Africa

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Scientists say the rainfall during storms in the region was heavier and the damage worse than before.

Sailor Eya Guezguez, Tunisia's youngest competitor at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, dies aged 17 after a training accident on Sunday.

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Apr 11 2022 (IPS)

Look around the world at this very moment. Whether we look at it in stark numbers and statistics, whether we look at it as a generational loss of basic human rights, including the right to an education, or whether we look inwardly and feel the unspeakable human suffering and devastation taking place, we all agree: we are at a historically low point in our collective humanity.

Yasmine Sherif

The UN Secretary-General has launched several multilateral calls in the name of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Goals to change this and to mobilize the international financing and action needed to do so.

Among these, three are of immediate relevance to the delivery of an inclusive quality education to children and youth left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crises: armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters.

The first call to action refers to the UN Reform, whereby we must end silos and competition, and work together through joint programming, humanitarian-development coherence and local empowerment – with a focus on those left furthest behind.

In this vein, Education Cannot Wait was operationalized in 2017. At the time, an estimated 75 million children and youth were left behind as their education had been disrupted in crisis-affected and refugee-hosting countries. Since then, Education Cannot Wait has transformed from a new start-up fund to a matured United Nations global fund (hosted by UNICEF), with the design and agility to advance UN Reform in how we deliver education in emergencies and protracted crises to those left furthest behind.

The second call to action refers to Our Common Agenda. Once more, the top-priority for the United Nations’ 193 Member States is to leave no one behind and to reinforce the quality of their education and learning outcomes. Due to COVID-19, the number of children and youth left furthest behind in brutal conflict, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters has sky-rocketed to nearly 130 million.

We must remember them as we prepare for the third relevant call for action: the UN Secretary-General’s Transforming Education Summit, to be held during the UN General Assembly week in September. This is our opportunity to focus international financing and multilateral action on these 130 million vulnerable children and youth.

Without an inclusive quality education, these crisis-affected girls and boys will be prevented from claiming their human rights and disempowered from rebuilding peace in their own lives and in their countries. Tragically, they will be reduced only to representing the staggering gap in reaching all the Sustainable Development Goals, not least, SDG4.

By connecting the dots between the UN Secretary-General’s UN Reform, Our Common Agenda and the Transforming Education Summit, we have a unique, historic opportunity to finally reach the millions of children and youth who are today left furthest behind.

As Norway’s Minister of International Development Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, states in her interview of this month’s ECW Newsletter: “UN Member States have committed to leave no one behind in their implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.” In doing so, she concludes: “The success of this work depends on close collaboration between states, multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, organizations of persons with disabilities, and a wide range of partners.”

This is how the United Nations works. This is how Education Cannot Wait – the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – works to reach those left furthest behind, together with other major financing mechanisms, such as the International Financing Facility for Education (IFFED) and the Global Partnership for Education.

Leonardo da Vinci once said: “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” Indeed, every vision, every call for action, every effort for change, is conditioned by our ability – not only to see, but how we see – by connecting the dots. Only then can we hit the real target and produce scaled up results.

Today, we see 130 million vulnerable children and youth without an education struggling simply to survive in armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters – none of their own making. Now is the time to connect the dots between UN Reform, Our Common Agenda and the Transforming Education Summit, by squarely placing the focus and financing on those left furthest behind.

Yasmine Sherif is Director, Education Cannot Wait (ECW)
The UN Global Fund for Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crises

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Preschool students stand in a section of the garden at the El Zaite Children's Center, where teacher Sandra Peña teaches them the importance of healthy eating and the advantages of having a vegetable garden, in El Zaite, a poor neighborhood near Zaragoza, in the southern Salvadoran department of La Libertad. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
ZARAGOZA, El Salvador , Apr 11 2022 (IPS)

A group of preschool students enthusiastically planted cucumbers and other vegetables in their small school garden in southern El Salvador, a sign that school feeding programs are being revived as the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the impacts of coronavirus are still being felt, schools in Latin America, particularly in Central America, have reopened their doors to on-site and blended learning classes.

Gradually, important components of school meal programs, such as vegetable gardens, have begun to come back to life.

“Does anyone know what plant this is?” teacher Sandra Peña, 36, asked the small group of children who had followed her, in line, to the small vegetable garden at the El Zaite Children’s Center, located on the outskirts of Zaragoza, a city in the department of La Libertad in southern El Salvador.

The children responded loudly: “tomato!”, while pointing to a tomato bush, which was already showing some yellow flowers.

With difficulties, because coronavirus hasn’t gone away, schools in Central America are making efforts to continue the school feeding programs, which were making good progress before the pandemic.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), these programs benefit 85 million students in Latin America and the Caribbean. Moreover, for nearly 10 million children, they are one of the main reliable sources of food received each day.

“Students are returning to classes, in a context that is not yet back to normal, but they are gradually returning,” Najla Veloso, an expert with the Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Program, told IPS from Brasilia.

As a result of this cooperation, at the beginning of the pandemic, in 2020, several Latin American and Caribbean countries carried out joint actions to keep school feeding programs active, as part of the Sustainable School Feeding Network (Raes).

These nations were Belize, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Peru, Paraguay, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Raes was created by the Brazilian government in 2018, as part of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025), in order to support countries in the region in the implementation and reformulation of school feeding programs, based on access and guaranteeing the right to an adequate diet.

Teachers Marta Mendoza (l) and Sandra Peña pose with their students at the El Zaite Children’s Center, located in a community that is struggling to get ahead in a context of poverty and violence, like many villages and towns in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The challenges continue

When the pandemic hit and schools were closed, activity in school gardens and the kitchens where food was prepared ground to a halt. That meant strategies had to be devised to make sure the students had food – not in the schools, but in the homes of families who were under lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.

The stopgap solution was to take non-perishable food to the students’ homes, because meals were not being cooked in the schools.

The FAO expert pointed out that Guatemala and El Salvador did a good job in this regard and, in general, all the Central American countries made an effort to keep their students fed.

“Some countries had to change their laws, because food could only legally be given to students, and with the schools closed they could no longer deliver it to them, and they had to give it to fathers, mothers and the families,” Veloso explained.

The logistics of an already complex program had to be expanded greatly, with components such as local purchases, which involved coordinating the purchase of legumes, grains, vegetables, fruits and other products that were part of the school menus from local farmers.

In some cases, seed kits and farming tools were also provided so that families could plant vegetables in their home gardens, since the school gardens were no longer functioning.

Now that in most of the seven Central American countries schools are open again with a mixture of online and face-to-face learning, food is no longer taken to students’ homes, but rather parents come to the schools to pick up the products.

