Tag: united nations

UN Rights Chief: ‘Annexation is Illegal. Period.’

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On June 26, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, released a statement denouncing Israeli annexation plans. Bachelet, the former president of Chile, voiced a strongly worded opinion on Israeli plans to use an unsigned peace deal as justification to annex 30% of the West Bank.

“Annexation is illegal. Period,” Bachelet stated. “Any annexation. Whether it is 30 percent of the West Bank, or 5 percent. I urge Israel to listen to its own former senior officials and generals, as well as to the multitude of voices around the world, warning it not to proceed along this dangerous path.” Annexation plans would not impact those living in the occupied territories alone, she emphasized.

Disastrous consequences

Bachelet said that “the precise consequences of annexation cannot be predicted, but they are likely to be disastrous for the Palestinians, for Israel itself, and for the wider region.” She recalled a June 23 statement by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who called any form of Israeli annexation “devastating.” Bachelet said, “The Secretary-General of the United Nations has called on the Israeli Government to abandon its annexation plans, and I back that call one hundred percent.”

As UN Commissioner on Human Rights, Bachelet has a mandate to prevent human rights violations and promote international cooperation to ensure respect of human rights. She sees opposing Israeli annexation as part of that mandate as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan “is likely to entrench, perpetuate and further heighten serious human rights violations that have characterized the conflict for decades.”

Threat to human rights

Her statement, published by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), highlighted a likelihood that restrictions on Palestinian rights to freedom of movement would further deteriorate “as Palestinian population centers become enclaves.” The statement emphasized how annexation could ban locals from farming their land and reduce access to education and healthcare.

The OHCHR statement called Israel settlements in the occupied territories “a clear violation of international law” that would “almost certainly expand” should annexation proceed. Even a “modest” form of annexation would “grievously harm the prospect of a two-state solution,” undercut future negotiations, “and perpetuate the serious existing human rights and international humanitarian law violations we witness today.”

Bachelet’s office fears the annexation would lack any legal backing and would create an untenable position for Israeli diplomacy in the future. “The shockwaves of annexation will last for decades, and will be extremely damaging to Israel, as well as to the Palestinians,” Bachelet warned in her statement. “However there is still time to reverse this decision.”

Rich Countries Seek Priority Access to COVID-19 Vaccine

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In order for an eventual COVID-19 vaccine to save as many lives as possible, it would require rapid distribution, and to those countries struggling with the highest infection rates. The chances that will happen are slim, say several experts who see an increasingly competitive race for first-access to a potential vaccine.

“We have this beautiful picture of everyone getting the vaccine, but there is no road map on how to do it,” the Associated Press was told by Yuan Qiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders in Geneva.

Hu predicts that the existing structure, in which companies establish patents at every step of vaccine development, will hamper the distribution and development of a vaccine that could be made available to all. “We can’t afford to face these multiple layers of private rights to create a ‘people’s vaccine,’” she told the AP.

Three phases

Several possible vaccines are under development across the world thanks to global efforts, with around a dozen in the early stages of testing. Vaccine development requires any potential remedy to go through a three-phase process that tests the efficacy of the drug while ensuring that side effects do not pose unforeseen risks.

In the first phase, small groups of people receive the trial vaccine. If the vaccine proves successful without any significant health risks among the participants, the process moves to the second phase.

In phase two, the clinical study expands to a group of people who are part of the risk group for whom the vaccine is intended, which in COVID-19 cases would be older people and those vulnerable because of pre-existing illnesses.

The third and final phase tests the vaccine on thousands of people to ensure safety and a proven efficacy to avoid false positives and detect possible allergic reactions or side effects.

Private investment

Several wealthy countries have spent millions to support the rapid development of possible vaccine candidates and ensure a potential vaccine could be manufactured on a large scale. In exchange for these investments, these countries are expected to receive vaccines before others.

The British government has declared that the first 30 million doses of a possible vaccine under development at Oxford University will be earmarked for British citizens. The US became entangled in a diplomatic row with France over the potential future distribution of a French vaccine candidate to which the US expected first access because of its investments.

AstraZeneca, a drug manufacturer that intends to produce Oxford University’s vaccine, has signed an agreement with the US that would guarantee 300 million doses for the US, to be delivered as soon as possible.

The same manufacturer struck a deal with four EU countries to also supply them with 300 million doses. Drug manufacturers appear to be actively goading governments into making early commitments to buy yet-unproven drugs, playing countries against each other as they stand to make giant profits.

