Bosnia and Herzegovina contained approximately 3 million landmines, or an estimated 152 mines per square mile, making it "the most infested" country in the world, that country's Permanent Representative, Muhamed Sacirbey, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this morning.
At a Headquarters press briefing this morning, a team of United Nations economists introduced a note of the Secretary-General on The World Economy at the Beginning of 1998 forecasting a picture of global economic growth despite the current financial crisis in South-East Asia. The note will be submitted to the 1998 organizational session of the Economic and Social Council.
At a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon to mark Human Rights Day, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), James Gustave Speth, said a third of the people in the developing world were imprisoned by poverty. It was a prison so complete that it denied them their fundamental rights, such as the right to life, liberty and to a meaningful existence.
At a Headquarters press conference yesterday evening, 3 December, Leiv Lunde, State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, said the basic motivation for the continued presence of humanitarian groups in Afghanistan was to alleviate the sufferings of the war-weary people of that country.
The humanitarian situation in Iraq will get "worse and worse" unless urgent measures are taken to alleviate it and contain the risk of further deterioration, the Executive Director, Office of the Iraq Programme, Benon Sevan, said at a Headquarters press briefing Tuesday.
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) should be dedicated to economic, social and strategic cooperation among former Soviet republics and not merely a mechanism for their "civilized divorce", Permanent Representative of Belarus Alyaksandr Sychou said this morning, in a press conference at Headquarters.
At a Headquarters press conference this morning, the European Union Humanitarian Affairs Commissioner, Emma Bonino, appealed for the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. She was joined by the President of Trinidad and Tobago, Arthur Napoleon Raymond Robertson, and by the Minister of Justice of Senegal, Jacques Baudin.