In the case of El Salvador, the Ministry of Education has invested, for the school year that began in January and ends in November, more than 10 million dollars for the food program to serve more than one million students nationwide, in 5128 public schools.

In this Central American nation of 6.7 million people, two food baskets have begun to be delivered, one containing a 1.1 kilogram bag of corn cereal for breakfast and seven liters of UHT liquid milk, while the other contains rice, beans, sugar, oil, powdered milk and a vitamin-fortified drink.

When IPS visited, parents and teachers at the school in the canton of San Isidro, in the municipality of Izalco in the western department of Sonsonate, were in the process of quarterly delivery of the baskets of items, which for now is replacing the serving of meals at public schools.

The photo shows sprouts planted by students at the El Zaite Children’s Center, in the south of El Salvador, in the school garden that will soon produce vegetables for their school meals again – part of the effort to keep the garden and healthy eating alive, now that schoolchildren are beginning to return to school as the COVID pandemic dies down. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“We have had to manage to get by during the pandemic, and now we are gradually getting the vegetable garden going again, for example,” said Manuel Guerrero, the school principal.

The school in San Isidro, which has been semi-open since 2021, serves 1,500 elementary and middle school students.

“Teachers are already working with the students in the gardens to make up for lost time,” added the 57-year-old principal.

Before the pandemic, they grew tomatoes, green peppers, yucca, cabbage and a local plant known as chipilín (Crotalaria longirostrata), whose leaves are added to soups for their high vitamin content.

“From our experience, and because I have visited many schools, I would say that the idea of school gardens has been well assimilated from the beginning, and that is why we must work hard to maintain it,” Guerrero added.

A state-of-the-art preschool

At the El Zaite Children’s Center, activities in the kitchen are back in full swing, although not as they were prior to the pandemic, when the cook, Dinora Gómez, took great care to ensure that the menus were to the children’s liking.

Somewhat nostalgically she reminisced to IPS about those days when she toiled away over pots and pans.

“For example, for lunch, I would make them a vegetable mince, with soy meat, tomato sauce and rice,” said Gómez, 50. Other times it was lentil soups and other vegetables.

For breakfast, “I would make scrambled eggs, fried beans and plantains,” she added.

Non-perishable food packages donated by Convoy of Hope, an evangelical organization, are also distributed to the students’ families.

Marta Mendoza and Sandra Peña are part of the teaching team at the El Zaite Children’s Center in southern El Salvador, where they are striving to return to the pre-pandemic standards of education and nutrition. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Now, although the kitchen is still formally closed, Gómez is preparing something to eat for a small group of students whose parents are unable to provide them with a mid-morning snack.

She also occasionally makes a salad from the vegetables grown in the garden.

This small school in El Zaite, which opened in 1984, serves 110 students ages four to six, and has six teachers.

The school is located in a low-income semi-rural community populated by people who settled here in the 1980s, fleeing bombings and military operations during the Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992). It is now home to 563 families.

“We are on land that used to be the pastures for the cattle of the wealthy people of Zaragoza,” Carlos Díaz, director of Patronato Lidia Coggiola, the NGO carrying out community support initiatives in this area, including the school, told IPS.

The school is a community project that falls outside the network of the Ministry of Education, which follows its curriculum as required but puts an added emphasis on topics such as the right to water or taking care of the environment.

In 1999, as part of the Patronato’s activities, a scholarship and distance sponsorship program was launched with support from donors from Italy, France and the United States, to benefit young people from the community who wished to continue their high school and university studies.

One of the beneficiaries of the initiative was Marta Mendoza, who attended preschool at the center, graduated from university and now returned to the center as a teacher.

“We formed the groups, and we are working on reading,” Mendoza told IPS. “The children came out of the lockdown with very energetic behavior.

“Little by little we are getting back to the dynamics we had in the classroom prior to the pandemic,” she said.

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Devka and Krishna Desai on their multilayer farm. They are happy because this method has brought them great success. Here they are with their harvest of bananas and papaya. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
PUNE, India, Apr 11 2022 (IPS)

Even as erratic weather and extremely high temperatures increase pest infestation and affect harvests, a combination of traditional methods, integrated pest management through intercropping and multilayering is helping farmers in Ahmednagar and Aurangabad districts of Maharashtra, India.

Ahmednagar and Aurangabad districts in the western Indian state of Maharashtra are semi-arid regions in the hinterland. Ahmednagar is drought-prone with erratic rains. Aurangabad district lies in the water-starved Marathwada region of Maharashtra. The mean maximum temperature is high, and the area experienced severe droughts in 2012 and 2014. Barring the Godavari, there are no perennial rivers in the region. Farmers have a trying time during the summer months, trying to prevent the soil from cracking due to intense heat. The rains are erratic, with untimely rains further exacerbating the onset of pests.

Yet, both districts lead in the production of pulses, maize, and grams. Since these crops are susceptible to aphids and pod-borers, high temperatures and erratic rains due to climate change have seen farmers resort to increased chemicals to check pest infestation.

This is where multilayer farming using natural organic methods, integrated pest management, and intercropping has proved beneficial to farmers in Gangapur, Shrigonda and Karjat.  Gradually reducing the chemical content in their farms over three full years, farmers are now opting for natural organic farming, with the help of technical expertise from the non-profit Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR) and scientists from WOTR-Centre for Climate Resilience (W-CRES).

The design incorporates a variety of vegetable and fruit varieties planted in limited space. This means using trees and plants of varying heights and maturing time next to one another so that each is dependent on the other. Smaller plants grow under the canopy of tall trees and yield well, even as tall fruit trees shoot up to the sun. It also ensures adequate shade in the summer months to keep the farms cool and congenial for growth. Water consumption is kept at a minimum using a rain-pipe sprinkler that runs around the patch. The method also uses integrated pest management to control pests by choosing the right plants in a cluster, and natural pesticides, without using any chemicals.

W-CRES Senior Researcher Dr Nitin Kumbhar and Junior Researcher Satish Adhe explains: “Integrated pest management works at several levels. It works through the choice of natural and organic methods, natural pheromone traps, intercropping (as per a formula we have developed), and the use of organic fungicides/pesticides that can be easily made by farming households.”

A simple square design is used, wherein bananas are intercropped with marigold, mango, maize, and black gram (urad), and papayas are intercropped with chilli black gram, drumstick, and guava. Onions are intercropped with ginger; tomatoes are intercropped with spinach and pumpkin. Radish is planted in a single row, while ridge gourd, lemongrass, and coriander are grown on the outside flanks of the farm.