While pharmaceutical companies have pledged to provide a not-for-profit version of their vaccines, it is becoming clear that the world’s richest will be the first to receive the vaccines, even if other countries need them much more. Another example of the perverse nature of privatized medicine, it will be the richest, not the sickest, who will receive priority in this global crisis.

Syrians Brace for Looming Sanctions

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On June 17, the ‘Caesar Act’ will come into effect in the United States, with potentially devastating consequences for Syria’s economy. The act consists of a broad package of sanctions that would, in effect, make it illegal for most countries to do business with Syrian enterprises.

The Caeser act shares the pseudonym of a Syrian military photographer who smuggled thousands of photographs of Syrian torture out of the country, revealing the brutality of the Syrian regime’s practices against detainees.

However, the package of sanctions could have far-reaching consequences for Syria. The war-torn country’s economy is already suffering from hyperinflation that has caused food prices to rise by 50% in a single month.

“Prices of goods in Syria, including locally produced ones, are rising with the exchange rate,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute told the Guardian. “The inflation is so rapid that prices in the morning would be lower than in the evening,” she explained.

Looming sanctions

The already dire situation in Syria is about to get worse since the Caesar Act will effectively penalize any country that does business with any company in Syria.

While existing EU and US sanctions already target senior regime officials and aligned business interests, the US sanctions set to trigger on June 17 will target any country that trades with Syrian entities, effectively targeting Syria’s few remaining trade-partners in neighboring countries and with businesses in Europe and the Gulf states.

The largest impact of the sanctions will be felt both in Damascus and Beirut, as trade with Lebanon has been one of the few remaining lifelines on which Syria’s fragile economy depended. Both Lebanon and Syria are facing spiraling currency crises and  the US sanctions aim to exacerbate these troubles in order to weaken Iranian influence in the two countries.

Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon’s government and Iranian support for both countries have long been a thorn in the side of the US military and the US now aims to break business ties between the two countries and plunge both into a dire economic crisis.

Victims

However, the victims of sanctions are rarely the elite that they nominally target. Rising prices of basic essentials and food scarcity are inevitable, but the regime’s leadership will always have enough to eat. The sanctions hope to make the economic situation in Syria and Lebanon so dire that the starving people will rise up and hold the governments responsible.

In over a century of sanctions, they have never actually produced this result. Sanctions on apartheid south-Africa actually further impoverished the black population, according to the then prime-minister de Klerk. Cuba has been under crushing US sanctions since it’s communist revolution, but the sanctions actually allow the regime to blame the US for any economic issues.

In Syria, an already devastated country with its infrastructure in ruins is facing an economic crisis even without the new sanctions. Rising bread prices have sparked protests which were met with counter-protests by government supporters, who directly highlighted Western sanctions as the reason for the economic troubles.

Following a nine-year conflict, Syria has few resources left to rebuild. The US now attempts to once again spark a popular uprising and reduce the influence of Iran and Hezbollah. But, after the first uprising was crushed with little to no official western backing, how are Syrians supposed to topple al-Assad now?

Russia, China, EU Tell US to Pull Back from Iran Arms Embargo Threats

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Russia and China have echoed the European Union’s sentiments, reiterating that the US is in no position to use the Iran nuclear deal as a platform for imposing a permanent weapons embargo on Iran. In a May 27 letter, to the UN Security Council, and  U.N. chief Antonio Guterres made public today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the US position as “ridiculous and irresponsible.” 

“This is absolutely unacceptable and serves only to recall the famous English proverb about having one’s cake and eating it,” Lavrov wrote.  

Last week, US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft said a draft resolution would soon be introduced to the Security Council calling for a permanent arms embargo on Iran, as it has violated the conditions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Despite no longer being part of the accord, Craft and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have both intimated that reintroducing UN-backed weapons sanctions, under the basis of the JCPOA agreement, is currently a top US priority.  

Top Chinese and European Union diplomats have also questioned the Trump administration’s call for a snapback to pre-JCPOA sanctions. All permanent Security Council members — Russia, China, the US, France and UK — have a right to veto resolutions. 

“The United States, no longer a participant to the JCPOA (nuclear deal) after walking away from it, has no right to demand the Security Council invoke a snapback,” Wang told the Security Council and Guterres in a letter on June 7. 

On June 9, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Frontelles agreed, stating, “the United States has withdrawn from the JCPOA, and now they cannot claim that they are still part of the JCPOA in order to deal with this issue from the JCPOA agreement.”  

“They withdraw. It’s clear. They withdraw,” he stressed. 

The US unilaterally pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accord

between the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, China, Russia and Iran in 2018. Under the 2015 plan Iran promised to limit sensitive nuclear activities, in return for an easing of sanctions. However the agreement began to unravel when Trump pulled out of the deal under his “maximum pressure” campaign, and re-imposed stringent US economic sanctions. 

