United Nations Daily Highlights 96-03-12

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday , 12 March 1996

HEADLINES

• There is need for a streamlined, more coherent and responsive Secretariat, Secretary-General tells Working Group on Strengthening UN System.
• Secretary-General in Egypt to attend anti-terrorism summit, meets with Egyptian President.
• Commission on Status of Women begins follow-up to 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women.
• Secretary-General recommends extension of UN Mission of Observers in Prevlaka (UNMOP) mandate for three months.
• Robberies, looting and intimidation of Serb civilians by armed individuals and groups continue in Sarajevo suburbs.
• Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs says Study on Emergency Assistance to Rwanda on target.
• Second WFP food shipment leaves for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
• UNDP Arab-State Resident Representatives set new priorities.

The Secretariat of the future must be comprised of a core international civil service - which constituted the independent heart of the Organization and provided experience and continuity, the Secretary-General said. "We can create a United Nations that is truly universal in its outlook, and more participatory in its methods. A United Nations with a clear mission and a well defined scope. An organization whose operations are streamlined and efficient. An organization whose approach is coherent, and whose activities are well coordinated".

According to the Secretary-General, the process of globalization was accelerating. At the same time, the forces of fragmentation were intensifying. he said these phenomena, and the new opportunities and new global problems they were creating, made the need for an effective United Nations greater than ever.

Dr. Boutros-Ghali said the United Nations agenda - containing conflicts, redressing inequalities, combatting poverty - was crucial. The United Nations would be increasingly important in addressing this agenda. But change was needed because it had been learnt that: "we must be clear about our priorities; we must shape our missions to our means; we must not spread ourselves too thin; and we must act not only on the symptoms, but also on the root causes of problems".

In a statement in Cairo, the Secretary-General said the United Nations was ready to take the required measures to erect a framework to fight against international terrorism. He said the UN was a tool which member countries should put to work.

Ensuring that women did participate in decision-making must clearly be one of the tasks of the organizations of civil society, she added. As democratization was known for political change, the votes of women were instruments for their own advancement and for the betterment of society.

The cash crunch faced by the United Nations would cause it to curtail services affecting the work of the Commission, Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary- General for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development said. He called on the international community to ensure that the work concerning the advancement of women would be disrupted as little as possible.

The most important dimension of the Beijing Conference was the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in all the activities of the United Nations. This activity of mainstreaming was the key dimension of the interface between the work that has been done, not just in Beijing, but all of the work that has been done in the UN system on the status of women and the rest of the work of the UN on developmental issues, Mr. Desai said. By placing gender concerns squarely in the centre of policy debate and operational programmes, the Beijing Conference had stated firmly and equivocally that the world was not divided between a women's part and the rest, which would by implication be a man's part, but rather was one in which the interest of both men and women could be reflected and their distinct contributions recognized and mobilized, he added.

"Although the problems that continue to beset women manifest themselves as social issues, the root causes and the solutions lie as much in the economic area", said the Acting Director of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) Martha Duenas- Loaza. She said issues related to the advancement of women called for a holistic approach.

On behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries, the representative of Costa Rica said the most important factor in the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action was the mobilization of new and additional resources to face the problem of poverty.

The negotiation process had accelerated over the past few months and both sides agreed that the presence of international observers contributed to the decrease of tension and to a more positive atmosphere for negotiations, the Secretary-General said. However, the two sides did not agree on which organization should be observing and monitoring. So in the absence of further progress on a negotiated resolution of their differences, and in the absence of agreement on an alternative organization to monitor the area, the Secretary-General considered that the continued presence of UNMOP would contribute to the decrease of tension.

There are 28 military observers from 27 countries in the Prevlaka peninsula. In mid- January, the Security Council had authorized UN military observers to continue monitoring the demilitarization of the Prevlaka peninsula for three months and said that it could be extended for an additional period of three months if necessary.

In response both the International Police Task Force (IPTF)and the Implementation Force (IFOR) increased patrols before the transfer of authority to Federation police in Ilidza today. Before departing, the Serb police in Ilidza attempted several times to set fires to their own police station, but both IPTF and IFOR prevented that from happening. They have now secured the building.

Reports from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) say that only about 2,000 ethnic Serbs are left in Ilidza out of an estimated population of about 20,000.

Mr. Akashi said that none would disagree with the study's central thesis concerning the enormity of what happened in Rwanda and the profound implications of genocide. The loss of life due to avoidable circumstances compounds the tragedy. He noted that the study's analysis of constraints, lost opportunities, and recommendations was a valuable contribution to the continuing effort to address shortcomings in international response mechanisms.

Another important lesson from Rwanda was that humanitarian assistance could not substitute for political will, Mr. Akashi said. Relief in a vacuum is tantamount to managing only the symptoms of a crisis.

He said that the study's findings and recommendations would be studied closely by individual agencies of the United Nations system. Extensive reforms were already under way, he added.

The WFP, the United Nations food aid arm, says that a WFP-chartered freighter is carrying 5,635 tons of rice, from Thailand and 903 tons of rice that the Programme is shipping to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea for Caritas.

The shipment is the second WFP consignment of rice to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea since the country suffered widespread flooding last summer. The WFP delivered an initial shipment of 5,140 tons in November last year and expects to deliver the third shipment by mid- April.

UNDP Administrator James Gustave Speth said his visits to a number of Arab countries had helped him identify seven priorities for the region: assistance in improving governance and aiding political transition; helping countries through economic transitions, including shifts from oil-dependent economies to diversified ones and shifts from systems dominated by the public sector to ones driven by the private sector; preventing crises, integrating societies and resolving conflict; eradicating poverty; advancing the status of women; protecting the environment; and boosting the economies and development cooperation within the region.

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

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