Soft-stemmed coriander attracts pests. When attacked, the affected stalks of coriander are easily discarded. Marigold destroys nematodes in the soil through its alkaloid roots and protects crops. It also attracts female moths who lay eggs on the plant (leaving other crops untouched). Maize attracts beneficial insects such as the ladybird beetle, which feeds on the aphids that destroy crops.

Integrated pest management also involves pheromone traps to attract and kill destructive pests. These traps can be used against leaf-eating insects, pod borers, mealy bugs, aphids, sucking pests or fruit flies.

For all crops grown on patches, it is imperative that planting is done in a north-south direction. “This allows the crops to access sunshine throughout the day,” explains Kumbhar.

Once the farmers did away with hybrid varieties and opted for traditional ones, there was less vegetative growth and fewer insect attacks.

“Part of the problem with hybrid varieties is more vegetative growth and softer stems. This makes it attractive for pests to attack. Traditional varieties are hardier and can withstand extreme temperatures that are now common due to climate change. Farmers do not lose their crops easily due to pest attacks,” Kumbhar tells IPS.

Dipali Bankar, whose family owns a 3-acre farm in Ambelohol village in Gangapur (taluka) of Aurangabad district. A Savita Bachat Gat (Savita microfinance group) member, Dipali used her savings to widen the varieties cultivated on her family’s farm, using the multilayer model on a patch.

“Earlier, we would grow cotton from June to October, Jowar in summer, soybeans and pigeon pea in the monsoons, chickpeas, and onion in winter. Limited availability of water-limited our options. In February 2020, I took the advice of experts from WOTR and went in for multilayer farming on four gunthas (400 square metres of our land. We planted papaya, moringa (drumsticks), bananas, mangoes, guava, lemon, figs, tomatoes, brinjal, chilli (curry leaves), and marigold. Despite the Covid 19 -induced lockdown, the family earned a sizeable sum from the fruit and vegetables cultivated. The Bankars had their first crop of chillies in April 2020 and have sold a sizeable amount every 15 days, helping the family earn Rs 15000 so far. Papaya matures in nine months, while bananas bear fruit in eight months, and moringa yields drumsticks in seven months. This helped the Bankars earn Rs 70,000 from papayas, Rs 28000 and Rs 56 000 from two banana harvests, respectively and Rs 40,000 from selling drumsticks. Although markets were shut during the lockdown, the family managed to sell through local grocery shops and used the rest for their consumption. Dipali’s husband, Devidas Bankar, managed to sell part of his produce in Surat and Mumbai, where he travelled once the lockdown eased.

Sindhubai Ramnath Desai of Ambelohol village in Gangapur taluka of Aurangabad was sceptical. She initially opted to experiment on just 100 square metres, planting moringa, bananas, papaya, lemon, mango, figs, tomato, chilli, brinjal, lemongrass, spinach, coriander, curry leaves and garden sorrel. But the earnings were so substantial that she soon revised her opinion on multilayer farming.

“We earned Rs 7000 from bananas, Rs 5000 from papaya, Rs 2000 from drumsticks, Rs 1500 from chillies, and Rs 2000 selling spinach following the first harvest, besides saving Rs 2000 every month using vegetables and fruit for our consumption.”

The Desais used to hire bullocks for their farm – with the extra money earned they bought cattle which they fed with home-grown fodder.

“We have a cow and two bullocks of our own, now. The special fodder bag we now make, using jaggery, salt and (maize) fodder grass, is very nutritious and has helped them yield good milk. The cattle relish it too, as you can see,” she points to her cow, hungrily devouring the contents of the fodder bag from a feeding bucket. The family has now decided to double the land under multilayer farming to 200 square metres (two gunthas).

Sangita Krishna Ballal and her family had been growing cotton as a monoculture crop on their farmland until the recent past. Their fortunes changed once they opted for multilayer farming on a single guntha (approximately 100 square metres). With drumsticks, papaya, mango, guava, figs, lemongrass, coriander, chilli, lemongrass, brinjal, tomato, curry leaves, marigold, spinach and dill to supplement their income, the family fortunes started looking up. Lemongrass proved an excellent cash crop, with factories regularly collecting it to manufacture flavouring essence.

Dipak Dattatraya Mandle and his wife Mangal Mandle of Mahandulwadi in Shrigonda taluka of Ahmednagar district found that apart from other achievements, marigolds were successful.  With marigolds priced at Rs 200 per kg, sales during the festive season in September-October clocked around Rs 7000/ per month.

Kavita and Aruna Bhujbal used the extra money earned to buy cattle.

“We now have 20 goats, in addition to our two buffaloes, and seven cows (four Guernsey and three local breeds). We have been selling the milk to the local dairy. Goat milk is in big demand,” Aruna said. Others are diverting their additional income to diversify into other livelihood options. For instance, Kausar Sheikh has used the money to expand her bangle business, while Mira Mahandule and Sangita Popat Birekar have started rearing goats.

In this, the FarmPrecise app developed by WOTR has been of immense help. A multilingual app, FarmPrecise helps the individual farmer with advice related to the amount of water, fertilizer, fungicide, or pesticide to be used for every crop and at what intervals. The farmers are also instructed on the organic concoctions for stimulating growth and keeping their crops pest-free.

For instance, the farmers use Bengal gram flour, jaggery, cow dung and cow urine to make Jeevamrut fertilizer, while Neemastra is made out of neem leaves, cow dung and cow urine to serve as a pesticide. The Amrutpani spray (pesticide), is made of a mixture of neem leaves, Bengal gram flour, jaggery and cow dung. The Dashaparni spray – a composition using ten different types of leaves along with garlic, chillies, cow dung and cow urine is another useful biopesticide that serves as a pesticide and growth stimulant.

This combination of traditional, time-tested methods and a modern app is helping farmers combat and overcome climate change, the newest scourge on the block.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Families carry their belongings through the Zosin border crossing in Poland after fleeing Ukraine. The number of refugees worldwide has risen markedly in the recent past, reaching a record high in April 2022 of more than 30 million. Credit: UNHCR/Chris Melzer

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Apr 11 2022 (IPS)

Twilight for the 1951 Refugee Convention is becoming a 21st century reality for an increasing number of countries worldwide.

Since the Convention’s adoption, the world’s population has more than tripled and is now approximately 8,000,000,000 people. The planet’s population growth is expected to continue and likely increase to 10,000,000,000 human inhabitants around mid-century. Nearly all of that demographic growth is projected to take place in developing countries, many of which face resource scarcity, difficult living conditions, and socio-political turmoil.

In addition, climate change is forcing increased human mobility, which is projected to worsen with global warming. And non-stop waves of men, women and children largely from developing countries continue attempting unauthorized entry mainly into developed countries.

