we look around the world to Congo, to Angola, to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, the Middle East, our staff members are working to make peace, the UN dream, a reality," Mr. Annan said.

Meanwhile, the President of the General Assembly, Theo-Ben Gurirab, told UN workers that they and their colleagues at duty stations around the world were the "lifeblood of the United Nations."

While the dedication of governments was needed for the UN to tackle the challenges of the next century, a cadre of motivated staff was also required, Mr. Gurirab said. "The future of the Organization hinges on the mutually reinforcing relationship between foresight and dedication on the part of Member States on the one hand, and enhanced competence, efficiency and integrity of UN personnel on the other," he said.

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

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