United Nations Daily Highlights, 97-07-03

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday, 3 July 1997

HEADLINES

• Addressing Economic and Social Council, UN Secretary-General says development remains United Nations most critical long-term task.
• United Nations plans a fresh beginning in search for a peaceful settlement in the Georgian/Abkhaz conflict.
• A five month extension is recommended for the United Nations mission in Haiti.
• UN Secretary-General says United Nations is determined to "get to the facts" of alleged mass killings in former Zaire.
• Joint UN/OAU envoy stresses the need for an international force to prevent escalation of conflict in Congo/Brazzaville.
• Head of UN children's agency encourages efforts to release children abducted in northern Uganda.
• More than 200,000 Rwandese and Burundese refugees remain unaccounted for in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN leader made that comment in Geneva where he addressed the high-level session of the Economic and Social Council which had been debating the question of fostering of an "enabling environment for development". He stressed that the timing of the gathering -- just after the General Assembly special session on Agenda 21, and just prior to his unveiling of a package of United Nations reforms -- was very opportune.

The Secretary-General said that Earth Summit + 5 that just ended in New York demonstrated again the power of the United Nations to bring world leaders together on issues of global significance. He stressed that it now fell to the Economic and Social Council, a body which is assigned a key role in promoting international cooperation for development by the UN Charter, to help sustain the momentum built at the New York summit.

Focusing on UN reform, the Secretary-General said he had already taken a number of steps to improve the efficiency of the United Nations machinery in the economic and social field. The next step, he told the Council, would be his wide-ranging reform proposal to be presented to the General Assembly later this month. "It will place the role of the Organization in the context of the work of the system as a whole. It will discuss our vital relationship with the private sector, civil society and other multilateral players. And it will set out a blueprint for the Organization's long-term future," he said.

Also addressing the Economic and Social Council on Thursday, General Assembly President Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia said the United Nations role in economic and development issues required "greater seriousness on the part of developed countries to discuss economic issues in the UN, particularly the hard issues, without simply referencing similar discussion and activities in Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organization".

He called on developed countries to deal with the need for economic growth "everywhere and not just domestic unemployment, inflation and the dismantling of their welfare". He also called for the involvement of more world leaders in discussions at the UN "to put life and political content into our debates, not just at the annual general debate every September".

The Spokesman said that the proposed meeting would open a new page for the United Nations efforts to bring peace to that trouble spot. "The UN has not been central to the Georgian peace process for the last two years or so and I think this marks a kind of fresh beginning of a new UN involvement", he added.

In his report, which contains an overview of the human rights situation in the country and an assessment of the functioning of the police, the judiciary and prisons, the Secretary-General notes that the extension of the Mission will help support the expected judicial reform efforts as well as to contribute to institution-building in the country.

At the same time, the report says that the political situation in Haiti has deteriorated and divisions within the ruling Lavalas movement have deepened. Referring to the stagnating economy, high unemployment and widespread popular disillusionment, the Secretary-General notes the Government's inability to address some of the social and economic ills. On a positive note, Mr. Annan states that despite the sometimes troubled situation, individual rights and fundamental freedoms continued to be widely enjoyed.

Responding to a question from the press about what he would do if the authorities in the country refused to receive the Joint Investigative Mission as long as it included UN Human Rights Commission's Special Rapporteur Roberto Garreton, the Secretary-General said the most important thing was to get to the facts while remaining realistic and practical. "The alleged mass killings ought to be investigated and we will do whatever we can to investigate them", said Mr. Annan. If for one reason or another it were not possible to field the team as originally constituted, he pointed out, "we have to come up with other means of getting to the facts, and we will do it".

Speaking to the press corps at UN Headquarters in New York following his briefing of the Security Council on Thursday, Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun said that tension could run high between the two countries because a number of shells fired from Brazzaville fell in Kinshasa.

Stressing the need to form an international force to prevent the escalation of the conflict into Congo/Kinshasa, the Special Representative said such a force could build trust between the Government forces and militias by ensuring that weapons and reinforcements did not flow into Congo\Brazzaville to give advantage to one side or the other.

The force would also provide security to humanitarian organizations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as they moved around helping the victims of the conflict, said Ambassador Sahnoun. He pointed out, however, that the major problem in forming a peace-keeping force was that no country had expressed willingness to lead such a force. The other problem, he noted, was lack of finances.

Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said in statement on Thursday that despite the failure of current advocacy efforts to end the abductions and secure the unconditional release of the children, she was encouraged by the recent visit to Sudan of a Ugandan delegation seeking to secure the release by the LRA of a number of adolescent girls abducted in late 1996.

According to UNICEF, an estimated five to eight thousand children had been abducted over the past two years in northern Uganda. The UN children's agency said that the majority of the children, between the ages of 12 and 16, were trained as fighters or given as wives to rebel commanders. UNICEF said that concerted international efforts to secure the release of the Ugandan children would send an important lesson to other countries in similar situations.

According to the figures released by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 20,000 refugees were still in Congo/Kinshasa. The UN refugee agency had also located thousands of other refugees in the Central African Republic, Congo/Brazzaville, Angola, and Tanzania.

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

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