National News

Belarus, UN cooperation in combating trade in children discussed in New York

Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Viktor Gaisenok met with Deputy Chief Executive of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Kul Gautam to discuss the avenues of cooperation between Belarus and the United Nations Organisation in combating the trade in children, BelTA leant from the press service of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry. The UNICEF intends to include the issues relating to the fight against trade in children and sexploitation into training programmes of the international centre for training specialists in combating human trafficking and illegal migration, which has opened in Minsk this year with the assistance provided by the International Organisation for Migration /IOM/. Participants of an official session dedicated to children scheduled to take place on December 11-12, 2007 during the 62nd UN General Assembly, plan to consider the progress that has been reached since 2002 in the sphere of children’s health and education, combating trade in children, violence and exploitation of children. A delegation of Belarus coordinated the negotiations to organise the session. Mr. Kul Gautam thanked the Belarusian side for the successful work and requested Belarus to send a high-level delegation for the session. Viktor Gaisenok and Kul Gautam exchanged the views on the implementation of the Belarus- UNICEF projects on iodinating salt. These projects aimed at thyroid cancer prophylaxis are very important for Belarus. Viktor Gaisenok also met with UN Deputy Secretary General for General Assembly and Conference Management Muhammad Shaaban to discuss the issues relating to organisational support to the debates on human trafficking scheduled to be held at the start of 2008 in the UN headquarters in New York. The sides considered the ways of expanding constructive cooperation between the Belarusian delegation and the UN Secretariat.