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United Nations Daily Highlights, 96-11-13United Nations Daily Highlights Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.orgDAILY HIGHLIGHTSWednesday, 13 November 1996This document is prepared by the Central News Section of the Department of Public Information and is updated every week-day at approximately 6:00 PM. HEADLINES
UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has called upon the international community to come to the aid of the refugees in eastern Zaire. Addressing delegates at the World Food Summit in Rome on Wednesday, the Secretary-General appealed to the international community to help those men, women, and children who have lost everything and who faced certain death unless they received immediate assistance. He said more than a million starving, frightened refugees were wandering helpless in the mountains and forests of eastern Zaire. The Secretary-General told the delegates that the Summit must provide the international community as a whole with the opportunity to reaffirm the overriding need to ensure food security for all. He said hunger was a direct affront not only to the physical integrity, but also to the very dignity of people. "Hunger is an insult to the fundamental values of the international community. And we are well aware that a society would be doomed to shame and dishonour if, at the end of the twentieth century, there persisted what his Holiness has so appropriately called the structure of famine", he said. He noted that eight hundred million people suffered from chronic malnutrition, adding that 88 States, almost half of which are situated in sub-Saharan Africa knew the pangs of chronic famine and malnutrition. "At this very moment, 200 million children of under five years of age are suffering from malnutrition and food deficiencies," Dr. Boutros-Ghali said. Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II has told the Summit that population was not a problem for world food security, according to a UN Radio report from Rome. He said demographic considerations could not explain deficient food distribution. According to the report, the Pope's statement came after criticism by the World Watch Institute that population was the key problem for feeding the hungry. Also addressing the Summit on Wednesday, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jacques Diouf said that his Organisation would take up the challenge of world food security as it entered a third millennium, which could be a time of conflict over water and food unless necessary care was taken. The FAO Director-General said the world's governments would appear to accept a reduction in the budget of the UN system, "a budget that in fact amounted to less than what nine developed countries spend on dog and cat food in six days and less than five percent of what the inhabitants of one developed country spent each year on slimming products to counter the effects of over-eating", according to the Radio report. UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says following almost five decades of conflict, the peoples in the Middle East and North Africa are now convinced of the necessity to lay the foundations for a lasting, just and comprehensive peace, in order to redeploy the region's resources and ingenuity in the service of construction, rather than destruction. In a message to the Third Economic Conference for the Middle East and North Africa held in Cairo, on Tuesday, Dr. Boutros-Ghali said since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, the peoples and governments of the region had shown their determination to opt for peace. He called on the countries of the region to make every effort and to seize every opportunity to protect and nurture whatever confidence and credibility have built up. "Providing a stable peace and ensuring security for all are prerequisites to the efforts of development and to the revitalisation of investment. Thus, the keenness of the United Nations on stressing the interrelation and complementarity of these issues", he said. The General Assembly on Tuesday urged States to repeal all laws and measures, the extra-territorial effects of which influence the sovereignty or freedom of trade and navigation of other States, such as the United States legislation known as the Helms-Burton Act. Concluding its discussion of the need to end the embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba, the Assembly adopted a resolution urging the invalidation of such laws as soon as possible by a vote of 137 in favour to three against (Israel, United States and Uzbekistan), with 25 abstentions. The Assembly called on States to refrain from promulgating and applying such measures, in conformity with their obligations under the Charter and international law. The General Assembly would encourage intensified bilateral nuclear disarmament efforts between the Russian Federation and the United States, by the terms of two drafts on bilateral nuclear-arms negotiations approved by the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), although the resolution differed in their provisions concerning the pace of nuclear disarmament and the recognition of existing agreements. According to one draft, the Assembly would call upon the Russian Federation and the United States to accord the highest priority to their work for deep reductions in their nuclear armaments, in order to contribute to the elimination of nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework. By the terms of the second text, the Assembly would encourage the Russian Federation, the United States, Belarus, Kazakstan and Ukraine to continue their cooperative efforts aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons and strategic offensive arms on the basis of existing agreements. It would also welcome the accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) of Belarus, Kazakstan and Ukraine as non- nuclear-weapon States. In order to become better equipped in following global financial integration issues, the United Nations should strengthen its cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the representative of Brazil told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) as it concluded consideration of external debt and financing in the context of development. Speaking on behalf of the Common Market of the Southern Cone (MERCOSUR), he said that by strengthening its cooperation with the Fund, the United Nations could contribute to the promotion of a more stable, sound and open international economic system. Several countries welcomed the new Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative adopted last September by the Joint Ministerial Committee of the World bank and the IMF. The Initiative involves a commitment by the international financial community to take the action needed to reduce an eligible country's debt burden to sustainable