United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-09-18

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, 18 September, 1998

HEADLINES

• Security Council decides to continue UN Mission for Referendum in Western Sahara through end of October.
• Security Council urges Secretary-General to assist in establishing early warning system in Africa.
• United Nations mission in Angola discovers one dead from Wednesday's ambush against UN convoy.
• Secretary-General appeals to governments to help protect UN staff by ratifying treaty on their security.
• Citizens of Kosovo continue to flee fighting as first snow falls, forshadowing crisis in winter.
• At General Assembly forum on globalization, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director questions wide-scale emergence of "wretched of the earth."
• United Nations Environment Programme starts annual "clean up the world" campaign.

The Council, acting unanimously, was responding positively to a recommendation by the Secretary-General, who said the extension would allow time for negotiations on the issue of "contested tribes."

So far, the Mission has identified 147,000 applicants for participation in the referendum, which will allow the people of Western Sahara to choose between independence or integration with Morocco. But concern persists over the unresolved question of the identification of applicants from three "contested groupings."

This issue will be dealt with in talks brokered by the Secretary- General's Personal Envoy, James Baker III, with representatives of the Morocco Government and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO), expected to begin by late September or early October.

In its resolution, adopted unanimously, the Council requested the Secretary- General to report in 30 days on the progress achieved in the implementation of the Settlement Plan. It welcomed the agreement of the Moroccan authorities to formalize the presence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Western Sahara. Both parties were requested to take concrete action to enable UNHCR to prepare for the repatriation of Saharan refugees eligible to vote and their immediate families.

The Council said that the warning system, based on the model currently being used by the United Nations, should be established through the United Nations Trust Fund for Improving Preparedness for Conflict Prevention and Peacekeeping in Africa, and encouraged contributions to the Fund. The Security Council also encouraged the Secretary-General to develop a strategy to enhance contributions to the Fund.

The Council urged the Secretary-General to assist in strengthening and making operational the OAU conflict management centre and its situation room, to assist Member States in the further development of a commonly accepted peacekeeping doctrine, and to share the existing peacekeeping doctrine and concepts of operations with the OAU and subregional organizations in Africa.

The Council invited the Secretary-General to assist the OAU and subregional organizations in Africa to form logistics assessment teams through the sharing of information on the establishment, composition, methods and functioning of United Nations logistics assessment teams.

The Council encouraged partnerships between States and regional and subregional organizations involved in peacekeeping operations, in which one or more States or organizations contribute troops and others contribute equipment.

Commending the various initiatives taken by several States to enhance African preparedness to participate in the military, police, humanitarian and other civilian components of peacekeeping operations, the Council encouraged joint training and simulation exercises and seminars with African peacekeepers.

It welcomed the proposal by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to establish a Council of Elders within its Mechanism for the Prevention, Management, Resolution of Conflicts, Peacekeeping and Security in order to facilitate mediation efforts. The Council urged the Secretary- General, in consultation with the Executive Secretary of ECOWAS, to assist in facilitating the establishment of the Council of Elders and to help to ensure its effectiveness.

The Security Council endorsed the establishment of a United Nations Preventive Action Liaison Office in the OAU and urged the Secretary- General to consider ways of making this office more effective and also the possibility of appointing liaison officers to peacekeeping operations of the OAU and of subregional organizations in Africa which are authorized by the Council.

The Council welcomed the fact that the United Nations and the OAU have agreed to broaden their cooperation on measures to prevent and resolve conflicts in Africa, and invited the Secretary-General to take concrete steps to enhance cooperation between the two organizations.

The individual had been working for a contractor of the World Food Programme (WFP). Meanwhile, three other injured persons, all local employees working with the same contractor, were flown to Luanda on Friday. The rescue mission, carried out where the attack occurred north of Lucala in Kwanza Norte province, was assisted by the Angolan National Police.

Attacks such as the recent ambush "seriously impede the ability of humanitarian organizations to assist those in need," said United Nations Spokesman Fred Eckhard. Currently, more 372,000 internally displaced persons in Angola are receiving assistance, out of a total of 1.3 million in need. The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has called on all parties to ensure the safety of humanitarian convoys and personnel in Angola, and to facilitate the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations throughout the country.

