Press Conference

Press Conference on ‘The Power of Muze Concert: A Prelude to Human Security’

Ambassador Gérard Araud, of France, which holds the Security Council’s rotating Presidency this month, told reporters today that the 15-member body would kick off its work with a briefing tomorrow from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his recent travels, as well as on the massive humanitarian effort underway in earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Describing the humanitarian situation in Haiti as the “main absolute priority”, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in that country said today that the United Nations was working hard to address it through a complex water and food distribution effort aimed at feeding 2 million people before the end of February.

While the overall relief operation in Haiti was making solid progress, “there’s a long way to go before we can feel satisfied about reaching all the people who need aid,” the United Nations humanitarian chief told reporters today, as he provided a snapshot of the massive relief effort underway some two weeks after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the tiny nation, flattening much of its infrastructure and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without food and shelter.

The Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia this morning formally adopted a mode of cooperation between China and the Western naval coalition patrolling the Gulf of Aden, Carl Salicath, its Chairperson, said at Headquarters today.

A top official of the European Union naval operation working to squash piracy and armed robbery off the Somali coast lauded this afternoon the Chinese Government’s decision to add a warship to that operation.

Participants in yesterday’s conference in Montreal on aid to Haiti after its devastating earthquake had agreed that planning for long-term recovery must be started while emergency assistance continued, United Nations officials told journalists at Headquarters this afternoon.

The United Nations top official in Haiti had presented to Government ministers today a proposal to better coordinate delivery of urgently needed food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies to people in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, Tony Banbury, Principal Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, said this afternoon.

“It is sheer dumb luck that we have succeeded as a world without a nuclear catastrophe since 1945, and not a function of good policy,” Gareth Evans, an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, said today at a Headquarters press conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Australia.

The head of the United Nations World Food Programme today warned that, while the international relief effort in Haiti was beginning to gain its footing, the scale of the devastation in the earthquake-ravaged country was immense, and helping more than 2 million people rebuild their lives would require the engagement of a broad spectrum of humanitarian actors “for at least the next 12 months”.