Under the JCPOA, which is enshrined in a UN resolution, if Iran violates the terms of the accord, sanctions, including an arms embargo, can be reinstated. Iran has violated the terms of the nuclear deal since the US pulled out, but Lavrov, Wang, and Borrell argue that the US has waived its rights to push for renewed sanctions since pulling out of the accord.  

“A party which disowns or does not fulfil its own obligations cannot be recognized as retaining the rights which it claims to derive from the relationship,” Lavrov explained, invoking 1971 International Court of Justice precedent. 

Read also: Iran to Execute Spy Who Gave Soleimani’s Location to US

 

 

UN, GNA Respond to ‘Cairo Declaration’ on Libya Crisis

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Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi announced on Saturday a new political solution to the Libya crisis, dubbed the “Cairo Declaration.” The proposal has been welcomed by a number of Arab and Western nations but rejected by the Government of National Accord, which is instead pushing ahead with military offensives east of Tripoli.  

Libyan National Army (LNA) Chief Khalifa Haftar and Libyan House of Representatives Counselor Aguila Saleh joined el-Sisi in Cairo, and both backed the plan and agreed to a ceasefire starting on June 8. The GNA has yet to issue an official statement on the “Cairo Declaration” but in a clear rejection of the proposal, has continued to push eastwards from Tripoli, building on gains made against Haftar’s retreating forces in recent days.  

Fighting has centered on the strategic coastal town and former ISIS stronghold of Sirte but the GNA, with Turkish militia and weaponry support, is unlikely to stop there. They have the Libyan National Army (LNA) now firmly on the back foot and Libya’s oil fields in their sights.  

“Now what do you have right to the east of Sirte, you have the most strategic area of Libya,” Libya expert Jalel Harchaoui told the Associated Press (AP News). 

“You have effectively a series of oil terminals capable of exporting everyday more than 6,000 barrels a day,” he said. The oil revenue would be a boost to the UN-recognized GNA, which has been cut off from the country’s main source of wealth since the country essentially split in two and developed parallel governing structures in 2015. 

UN Responds 

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has called for all sides of the conflict to seek a political solution and immediate ceasefire, declaring “any war among Libyans is a losing war,” in a statement issued late Saturday.  

UNSMIL did not comment directly on the “Cairo Declaration,” but welcomed “calls by international and regional actors in recent days for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Libya.” 

“A political solution to Libya’s longstanding crisis remains within grasp and the Mission, as ever, stands ready to convene a fully inclusive Libyan-led and Libyan-owned political process,” UNSMIL said in what appears to be a thinly-veiled swipe at el-Sisi’s announcement.

The UN also denounced the uptick in violence over recent days, noting fighting around eastern Tripoli and Tarhouna has displaced some 16,000 people. It called for an investigation into the “deeply disturbing” discovery of a number of dead bodies at a Tarhouna hospital and encouraged all conflict participants to respect the rule of law and international humanitarian law. 

“We have also received numerous reports of the looting and destruction of public and private property in Tarhuna and Alasabaa which in some cases appear to be acts of retribution and revenge that risk further fraying Libya’s social fabric,” UNSMIL added. 

Choosing Peace over Military Gains 

The Egyptian peace plan has received support from a number of Arab states including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan. In the past 24 hours, Russia, the US, France, and Greece have also welcomed the Egyptian solution, while Germany and the UK have praised Haftar’s commitment to a political solution but called for all talks to be UN-led.

Despite Haftar and Saleh’s apparently genuine commitment to a ceasefire and political solution to the conflict, it seems that the GNA, led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj and backed by Turkish troops and Qatari funds, is much more interested in territorial gains than sparing civilian lives or securing a peaceful future for Libya.

Sarraj has called on his troops to “continue their path,” and Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha said the GNA will not consider negotiating until it has taken Sirte and the nearby Al Jufra Airbase. With Haftar’s troops on the back foot, it remains to be seen if the GNA will show restraint and look towards a political solution or continue the bloodshed that has torn Libya apart for years. 

Read also: Egypt’s Peace Plan for Libya Gains Ground in Arab World

Saudi Arabia’s Anti-Mine Program “Masam” Works to Make Yemen Safer

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A Saudi Arabia-led land-mine removal program neighboring war-torn Yemen removed 852 deadly explosive devices in the first week of June alone, the initiative reports. Hundreds of innocent Yemenis have been killed and maimed by some of the estimated 1.1 million mines laid by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels during the country’s five-year civil war.  