The world is also experiencing record levels of refugees, asylum seekers and persons displaced across borders. The number of refugees worldwide has risen markedly in the recent past, reaching a record high in April 2022 of more than 30 million.

That global figure includes 21 million refugees under UNHCR’s mandate and 6 million Palestinian refugees under UNRWA’s mandate as well as 4 million people as of mid-April who fled Ukraine due to Russia’s invasion. Today’s global number of refugees is rapidly approaching a three-fold increase since the start of the 21st century (Figure 1).

 

Source: UNHCR.

 

In addition to the more than 30 million refugees, 4 million Venezuelans are displaced abroad. Also, more than 4 million people are asylum seekers, with the global level of asylum claims having increased four-fold over the levels a decade ago.

In the aftermath of World War II and the beginning of the cold war, the Refugee Convention was drafted and signed by the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, held at Geneva from 2 to 25 July 1951.

The Convention and its subsequent 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees provide the foundation for today’s international refugee regime. They are the primary international legal documents that define the term “refugee”, outline the rights of refugees and responsibilities of countries, and indicate the institutions protecting refugees.

Article 1A(1) of the Convention defines refugee as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

However, the term “refugee” is often used more broadly and loosely than its legal definition. For example, colloquial and media usage, general public discourse and political remarks often include individuals seeking refuge and a better life but do not meet the Convention’s criteria for a refugee.

A core refugee principle is “non-refoulement”. That principle states that a refugee should not be returned to a place where their life or freedom would be threatened on grounds of race, religion, nationality, and membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Most of the United Nations Member States, some 149 countries, have signed or ratified either the Convention, its Protocol or both. The remaining 44 countries, many of which are the top refugee-hosting countries, are not parties to them.

However, the actions of nations regarding refugees are not directly correlated with whether they are a party to the Convention or Protocol. In fact, many signatories to the Convention and Protocol do not honor their protection responsibilities regarding refugees, often believing it’s somebody else’s problem. Increasingly, refugee protections are politicized and seen at odds with national interests and priorities.

Closely related to the refugee documents is Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the right to seek asylum. That provision states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” However, to be granted asylum, a person typically needs to meet the standards of the legal definition of a refugee.

Poverty, the lack of employment, housing, education and health care, poor governance, climate change, and crime are generally not considered legitimate grounds for granting asylum. Therefore, in most instances, claims for asylum are denied because they do not to meet the definition of a refugee.

In the United States, for example, approximately two thirds of asylum claims were denied in the past two years. Higher rates of asylum claims in 2020 denied in the first instance occurred in some European countries, such as Hungary at nearly 90 percent, Italy at 86 percent, and France at 84 percent.

Concerns about the record numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, and people displaced across borders led to the Global Compact on Refugees, which was launched in 2018. The Compact was intended to improve and better coordinate responses of the international community and host countries. However, the Compact, which was voluntary and nonbinding, offered promises and suggestions without an implementation plan and clear measures of progress.

The record levels of displacement are straining the international refugee system. Humanitarian agencies and refugee host countries, which are predominantly in developing countries such as Turkey, Colombia and Uganda, and more recently Poland, are struggling to provide the basic daily needs to the growing numbers of men, women and children.

Nearly all of the projected 1.8 billion additional people by mid-century will occur in less developed countries. For example, whereas Africa is projected to add more than 1 billion people to its population by midcentury, Europe’s population is expected to decline by nearly 40 million over the next three decades (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Economic hardship, poverty, social unrest, and conflicts are also increasing the likelihood of future flows of refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced persons. Many people who have little chance of emigrating legally can be expected to resort to unauthorized migration.

To gain entry into their destination country, many unauthorized migrants claim asylum even though most claims subsequently turn out not to meet the legal standards for being granted asylum. Based on the experiences of the past, growing numbers of unauthorized migrants believe that claiming asylum permits them to enter and remain in the country even if their claim is eventually denied, which typically takes lengthy periods to be adjudicated.

The consequences of such migration are seriously challenging governments. Recent international survey data find that the world is becoming less tolerant of migrants, especially when the migrants differ ethnically, religiously, and culturally from the host country population. Reconciling border security, national sovereignty, cultural integrity, and basic human rights remains a major challenge for the major migrant-receiving countries.

In addition, climate-related migration is expected to become a more critical issue in the coming years. Increasing numbers of people, particularly in developing regions, will be forced to adapt to global warming and changing environmental conditions, with many becoming “climate refugees”. A recent landmark ruling by the United Nations Human Rights Committee found it unlawful for governments to return migrants to countries where their lives might be threatened by a climate crisis.

In general, the responses to today’s formidable migratory challenges of increasing numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, unauthorized migrants, and persons displaced across borders are not encouraging. Those responses include more walls, barriers, and fences, increasing numbers of border guards, sea patrols, pushbacks, and detention centers, strengthening of right-wing nationalists, increasing xenophobia, heightened fears of terrorism and crime, and, importantly, shirking protection responsibilities.

In virtually every major region, governments are behaving as though the 1951 Refugee Convention is outdated, ineffectual, and incongruent with national interests. In brief, in more and more countries, it’s twilight for the 1951 Refugee Convention.

 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

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A man photographs an apartment building that was heavily damaged during escalating conflict, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/Anton Skyba for The Globe and Mail.

By Hanna Shelest
ODESA, Ukraine, Apr 11 2022 (IPS)

In the eyes of the Kremlin leadership, the basic precondition of the successful war against Ukraine has been the perceived power of the Russian Armed Forces and possible superiority over the Ukrainian forces.

This idea is clearly visible in the numerous pre-war statements in which it was assumed that Ukrainian people would not fight, that they would welcome Russians, and that they would and should be ‘liberated’ or ‘protected’.

The reality showed the opposite. Not only did Ukrainian Armed Forces fight back, but Ukrainian society demonstrates unity and resistance, something that definitely contradicts the notion of a ‘divided East and West’ promoted by Russian propaganda for years.

Do Ukrainians still have different views regarding politicians, economic development, and even the state of their foreign policy? Yes, absolutely, as any other democratic nation should.

Still, according to the latest sociological surveys (March), 76 per cent of Ukrainian think that their country is going in the right direction, in February, this number was just 25 per cent.

Moreover, Ukrainians are not ready to give up Crimea and the occupied territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions: 86 per cent think that Ukraine should use all means necessary to return Donbas, and 80 per cent – to return Crimea – these numbers are also higher than they were before the war started.

