United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-09-03

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: [email protected]

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, 3 September, 1999

HEADLINES

• UN appeals to Indonesia to control militia rampage through East Timor.
• Top UN human rights official calls for possible international action to protect East Timorese.
• UN legalizes use of foreign currencies in Kosovo.
• World Health Organization issues new guidelines for drug donations in emergencies.
• UNICEF in campaign to educate children, fight child labour.
• UN to ship food to 100,000 displaced people in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley.
• Secretary-General urges francophone community to promote conciliation and dialogue for peace.
• Former Rwandan health minister enters innocent plea at UN war crimes tribunal.

The UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) evacuated all its international staff from the village of Maliana, which was described as a "ghost town" and where two local UN staff were killed yesterday. UN staff remain in Liquica, however, where 20 to 30 houses were burned.

A UNAMET spokesman told reporters in Dili that the UN was taking additional measures, such as instituting a curfew and a convoy system for vehicles, to ensure the safety of its personnel.

In New York, the spokesman for Secretary-General Kofi Annan reiterated that the agreement authorizing Monday's ballot specified Indonesia's responsibility for maintaining law and order and controlling violence.

"The security situation must be brought under control and we think Indonesia is capable of doing that," said Spokesman Fred Eckhard. "We continue to appeal to them to do what is within the realm of possibility, namely to clamp down on these renegade elements running around with machetes and weapons."

Meanwhile, staff from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are in a "race against time" to provide urgently needed assistance to displaced people, who now number about 55,000.

According to UNHCR, many of them are being temporarily housed in churches and schools after initially seeking shelter at the UNAMET compound. The UNHCR and other aid agencies are providing them with rice, beans, dried fish, sugar, salt, mats, blankets and kitchen sets.

Mrs. Robinson said the current violence threatens to derail the consultation process and seems aimed at denying the East Timorese their right to determine their own future.

"It is essential that the progress achieved until now in East Timor not be reversed," said Mrs. Robinson, stressing that the outcome of Monday's vote represents the will of the people and must be respected.

Mrs. Robinson said the Security Council must urgently consider the deployment of international or regional forces if the Indonesian authorities are unable to fulfil their responsibility to ensure the security of the Timorese people, adding that she was encouraged that the Indonesian Government had indicated it might consider accepting an international security presence in East Timor.

The new legislative act -- signed yesterday by the chief of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Dr. Bernard Kouchner - - allows the use of all currencies, including the Yugoslav dinar, while lifting past legal restrictions on the use or possession of all foreign currencies.

"This is an important first step towards the creation of functioning banking, payments and fiscal systems in Kosovo," said Joly Dixon, the UN Deputy Special Representative in charge of economic reconstruction in Kosovo.

The UN will maintain its books and accounts, and make payments to civil servants and other stipends, in German marks. While obligatory payments such as duties, taxes and fines will be accepted in all currencies, a handling fee will be added to payments not received in marks.

A recent WHO survey of drugs donated to the Albanian Health Ministry in May found that about 41 per cent had a shelf-life of less than one year and that 18 per cent contained small packs of free samples or drugs returned to pharmacies. Other studies have shown similar problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Somalia and Honduras.

Dr. Jonathan Quick, Director of WHO's Department of Essential Drugs and Other Medicines, said that when drugs are sent -- with the best intentions - - to the site of any disaster, there have been problems with some donations failing to meet the most urgent real health needs. "Once in the country, they clog up already overloaded distribution systems and become difficult to dispose of," he said.

WHO said the release of the revised guidelines is particularly timely in light of the influx of drug donations into Turkey following last month's earthquake. Large quantities of donated and unsolicited medical supplies are hampering the restocking of regular or emergency medical structures, according to a report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The UNICEF programme includes efforts to spur quality primary education for children, including special educational strategies for working children; equivalent out-of-school education programmes for children working on the streets; and support and economic incentives for parents.

The initiative also stresses the need to attack child labour itself, including attempts to eliminate abusive and exploitative forms of work; stricter law enforcement against bonded child labour and trafficking and raising public awareness against under-age workers.

According to UNICEF, some 250 million children aged five to 14 in developing countries work, with 20 per cent of them working in hazardous situations. "Education can counter today's horrendous conditions of domestic servitude, cruel and hazardous labour and outright trafficking by creating alternatives that offer children and their families real choices," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy.

According to Stephanie Bunker, UN Spokesperson for Afghanistan, about 50 to 70 per cent of the displaced have found shelter with local families. Others are either housed in public buildings or are out in the open.

"As in Kabul, where the majority of the displaced have been supported by the local population, it is heartening to see such hospitality in Panjshir, even from people who have little themselves," she said, adding that it was welcome news that local authorities have also tried to help the displaced with the few resources they have.

In a speech on "Youth and the Dialogue among Civilizations" to the Eighth Francophone Summit in Moncton, Canada, the Secretary-General said it is becoming increasingly obvious that all peoples of the world are destined to form a single, more or less united community.

"It is therefore necessary for all parties -- whether they are called societies, cultures or civilizations -- to engage in an open dialogue based on respect for different points of view and based on the firm conviction that diversity is not a threat but a source of wealth and of vitality," said the Secretary General.

The Summit theme this year is Francophone Youth and is attended by the heads of State and Government of the organization's 49 member countries.

Casmir Bizimungu pleaded not guilty to eight counts of genocide and crimes against humanity at the Tribunal's Trial Chamber II.

The Prosecution alleged that Bizimungu, Rwanda's Health Minister during the 1994 genocide, failed to prevent massacres at the Centre Hospitalier de Kigali or to punish the perpetrators. Bizimungu is also alleged to have known about, but did nothing to stop, the massacres at Butare University Hospital and at the Kabgayi School of Nursing.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: [email protected]

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