The Saudi Project for Landmine Clearance, known as “Masam,” says it has cleared 168,155 mines, unexploded ordnance, and explosive devices since it began in late June 2018. 

“Masam” says it has an “ironclad determination” to continue its important humanitarian work. Despite making “tremendous progress in its combat against mines” so far, the initiative says it will continue to work towards its goal of a “mine-free Yemen.” 

In addition to posing a threat to Yemenis’ lives and obstructing their movements, the explosive devices have also prevented crucial aid and development assistance from reaching vulnerable populations. 

“Masam” is forging ahead with its lifesaving work at a time when the United Nations programs in Yemen are in doubt after a recent fundraising initiative fell $1 billion short of its target.

The June 2 pledging conference, co-hosted by the United Nations and Saudi Arabia, hoped to raise $2.41 billion but only managed to secure $1.35 billion in urgently-needed funds.  

As a result, many vital UN-run food, health, education, and internally displaced person’s (IDP) programs will have to be wound back or cut, placing lives at risk. Yemen is considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with approximately 80% of citizens requiring some form of humanitarian protection or assistance, and is now facing dual hunger and COVID-19 crises.  

“Without more money, we face a horrific outcome,” said the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.

“Yemen needs peace. In the meantime, we must keep people alive,” Lowcock said during the Yemen Conference 2020 last week. 

“We welcome the pledges made today. But this still falls far short of what is needed to alleviate the suffering,” said Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland after the fundraiser.

“Millions of Yemeni people are staring down the double barrel of starvation and a global pandemic,” Egeland stressed. “The money pledged today needs to be disbursed immediately and donors who failed to put their hands in their pockets must step up.”

Read also: Yemen Donor Drives Raise Only Half of Required Funds

Egypt’s Peace Plan for Libya Gains Ground in Arab World

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On Saturday evening, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi fronted the media in Cairo to announce a political solution to the Libyan civil war, dubbed the “Cairo Declaration.” El-Sisi was flanked by Libyan House of Representatives Counselor Aguila Saleh and Libyan National Army (LNA) Chief Khalifa Haftar as he outlined the bold proposal.

“There can be no stability in Libya unless peaceful means to the crisis are found that include the unity and integrity of the national institutions,” el-Sisi said on June 6.

The first step of the plan calls for the implementation of a ceasefire on June 8 and the expulsion of all foreign militia from Libya. It would also see militias disbanded and military authority handed back to the Haftar-led LNA.  

Under el-Sisi’s plan, a transitional government composed of representatives from the country’s three regions would reign for 18 months to stabilize the country, paving the way for elections. Rival, parallel parliaments have been operating in Libya’s east and west for the last five years and the Egyptian plan would see Tripoli and Tobruk reunited.  

“We warn against the insistence of any party on continuing to search for a military solution to the crisis in Libya,” el-Sisi stressed.  

The Egyptian president framed the “Cairo Declaration” as a continuation of the frameworks set out through previous rounds of UN talks, urging the United Nations to lead renewed political discussion in Geneva. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has yet to comment on the proposal.  

The UN-recognized Government of National (GNA) is also yet to comment on the political plan and was not represented at the Cairo summit. The GNA has instead pushed ahead with a military offensive to retake the coastal town of Sirte, south of Tripoli, which Haftar’s forces captured in April. 

Approximately 16, 000 civilians were displaced in 24 hours as fighting in southern Tripoli and Tarhouna intensified on June 5, the UNSMIL Libya reported on June 6. 

Arab world support, Turkish rejection 

Meanwhile, Egypt has been busy gaining regional support for its peace plan. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry reached out to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, African Union Chair Moussa Faki, as well as the leaders of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS).  

A number of Arab countries have already thrown their support behind the “Cairo Declaration;” in particular, the ceasefire. The governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE,

Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan welcomed the political plan and encouraged all sides of the Libyan conflict to negotiate a peaceful solution to the ongoing crisis.

Turkey, who supports the GNA with militiamen and weapons, rejected the proposal, instead claiming it was Egypt’s support for Haftar that is undermining the political process in Libya.  

“It is not surprising that those who have taken over their administration by a coup support a putschist,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said, referring to el-Sis’s rise to power.  

“Egypt’s years-long military support to putschist Haftar constitutes a clear violation of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” Aksoy added.

The spokesman said Turkey will continue to back “the legitimate government in Libya [GNA] and pursue relevant UN resolutions. Its ally and financial backer Qatar is yet to comment on the “Cairo Declaration.”

Read also: US Signals Potential Renewed Involvement in Libya

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