levels, provided the country completes a period of strong policy performance. Only the world's poorest countries are eligible for assistance under the Initiative. The General Assembly would defer the holding of the first high-level dialogue on the social and economic impact of globalisation and interdependence and its policy implications to the early part of its fifty-second session in 1997, by the terms of a draft resolution introduced in the Second Committee (Economic and Financial). Under the provisions of the draft text, one of four introduced by the representative of Costa Rica, on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, the date, procedures and focus of the two-day discussions would be decided by the President of the General Assembly through consultation with Member States not later than February 1997. Another draft text would have the Assembly urge all countries to consider making additional contributions to the implementation of the Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, in 1994. The situation of children in armed conflict would be better dealt with through existing international mechanisms and legal instruments, the representative of the United States told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural). Referring to the report of the Secretary-General's Expert, Graca Machel, on the impact of armed conflict on children, he said her recommendation to appoint a special representative on the issue was not the best way to produce real change. He said the United States shared Ms. Machel's concern about the effects of economic sanctions on vulnerable populations. However, sanctions did not harm children, rather, it was their government's social priorities and callous decisions to disregard their needs and use their suffering as political leverage. Introducing her report, Ofelia Calcetas-Santos, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission of Human Rights on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, said the whole world was now aware that abuse against children was systematic and involved very serious physical, sexual and psychological attacks against the child. Several speakers said the World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm last August, was a groundbreaking event in raising public awareness of the pervasive nature of sexual abuse of children. The representative of Sweden said the World Congress did not create new mechanisms. The international community should concentrate its efforts on effective implementation of existing international instruments on the rights of the child. Recent evidence suggesting that primitive life existed on Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago had made the work of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mars programme all the more crucial, the representative of the United States told the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonisation). While reaffirming that the applications of space science and technology should indeed benefit all countries' efforts to address terrestrial problems, he said the exploration of the solar system also remained important in the search for the origins of the universe and life itself. The representative of Brazil told the Committee that the transfer of technology, training and education, and the growth of indigenous capabilities in developing countries made space exploration no longer the privilege of a few, but an adventure shared by all humankind. He said the Brazilian Space Agency had just finalised plans with Mexico for the Regional Space Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean region. Environmental dangers to which humanity was exposed as a result of industrial activities not prohibited by international law made it necessary to develop commonly accepted legal rules on that matter, the representative of Austria told the Sixth Committee (Legal) as it discussed the question of international liability for the injurious consequences of acts not prohibited under international law. The representative of Bahrain told the Committee that the right of an individual to a nationality within the context of State succession should be considered as basic. He stressed that the aim of such a principle was to avoid statelessness. The representative of Slovenia told the Committee that when considering the effects of State succession on the nationality of natural persons and corporate entities, priority should be given to the nationality of persons, which had human rights implications. However, it was also important to address the nationality of legal persons in view of the effects that it could have on the property rights of individuals. A subregional conference on the theme "Democratic Institutions and Peace in Central Africa" is to be held in Brazzaville, Congo, 20 to 24 January 1997. It will be organised by the United Nations Standing Advisory Committee on Security Questions in Africa, to examine the evolution of the democratic process in the subregion with a view to establishing a lasting peace in the countries of Central Africa. At their Summit meeting, held in Yaounde, Cameroon, on 8 July 1996, a Non- Aggression Pact between the countries of the region was signed, and the heads of State and government of the countries which are members of the Committee stressed the urgent necessity for States in the subregion to establish, encourage and sustain participatory systems of governance as means of preventing conflicts. The Conference is open to the governments of the 11 countries which are members of the Standing Advisory Committee as well as to political parties, civil society, non-governmental organisations and associations and researchers working in the fields of peace and democracy. The power and potential influence of television in influencing decision- makers and promoting international understanding will be explored in a two- day meeting of heads of the world's major broadcasting corporations to be held at UN Headquarters on 21 and 22 November. The event, entitled, United Nations World Television Forum, is the first to be convened by the Organisation to focus specifically on the global role of television. The Forum will offer a unique opportunity for heads of the world's major broadcasting corporations, non-governmental representatives and journalists from different regions of the world to debate the role television must play in meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. Among issues to be discussed is how television can strike a balance between commercial imperatives and the medium's potential to promote a global society that reflects the ideals of the Charter of the United Nations. For information purposes only - - not an official record From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.orgUnited Nations Daily Highlights Directory - Previous Article - Next Article |
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