IN BRIEF

ARCHBISHOP SILVANO TOMASI, HOLY SEE PERMANENT OBSERVER to the  Office of the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva, spoke in that city on June 28 at the Second Preparatory Meeting of the First Review Conference of the Ottawa Convention. The review conference is scheduled to take place in Nairobi, Kenya from November 29 to December 3, 2004. The Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction was established on September 18, 1997 and entered into force on March 1, 1999. In his talk, the archbishop noted that, since March 1999, 116 countries have destroyed a total of 31 million mines; the cost of realizing the Convention's objectives so far has been $1.6 billion and up to February of 2004, 141 countries have become parties to this convention. Calling the Convention "a pioneer and efficacious," Archbishop Tomasi said "mines have made the poor even poorer, victims without hands and feet, children without a future, farmers without land to cultivate and young generations with a future on their ancestral land and whose only alternative is uprooting and migrating towards an uncertain tomorrow."

MARY ANN GLENDON, PRESIDENT OF THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY of Social Sciences and head of the Holy See delegation to the ECOSOC 2004 High Level Segment of Least Developed Countries (LDC), addressed the assembly on June 29 in New York on its theme, "Resource Mobilization and Enabling Environment for Poverty Eradication in the Context of the Implementation of the Program of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2002-2010." ECOSOC is the United Nations' Economic and Social Council. Prof. Glendon said that "the Holy See joins its voice to those that are urgently calling the family of nations to attend to the needs of its most vulnerable members. ... For as Pope John Paul II has insisted, 'The poor cannot wait.' No one can deny that the challenge to reverse what often appears to be a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, especially of LDCs, is formidable." These challenges must not be used as excuses, but rather to spur us on to greater effort, she added. "The Holy See wishes to emphasize that any measure to promote authentic and lasting development must be protective of human dignity and culture. ... What is needed is a change of heart, that the international community may be ever bolder, more generous, more creative, more energetic in its struggle to finally end the division of the world into areas of poverty and plenty."
.../IN BRIEF/...            VIS 20040701 (430)