United Nations Daily Highlights, 97-01-27

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Monday, 27 January 1997

HEADLINES

• Chairman of Supreme Council of Abkhazia says Abkhaz authorities have flagrantly violated rights of Georgian population in the region.
• United Nations announces inter-agency appeal for Chechnya, Great Lakes region of Africa and Sudan.
• Disarmament Conference hears calls for bans on land-mines and fissile materials.
• UN Environment Programme says major attitude change is needed to save environment.
• Unemployment, in all professions and age groups, is affecting women more than men in Denmark, Women's Anti-Discrimination Committee is told.
• Pakistan and Iran among countries identified as free of guinea worm disease.
• UN Population Award Committee says it will choose three laureates in 1997.

In a letter to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Supreme Council Chairman said that at a time when the negotiating process in Abkhazia was stalled and the "hundreds of thousands of refugees still had no realistic perspective of returning to their homes", the international community should strictly condemn and discourage such unjustified demands.

"Intimidation, banditry, executions, illicit traffic of arms and narcotics, abuse and desecration of historical and cultural monuments have long been the abiding characteristic of the policy pursued by the Abkhaz leadership," Mr. Nadareihvili said.

Commending the Secretary-General on his "profound experience and diplomatic skills", Mr. Nadareihvili expressed confidence that the United Nations and its Security Council would achieve substantive progress in the peace process leading to the comprehensive settlement of the dispute.

Speaking as the Conference continued to work to reach an agreement on an agenda for the current session in Geneva, the representative of France said the opinions of the different groups on the work programme were not irreconcilable.

The General Assembly, in 1993, had decided unanimously upon the negotiation, within an appropriate time-frame, of a non-discriminatory, multilateral, internationally efficient verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear arms use, or "cut-off", she added.

In appealing for substantial negotiation processes on "cut-off" and on a treaty to ban land-mines, the representative of Germany pointed to the Conference's unique role in negotiating universal arms accords. Failure to reach agreement on a land-mine ban would disappoint the international community and could raise questions about the effectiveness of the Conference itself, he said.

Meanwhile, Austria informed the Conference of a forthcoming expert meeting on anti-personnel land-mines to be held in Vienna from 12 to 14 February. The representative of Austria noted that the meeting would in no way prejudge the position of the participating countries on the form and the forum in which the negotiations would be conducted.

The appeal for the Great Lakes region would cover all of the relief requirements for 1997 to Burundi, eastern Zaire, Rwanda and Tanzania and. "The appeal for Sudan calls for over US$120 million to meet emergency humanitarian requirements for 4.25 million people," the Spokesman said.

"If we allow these trends to continue, we will ultimately run out of the essential ingredients for life on this planet. We may not know when, but it is clear we are on an unsustainable trajectory," said UNEP Executive Director, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, at the launch of the report in Nairobi, Kenya.

Among its findings, the GEO-1 cites greenhouse gas emissions as still being far in excess of internationally agreed targets, biological diversity as still vanishing at alarming rates, and hazardous chemicals continuing to contaminate the environment and damage human health.

An estimated one quarter of the world's population would suffer from chronic water shortages in the beginning of the next century, the report said.

The GEO-1 is the first in a series of reports on the global environment to be published by UNEP on a biennial basis. But, more than simply another downbeat catalogue of the world's environmental woes, the GEO-1 breaks new ground in attempting to analyse the effectiveness of what was being done to address environmental issues.

Meanwhile, the nineteenth session of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) opened Monday at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi. Ministers and high-level government representatives from over 100 countries are attending the two-week meeting which will culminate with a high-level segment, to be held from 5 to 7 February.

In an exhaustive reply to questions from the Committee, the Danish delegation said women in the country were also hit by chronic unemployment to a much higher degree.

In order to fight the problem and qualify women for a broader range of jobs, adult vocational schemes had been tailored to the background and needs of the specific categories of participants, such as unskilled or semi-skilled unemployed women. The Committee heard that the latest statistics showed that the salary gap between women and men was an average of 25 per cent.

According to WHO, the last dracunculiasis case in Pakistan dates back to October 1993, while Iran had not reported any cases since the middle of the 1970s. In the other nineteen countries, including Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria and Colombia, the guinea worm disease had not been reported during this century, or the conditions needed for its transmission do not exist.

The agency said its decision was based upon the recommendation of the International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication, a global body under the guidance of WHO, and established in 1995.

The Award is presented annually by the Committee to individuals and institutions which had made outstanding contributions to increasing the awareness of population problems and to their solutions.

The Committee was established by the General Assembly in 1993, and has given the Award to either one or two laureates every year. The decision was made to select three laureates this year to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Award, Committee members said.

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

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