Hanna Shelest

A united Ukrainian people

The imperative of the Russian leadership was that Russian-speaking cities such as Kharkiv and Odesa would surrender first. Just before the invasion, there had been rumours in Odesa’s social networks that a mayor bought one million roses to greet Russian soldiers.

Moreover, Kharkiv appeared in the Ukrainian president’s interview with the Washington Post as a city that has the potential to be occupied by the Russian Federation. The latter provoked strong opposition among the local politicians and activists who have been publicly confirming the readiness to resist and the pro-Ukrainian mood of the city.

Some experts now consider that the brutal Russian shelling of Kharkiv is a punishment for that January position. In Odesa too, sociological polls on the third week of the war demonstrated that 91 per cent agreed that Russia is at war with Ukraine, 74 per cent absolutely disagreed that Russia is liberating Ukraine from ‘nationalists’, and 93 per cent supported the actions of President Zelenskyy.

Moreover, an initial plan that these occupied cities would quickly follow ‘the Crimea scenario’ of the fake referendum and the instalment of proxies as heads of the municipality did not work out.

The occupied cities of Kherson, Kahovka, and Energodar have seen daily participation of pro-Ukrainian demonstrations against the Russian forces. Mayors of several towns in Eastern Ukraine, including Melitopol, were kidnapped, but local inhabitants still did not support a new ‘leadership’.

In 2013, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians came to the Maidan after the brutal attack against a small group of students. In 2022, millions of Ukrainians, despite ethnicity, religion, or language preferences, came out in support of the towns that have been under constant attack.

While in January, the newly established Territorial Defence Forces of Ukraine was trying to attract 100 thousand reservists, in March, it is almost impossible to join the TDF because of quantity of applications.

These volunteers now have an experience of eight years of continuous war with Russia and bring both humanitarian aid and military supply. But what is most important is that people believe in the Armed Forces, and this trust and support is what makes the situation so difficult for the Kremlin.

2014 is not 2022

In the development of different strategic documents for the Armed Forces or diplomats of Ukraine, we always emphasised an important element – personnel and their motivation. Air superiority or outnumbering in personnel and missiles are important, but only if you have personnel ready to fight and with an understanding for what the country is fighting.

After three weeks of the Russian invasion, it seemed that despite military superiority, the Russian army is confused and demoralised. But unfortunately, not their leadership.

These examples clearly demonstrate the how the Russian leadership underestimated Ukraine’s military, as most conclusions were based on the 2014 situation. Ill-equipped Armed Forces, significant support of the pro-Russian political parties, misunderstanding of the undemocratic processes happening in Russia itself have diminished gradually after eight years of the occupation of Crimea and the war in Donbas.

The desire for peace cannot be confused with the willingness to surrender, and the desire for stability should not be confused with willingness to suppress a democratic and sovereign choice of people.

‘It is our land, it is our home’. ‘We are not contesting anybody or disputing over something. We defend our family’. ‘Don’t ask how is my family, my family is 44 million Ukrainians’. These are the most popular slogans these days. It is not nationalism or excessive patriotism.

This is the type of resilience which experts and politicians have been discussing during the last years. Ukraine adopted its first National Resilience Concept in September 2021. Six months later came a reason to check its validity.

Dr Hanna Shelest is editor-in-chief of Ukraine Analytica and heads the security policy department at the Ukrainian think tank Ukrainian Prism.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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In what experts call Somalia's worst drought in a decade, children are facing severe malnutrition.

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In the photo, people in several vehicles inspect a section of the Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, near the city of Valladolid, in the southeastern Yucatán peninsula, seat of the second most fragile jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico , Apr 8 2022 (IPS)

Along the wide slash of white earth in southwestern Mexico there are no longer trees or animals. In their place, orange signs with white stripes warn visitors: “Heavy machinery in motion,” “No unauthorized personnel allowed”.

Five tractors spread over the terrain, like intimidating metallic guards with sharp teeth. Two blue portable toilets keep them mute company, two white cans overflow with garbage, and a white and solitary awning attempts to protect them from the punishing sun.

The metal teeth tear up the jungle carpet on land in the Río Secreto ejido – an area of communal land used for agriculture – south of the city of Playa del Carmen. With a population of 305,000, Playa del Carmen is the seat of the municipality of Solidaridad, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, some 1,600 kilometers from Mexico City, on the Yucatán peninsula.

The new 90-meter gap in the jungle opens the way for the 120-kilometer southern route of Section 5 of the Mayan Train (TM), the most ambitious megaproject of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who wants at all costs for the locomotives to blow their horns by late 2023."Hundreds of hectares are being deforested. We are going to end up with new cities or existing ones are going to grow. This could be a tragedy of enormous proportions, because the ecosystems are being disturbed. Simply by removing vegetation cover, the capacity of water systems to capture and filter water is altered.” -- Lorenzo Álvarez

Mina Moreno, an independent environmental conservationist, describes Section 5, one of the seven sections of the project, as “illegal and opaque”.

“There are no studies, there is no information as to why the route was changed, what is behind the new route. The problem is what the railway will bring with it: it’s a Trojan horse for what is coming behind,” she told IPS.

The project, under the responsibility of the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), has suffered delays and cost overruns since construction began in 2020 and will have environmental, social, cultural and labor impacts, as IPS saw during a tour of several areas along the route.

With seven sections running through the Yucatan peninsula and part of the southeast, the plan is for the Mayan Train, with 21 stations and 14 stops, to cover a distance of some 1,500 kilometers. The railroad will pass through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Chiapas and Tabasco, which are home to a combined total of more than 13 million people.

The first three are located in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile Mexican ecosystems and the second largest jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest.

It is here that around 80 percent of the TM railway will run, whose locomotives will pull wagons carrying thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, the main agricultural products from the peninsula.

The Mexican government is promoting the president’s flagship megaproject as an engine of social development that is to create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and bolster the regional economy. But these arguments have sparked conflicts between its supporters and critics.

UN Habitat, which is providing technical advice on the project’s land use planning, believes that the railway will create one million jobs by 2030 and will lift 1.1 million people out of poverty in an area with 42 municipalities with high rates of poverty and marginalization. (The estimates were made prior to the COVID-19 epidemic that hit Latin America’s second-largest economy hard.)

The Mayan Train, which will run 1,500 kilometers through five states in southern and southeastern Mexico, threatens ecosystems and tourist attractions, such as subterranean caves and cenotes. The photo shows tourists swimming in the cenote Azul, on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

One land, two faces

The TM, built with public funds, requires 1,681 hectares of land, which implies the cutting of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study. The construction of the first three sections, which require 801 hectares, began without environmental permits.

The western route is causing social, cultural and land-ownership conflicts, while the eastern route will cause greater environmental damage.

López Obrador denies that the railway will lead to deforestation, and promised the creation of three natural parks in eastern Quintana Roo and the reforestation of some 2,500 hectares.

But available information shows that the megaproject is moving ahead with construction while leaving environmental management plans behind.

This is seen in a close look at the 2020 public accounts of the Chief Audit Office of Mexico – the comptroller of the public treasury – on the budget and execution of the TM. The office concluded that the project lacks a master plan and the necessary resources to guarantee sustainable development and environmental protection.

It also documented an increase in cost from 7.3 billion dollars in 2019 to 8.8 billion the following year, and found that there was no explanation for the expenditure of about 13 million dollars.

Moreover, the megaproject only advanced one-fifth of what was planned in 2019 and 2020, a bad omen for the president’s plans, although the rate of progress in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 is not known.

But it is clear that Fonatur decided to step on the accelerator to fulfill the president’s promise and that the last two sections may be built with the participation of the army in the middle of the jungle. It is also clear that López Obrador does not want to inaugurate the TM until the entire line is completed.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) did not inspect the works in 2020, nor has it done so for section 5, as stated in a request for access to public information filed by IPS.

The porous karst soil of the peninsula has sabotaged the government’s plans and deadlines, as it has forced Fonatur to change the design several times. For example, section 5 underwent three modifications from January 2021 to January 2022.

In the Mexican municipality of Solidaridad, whose municipal seat is Playa del Carmen, on the Yucatán peninsula, the construction of one of the seven sections of the Mayan Train has deforested at least 10 kilometers of jungle. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The megaproject contains contradictions, because while the government promises sustainable tourism in other areas of the peninsula, the railway threatens the local sustainable tourism attractions, such as the cenotes, the caves and the entire ecosystem.

In the Yucatan Peninsula there are some 7,000 cenotes – freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater. Between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, cities only 61 kilometers apart, there are 13 of these ecosystems.

In the entire state of Quintana Roo there are at least 105 flooded caves over 1,500 meters in length and 408 underwater caves.

The TM threatens the largest system of subterranean rivers and flooded caves on the planet, a complex of submerged caves more than 340 kilometers long beneath the limestone floor.

From land to sea

Lorenzo Álvarez, a researcher at the Academic Reef Systems Unit of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, says that as a regional development project, the railway will be “catastrophic”.

“Hundreds of hectares are being deforested,” he told IPS. “We are going to end up with new cities or existing ones are going to grow. This could be a tragedy of enormous proportions, because the ecosystems are being disturbed. Simply by removing vegetation cover, the capacity of water systems to capture and filter water is altered.”

The consequences: water with more sediment in the reefs, waste, leachates and more pollution.

That is the vision that the visitor gets looking at the map from inland to the coast in Puerto Morelos, in the north of Quintana Roo, which has suffered a real estate invasion, to the extent that the reefs have been mortally wounded. They are part of the Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest in the world, after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The fear in this former fishing village, which is now the largest port on the so-called Riviera Maya with 27,000 inhabitants, is that the TM will exacerbate the real estate boom. But most locals are unaware of the danger.

The Mayan Train will run through the outskirts of Puerto Morelos, seen in the distance in the photo. Located 38 kilometers from Cancun and forming part of the so-called Riviera Maya, this former fishing village is now a port city with real estate encroachment that has damaged the reefs off its coast. The railroad could spell the end for the fragile ecosystem. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

“Construction hasn’t started yet,” Fabiola Sánchez, an activist with the non-governmental group United Voices of Puerto Morelos, told IPS. “There has been no tangible damage here, as in other municipalities, but we know the environmental implications. Our aim is prevention, because we are going to suffer the same environmental effects.”

The activists’ concern is focused on the 2020-2030 Urban Development Program, which they accuse of favoring hotel and real estate interests to the detriment of citizen participation and sustainable planning on a coastline already stressed by excessive tourism.

And, above all, they accuse it of favoring construction of the new railway.

Through legal appeals, opponents of the program have managed to bring it to a halt, but they are witnessing construction without land use planning in other municipalities.

The Mayan Train megaproject includes the construction of sustainable cities (formerly called development poles) around the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban equipment.

The Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) itself warns that these poles may represent the greatest environmental threat from the railway line.

The sustainable cities should promote “well-managed urban planning” and should help reduce the backlog of local and regional services, according to the official website.

“Considering climatic conditions, efficient use of water, energy and integrated management of solid waste…and respecting natural conditions, affecting ecosystems as little as possible,” are essential, Semarnat stated.

But the construction work on the ground and the lack of urban development plans contradict these precepts.

In any case, the railway’s route does not seem to be set up for the benefit of excursionists and local workers, as its planned stations are far from tourist sites and work centers. Passengers would have to use other means to travel to these places.

In addition, the popular perspective values supposed future returns, such as jobs and income, over current and potential harms, like deforestation.

There have also been labor abuses. Section 5 workers earn about 39 dollars a week – less than the minimum daily wage of 8.5 dollars – and work without protective equipment and without signed contracts, as IPS learned.

Furthermore, there has been arbitrary treatment of “ejidatarios” or local residents of ejidos, since in Campeche the authorities paid about 2.5 dollars per square meter of expropriated land, while in Quintana Roo the price rose to about 25 dollars.

The threat of collapse is not merely an apocalyptic proclamation, environmentalists insist. They quote the closing line of the novel La vorágine (1924), by Colombian writer José Eustasio Rivera, a Latin American classic: “The jungle swallowed them up”, in allusion to the fate of its characters, and they say the same thing could happen to the TM.

Brentford's African duo Frank Onyeka and Yoane Wissa are relishing their debut seasons in the Premier League.

Credit: United Nations

By Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Apr 8 2022 (IPS)

The other day a friend asked me “Can Russia be expelled from the General Assembly by a two-thirds majority?”

Almost impossible to do that, I responded.

Two of the articles of the Charter of the United Nations relate to the issue of possible exclusion of Russia from the United Nations. Article 5 talks about suspension and Article 6 talks about expulsion. According to those articles, the action needs be taken by the General Assembly with two-thirds majority, upon the recommendation of the Security Council. That recommendation of the Council cannot be made as it is subject to veto by the Russian Federation as one of the five Permanent Members.

The obvious follow-up question was “Has any country been ever expelled or suspended from the General Assembly?”

The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) has effectively excluded a state on three occasions: Cambodia in 1997, Yugoslavia in 1992 and South Africa in 1974.

Ambassador Anwarul K Chowdhury

UNGA Resolution 47/1 was adopted on 22 September 1992 expelled Yugoslavia from the UN General Assembly. In this case, the Security Council by its Resolution 777 (1992) recommended action under Article 6 of the UN Charter, considering that the nation known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had ceased to exist and therefore recommended to the General Assembly to exclude Yugoslavia from General Assembly and asked the country as constituted to apply for membership in the United Nations.

Some countries tried to expel South Africa, which was one of the 51 founding members of the United Nations in 1945, because of its policy of apartheid, but the three permanent members of the Security Council – France, UK, and US – used their veto power to block that move.

After the Council informed the General Assembly on its failure to adopt a resolution, the then President of the General Assembly, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, ruled that the delegation of South Africa should be refused participation in the work of the General Assembly. His ruling was upheld by 91 votes to 22, with 19 abstentions on 12 November 1974.

Although remaining a member of the UN, South Africa was not represented at subsequent sessions of the General Assembly. Following South Africa’s successful democratic elections of May 1994, after 20 years of refusing to accept the credentials of the South African delegation, the General Assembly unanimously welcomed South Africa back to full participation in the United Nations on 23 June 1994. It also deleted its agenda item on “the elimination of apartheid and the establishment of a united, democratic and nonracial South Africa.”

It is also important recall that in 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on all member states to impose a trade boycott against South Africa. A US Congressional legislation aimed to ban all new U.S. trade and investment in South Africa and that acted as a catalyst for similar sanctions in Europe and Japan. In 1963, the UN Security Council called for partial arms ban against South Africa, but this was not mandatory under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Deadlock but not dead-end – other courses of action

As mentioned earlier, the suspension or expulsion of Russia is “almost impossible” according to the UN Charter. To that, I would add that it is a deadlock but not a dead-end.

Some UN watchers are of the opinion that there are still ways to limit Russia’s presence in the U.N. beyond the Security Council as has been decided today (7 April) by the UNGA to suspend its membership in the UN Human Rights Council.

According to the General Assembly’s 1950 resolution 377A (V), widely known as ‘Uniting for Peace’, if the Security Council is unable to act because of the lack of unanimity among its five veto-wielding permanent members, the Assembly has the power to make recommendations to the wider UN membership for collective measures to maintain or restore international peace and security.

For instance. most frequently, the Security Council determines when and where a UN peace operation should be deployed, but historically, when the Council has been unable to take a decision, the General Assembly has done so. For example, in 1956, the General Assembly established the First UN Emergency Force (UNEF I) in the Middle East.

In addition, the General Assembly may meet in Emergency Special Session if requested by nine members of the Security Council or by a majority of the Members of the Assembly. To date, the General Assembly has held 11 Emergency Special Sessions (8 of which have been requested by the Security Council).

On 1 March 2022, the General Assembly, meeting in emergency session, adopted a resolution by which it deplored “the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter. Can any other process feasibly be exploited to suspend a state in such circumstances, as a way of circumventing article 5? Yes, there is a way to try that.

Though the General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, but they are considered to carry political weight as they express the will of the wider UN membership.

Some UN watchers believe that Article 5 of the Charter is not completely the end of the road on suspension. They are of the opinion that that there are two dimensions to a state’s participation in the UN: the actual membership of the state (the subject of article 5 of the Charter); and the representation of that state at the General Assembly’s sessions.

Matters of representation are considered in the context of the General Assembly’s credentials process, which is the process by which the Assembly assesses the eligibility of individual delegates to represent their states at the Assembly’s annual sessions. The process is essentially procedural in nature. It is regulated not by the UN Charter but by the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure.

While the credentials process is usually a procedural one, the credentials process effectively gives the General Assembly the power to decide which authority should be regarded as the legitimate representative of the state – at least so far as the UN is concerned. UNGA could vote to suspend Russian delegation from participating in the General Assembly, a step that does not require the Security Council.

In this context, it has been asserted that “ This move, which would strip Russia of its right to speak or vote at the UN but allow it to retain membership, previously happened in 1974, when diplomats voted to suspend South Africa for its apartheid system.”

Veto is the Chief Culprit

The headline of my opinion piece for the IPS wire of 8 March 2022 argued that “Veto is the Chief Culprit” emphasizing that “Expulsion or Suspension is Not the Remedy”. Since 1946, all five permanent members have exercised the right of veto at one time or another on a variety of issues.

To date, approximately 49 per cent of the vetoes had been cast by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and thereafter the Russian Federation, 29 per cent by the United States, 10 per cent by the United Kingdom, and six per cent each by China and France.

I repeat my main contention in that opinion as “The chief culprit in the failure of unified global action by the UN is the continuation of the irrational practice of veto. As a matter, I have said on record that, if only one reform action could be taken, it should be the abolition of veto. Believe me, the veto power influences not only the decisions of the Security Council but also all work of the UN, including importantly the choice of the Secretary-General.”

Further, I added, “I believe the abolition of veto requires a greater priority attention in the reforms process than the enlargement of the Security Council membership with additional permanent ones. Such permanency is simply undemocratic. I believe that the veto power is not “the cornerstone of the United Nations” but in reality, its tombstone.”

Proactive UN leadership missing

Amid all these legal explanations, diplomatic exchanges, and diverse conjectures, it is unfortunate that questions have been raised about the reticence of the UN Secretary-General in getting his hands dirty and in getting more actively involved in towards ending the Russian aggression and promoting peace in Ukraine.

As much as I recall, this is first time the world public has done that about the role of the UN leadership so vocally. The UN website mentions “near daily press stakeouts by the Secretary-General” on the war in Ukraine. Is this the extent of his active role and involvement?

Well-respected UN watcher and former high UN official Kul Chandra Gautam in an opinion piece recently even exhorted the SG “not to hide behind the glasshouse at Turtle Bay and go beyond invisible subtle diplomacy to more visible shuttle diplomacy.” That is the way to go.

On 3 April, the UN website publicized a Twitter message from the SG saying: “I am deeply shocked by the images of civilians killed in Bucha, Ukraine. It is essential that an independent investigation leads to effective accountability.”

Just two pitiable sentences in Twitter (I wonder how many of the global population has a Twitter account). His operatives – the UN secretariat – misled the world by the trick headline: “UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday called for an independent investigation into the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, a suburb of the capital, Kyiv.”

Which official language(s) of the UN would interpret “It is essential that an independent investigation leads to effective accountability” as “called for an independent investigation”? This is the height of public deception. I wonder why this is necessary.

The Ukraine President lamented on 5 April about the failure of UN Security Council saying that the Council can “dissolve yourselves altogether” if there is nothing it can do other than engage in conversation. First time, a UN Member State has spoken so frankly, so openly, so rightly in a speech before the Council which was at an impasse to stop the aggression in his country.