Speaking on the occasion of Staff Day, which was held under the theme "International Civil Service: Fifty Years of Peacekeeping Sacrifice," the Secretary-General said the United Nations was doing all it could to minimize risks. At the same time, he would be appealing to the Security Council to take "some difficult decisions" about the relative risks and payoffs of United Nations action, since civilians were being sent to places where governments did not want to expose their troops.

"The sad truth," said Mr. Annan, "is that unless more care is taken, from measures in the field to political decisions at Headquarters, we can expect more heartbreaking news."

Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette echoed Mr. Annan's appeal to Member States to ratify the Convention. She noted that since 1948, more than 1,500 United Nations peacekeepers had died while serving the cause of peace. Civilian deaths had increased dramatically since 1992; before then, no more than a handful of civilian staff had lost their lives. "Let us pledge to do all in our power to ensure that the sacrifices of half a century -- and the sacrifices that are certain to come, even, perhaps, with the next hour's headlines -- will not have been in vain," she urged.

All of the proceeds from Staff Day were donated to a scholarship fund for the children of United Nations staff members killed in the line of duty.

"A government offensive now in its third day has prompted some 10,000 people to flee at least 13 villages from Podujevo to Mitrovica," said Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

He said the villagers all reported having heard word that they would be attacked. After they left the shelling had started. "They said that not all of the 13 villages were bombarded but that all of them were empty," he added.

Mr. Janowski reported that soldiers had stopped UNHCR from entering the conflict zone. A team of international observers found that some 25,000 internally displaced persons who had fled their homes in the Drenica region were living in the open along the border with Montenegro without food or medicine. The team had reported that many were sick or injured, and had pointed out that conditions would worsen with the onset of winter.

The World Food Programme (WFP) meanwhile reported that internally displaced people hiding in the Bjeshket and Memuna mountains separating Kosovo from Albania had confirmed that snow had started falling, increasing their fears that winter had arrived early.

"We have been dreading the arrival of winter and the certain increase in suffering it will cause those who have been displaced," said Robert Hauser, head of WFP's Eastern Europe unit. "This marks the beginning of a new phase in the humanitarian crisis -- from here it can only get worse."

WFP warned that snow and rain would exacerbate the already tenuous situation of those who had fled their homes. Snow and rain would also complicate the delivery of humanitarian aid, as many of the displaced people were located in isolated areas along narrow dirt roads. Since June, the agency has delivered 170 metric tonnes of food to the displaced people in Kosovo.

Addressing a ministerial round table on the topic of the "social and economic impact of globalization: national responses," UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Stephen Lewis asked participants "why in an era of globalization, a so-called harbinger of prosperity, do we witness the wide- scale recrudescence of those described by Franz Fanon as the 'wretched of the earth' -- the children and women who not only live under conditions of horrendous poverty, but who are also in danger of being written off by their nations and the world?" Where globalization was concerned, far too much was left to abstraction, with calamitous consequences. "These are human lives we are trying to protect, not currency movement", he pointed out.

He said the international community could surely develop the pattern where economic decision-making would be carried out in consultation with qualified experts, armed with the information needed to assess the impact of their decisions on children, on the poor, and on those at the periphery of national life. He wondered what the result would be if national policy- makers came to believe that there was simply no economic advantage in protecting the rights of the most marginalized.

Dan Abodakpi, Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry of Ghana, told the gathering that the greatest problem confronting Ghana, and Africa as a whole, was the world's perception of a continent that could never be brought into the forefront of the global economy. He stressed that the world must focus on Africa's positive aspects and recognize that the crisis there was due to its marginalization in the global economy.

Liz O'Donnell, Minister for Development and Cooperation of Ireland, emphasized that developing countries required investment in human capital and modern technology, a reasonable stability of financial flows, fair commodity prices, and an easing of the debt crisis, she stressed.

"The Clean Up the World Campaign is a global success story which has demonstrated without a doubt that individuals can take responsibility for improving their quality of life," UNEP's Executive Director, Klaus T”pfer. He said the campaign proved that when the global community acted in unison in defence of the environment, the results were "monumental."

Clean Up the World was founded in 1993 by Ian Kiernan, an Australian. In support of the United Nations International Year of the Ocean, Mr. Kiernan urged volunteers to focus efforts on cleaning their local beaches, rivers, canals and creeks, in order to stem the flow of pollution in the world's oceans.

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

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