18 Jan 2013

GENEVA / MALI

Violence in Mali could uproot an additional 700,000 people in the coming months, including 400,000 who could flee to neighboring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said today. CH UNTV

Posted at: January 18, 2013 12:03 pm

Duration: 02:30

Available in: SD

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Full script

STORY: GENEVA / MALI
TRT: 2.30
SOURCE: CH UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / FRENCH / NATS

DATELINE: 18 JANUARY 2013, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE

SHOTLIST:

FILE - RECENT, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

1. Wide shot, exterior, Palais des Nations

18 JANUARY 2013, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

2. Wide shot, press room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Melissa Fleming, Chief Spokesperson, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR):
"We are urgently reinforcing our staff there, dozens of experts are going to be deployed to the region to boost assistance in not only the region but also inside.  We have a new planning basis figures.  We believe there could be in the near future up to 300,000 people additionally displaced inside Mali and over 400,000 additionally displaced in neighbouring countries."
4. Close up, journalist
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Melissa Fleming, Chief Spokesperson, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR):
"Many also fear the strict application of Sharia law.  They report having witnessed executions and amputations and they say that also large amounts of money are being offered to civilians to fight against the Malian army and its supporters.  Disturbingly also we are hearing accounts that there are children among the rebel fighters, they're certainly not there willingly.  Also people very distressed saying that family members have just disappeared."
6. Med shot, table of journalists
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Rupert Colville, Spokesperson for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"Human rights experts also found that civilians in the North suffered from degrading treatments by extremist groups, based on an extreme interpretation of Sharia. Women, in particular, have suffered from harassment, abuses and sexual violence, for example after being accused of being improperly veiled or dressed, or for riding on a motorbike."
8. Med shot, three journalists
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Rupert Colville, Spokesperson for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"Rapes of women and girls, at times in front of family members and often apparently carried out on an ethnic basis, have been repeatedly used in the North to intimidate people and break any form of resistance."
10. Med shot, journalists
11. SOUNDBITE (French) Elisabeth Byrs, Spokesperson, World Food Programme (WFP):
"We are ready to resume operations as quickly as possible. The trucks are loaded ready to leave and distribute, and as the WFP Director has said there are one million eight hundred thousand Malians who live in the most affected regions and among these more than a third are food insecure."
12. Wide shot, press room

STORYLINE:

Violence in Mali could uproot an additional 700,000 people in the coming months, including 400,000 who could flee to neighboring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said today (18 January).

Conflict in the north of the country has triggered widespread displacement within Mali and into neighbouring countries, uprooting half a million people and placing pressure on vulnerable host communities still recovering from the Sahel drought.

Some 147,000 Malians have already fled to countries including Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Algeria since the crisis began last year. Some 229,000 Malians are already internally displaced within Mali.

The spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Melissa Fleming, told a news briefing in Geneva her agency believed there could be "in the near future up to 300,000 people additionally displaced inside Mali and over 400,000 additionally displaced in neighbouring countries".
 
"We have been hearing horrific accounts from refugees in the neighboring countries," Fleming said. "They report having witnessed executions, amputations, and they say also large amounts of money being offered to civilians to fight against the Malian army and its supporters," she said.

"Disturbingly we are also hearing accounts that there are children among the rebel fighters, Also very distressed people saying that family members have just disappeared."

At the same briefing the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned that the crisis in Mali has led to various human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, rape and torture.

These have been documented in a new report requested by the UN's Human Rights Council. The report shows that the current human rights situation is linked to long-standing and unresolved issues, and that human rights violations have been committed both in the North, and in the area under government control.

"Rapes of women and girls, at times in front of family members and often apparently carried out on an ethnic basis, have been repeatedly used in the North to intimidate people and break any form of resistance," said, Rupert Colville, Spokesperson for OHCHR.

Meanwhile the World Food Programme said its food distribution programme in the North was still suspended due to the security situation but that it was ready to resume as soon as possible. "The trucks are loaded", WFP spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs said, adding that a third of the 1.8 million people in the North were food insecure.