Unfortunately, it is widely understood that for the UN system, more so for the SG, the dominant instinct for being pro-active in any crisis situation is “the fear of failure.” That “fear” determines the process of decision-making in a big way. A global organization like UN should be smart and mature enough to understand the value of critical opinions to improve its efficacy. Unfortunately, we are not there.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is Former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN; President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001); Senior Special Adviser to UN General Assembly President (2011-2012) and Former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN.

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A view of the Security Council Chamber as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (on screen) addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine on 5 April 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 8 2022 (IPS)

A legendary quote attributed to Joseph Stalin most likely applies to the United Nations too. “How many divisions does the Pope have?” asked the Soviet leader, interrupting a speech by Winston Churchill in a bygone era.

If you don’t have an army of your own, or a military force behind your edicts or your resolutions, so the argument goes, you are fighting a losing battle—even as the United Nations remains helpless in the face of thousands of civilian deaths and the destruction of densely populated cities by Russian armed forces in Ukraine since February 24.

When he addressed the UN Security Council via video-conferencing on April 5, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine did not pull his punches when he told delegates the purposes of the UN Charter, especially Article I — to maintain international peace and security — are being blatantly violated by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“What is the point of all other Articles (in the UN charter)? Are you ready to close the United Nations? Do you think that the time for international law is gone?” If not, “you need to act immediately,” he told delegates.

To support peace in Ukraine, he argued, the Security Council must either remove the Russian Federation from the UN, both as an aggressor and a source of war, so it cannot block decisions made about its own war, or the Council can “dissolve yourselves altogether” if there is nothing it can do other than engage in conversation.

“Ukraine needs peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace,” he insisted.

But what Zelenskyy did not realize was a longstanding political reality: Russia, along with the US, UK, France and China (P5), are “permanent members” armed with veto powers.

And they are “permanent” for life, either their life as a member state or the life of the United Nations– whichever comes first.

Meanwhile, the US led a successful campaign to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) with a resolution which garnered two-thirds majority in the General Assembly on April 7. The voting read: 93 Yes, 24 Noes and 58 Abstentions.

Which triggers the question: can Russia be suspended from its membership in the 193-member UN General Assembly (GA)?

Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told IPS: “The GA suspended apartheid South Africa for 20 years, from 1974 to post-elections in 1994. Russia qualifies as a comparable pariah with its unprovoked and illegal war in Ukraine. It would be an important new precedent to say “nyet” to recolonization.”

The precedent in the HRC is Libya, which the HRC voted to suspend and then the GA by consensus voted to suspend that regime, said Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)

In an oped piece for IPS, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former President of the Security Council and UN Under-Secretary-General, pointed out that the General Assembly effectively suspended three UN member states on three different occasions: Cambodia in 1997, Yugoslavia in 1992 and South Africa in 1974.

He said the suspension or expulsion of Russia is “almost impossible” according to the UN Charter. “To that, I would add that it is a deadlock but not a dead-end.”

Some UN watchers, he wrote, are of the opinion that there are still ways to limit Russia’s presence in the U.N. beyond the Security Council, as has been just decided by the UNGA to suspend its membership in the UN Human Rights Council.

Louis Charbonneau, United Nations director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS: “Given the evidence of war crimes and serious human rights violations committed by Russian forces in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine, it’s essential that the UN and International Criminal Court move swiftly with their investigations to gather and preserve evidence”.

He said the victims and their families need justice. Suspension of Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, a body it’s clearly unfit to be a member of, is an important step to holding Russian authorities accountable for their actions.”

After the vote to suspend Russia from the HRC, Charbonneau said: “The General Assembly has sent a crystal-clear message to Russia’s leadership that a government whose military is routinely committing horrific rights violations has no business on the UN Human Rights Council”.

He said gruesome images from Bucha have shocked people around the world. Victims and their families deserve to see those responsible held to account. Investigators from the UN and International Criminal Court should set the wheels of justice in motion by moving swiftly to gather and preserve evidence of war crimes.

In his address to the Security Council, the Ukrainian President also said the “UN Charter must be immediately restored and the system reformed so that the veto power does not represent the right to die, and so there is fair representation in the Council of all world regions.”

If tyranny in places from Syria to Somalia had received a response, it would have ceased to exist, and an “honest peace” would have prevailed.

A war against Ukrainian citizens would not have been launched. Instead, the world watched, and turned its eyes away from the occupation of Crimea, the war against Georgia, the taking of Transnistria from the Republic of Moldova and the preparations of Russian troops for another war near the border.

“The Russian military and those who gave them orders must be brought to justice and charged with war crimes in Ukraine, before a tribunal similar to the one created in Nuremburg,” he declared.

Asked whether Russia could be kicked off the Security Council, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said: “Look, the Security Council was created as a product of the creation of the UN after World War II. They are a member of the Security Council. That’s a fact. We can’t change that fact, but we certainly can isolate them in the Security Council. We can make their presence in that body very uncomfortable. And we have done that,” she added.

In an interview last week, she was asked: Given the restraints on the United Nations because they sit on the Security Council, because they still have the support of China—and given all that, does the world needs to have some sort of alternative body? That enforces the rule of law, that enforces the kind of values that, frankly, humanity demands?

“The UN is the body that we have, and we have to work to improve the UN and to continue to use this body to put pressure on the Russians. And while they do have the veto power, they can’t veto our voices.

“They cannot veto the Ukrainian president coming in front of the Security Council and condemning them. They cannot veto you, and others who are reporting the truth to the world. And they are uncomfortable”.

“And as for the Chinese, they’re uncomfortable in this position that they find themselves in defending what the Russians are doing. So, we’re going to keep the pressure on. We’re going to keep applying that pressure until Russia comes to understand that they cannot continue this unconscionable war against the Ukrainian people,” she declared.

Meanwhile, at a press conference on 6 April, one of the questions raised was about Pope Francis pointing out that the Ukraine war was a reflection of the impotence of the United Nations.

“Also, President Zelenskyy said something similar —that the United Nations, the way it is, should be completely reformed, even the Security Council. So, any comments from the Secretary General?”

Responding to the questions, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the UN and its Charter are resilient.

“We have faced crises in the past. It is a fact for all to see that, I think, the security aspect of it, which is really guided by the Security Council, is divided, and that is not the responsibility of the Secretary General. It is a reflection of the situation between the Member States and some of the most powerful Member States of this organization who sit on the Security Council”.

“But I think you have to look that the UN is more than just the Security Council. