i) Kofi Annan and the UN Share the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2001, in two equal portions, to the United Nations and to its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world. The United Nations Association in Canada extended its sincerest congratulations to the UN and its Secretary-General for receiving this richly-deserved award.
For more information, please visit the following websites:
The Nobel Foundation
The United Nations
UNA-UK
ii) Who's who in OHCHR
A directory which explains who does what in the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights and how to contact them has been published for the use of human rights non-government organisations. It is not available on any website and is restricted for interested NGO internal use. To apply for a copy (Word document only):
e-mail: Laurie Wiseberg, NGO Liaison, lwiseberg.hchr@unog.ch
or Tel. 011 (41 22) 917 9393 or Fax. 011 (41 22) 917 9050
iii) UN News Daily
UN Wire is a free daily news service sponsored by the United Nations Foundation and its sister organization, the Better World Fund, which are dedicated to supporting United Nations efforts on behalf of the environment, population stabilization and children's health. Its reports and the complete issue of each day's UN Wire can be found on the Web at http://www.unfoundation.org The Web version includes hot-links to the complete text of cited articles, a fully searchable archive and easy access to recent issues.
The UN newsservice also provides official UN news at www.un.org/News/
iv) One UN Conference likely to be scrapped
The United Nations will probably abandon its plans to hold an international conference on migration and development because of a lack of support from member states. In a report prepared for the UN General Assembly's UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says 26 governments have expressed opposition to the conference, saying that "international migration and development issues had already been the object of discussions in several UN conferences." Some of the countries also said the UN should not take on such a conference given the world body's tight financial situation, Annan said.
Only 52 of the remaining 163 UN member states responded at all to Annan's three appeals for the conference over the last six years, he said. Of those countries, 47 said they are "generally in favor" of such a meeting.
An unnamed UN source said migrant labor-dependent countries in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Western Europe are opposed to the conference for "selfish reasons." The source added, "Clearly, they don't want a conference because it would not only raise issues concerning the exploitation of migrant labor but also consolidate the rights of expatriate workers." The International Labor Organization supports the conference because it says new standards are necessary to deal with changes in migration and resulting labor and human rights abuses (Thalif Deen, IPS/TerraViva, 15 Aug) Excerpt from UN Wire of 4 August, 2001
v) And two others are postponed
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the security concerns in New York, the World Summit on Children, scheduled for mid-September was postponed. New dates have just been confirmed - the special sesson is now scheduled for May 8 to 10, 2002 in New York.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was forced to postpone the World Food Summit scheduled to take place in Rome from 5 to 9 November. The threat of terrorist attacks added to existing security fears in the wake of violence at the Genoa G8 Summit in July were key factors. The new dates are for June 10 to 13, 2002 in Rome. The summit meeting had aimed to boost attempts to halve the number of people suffering hunger by 2015. The total still stands at more than 800 million.
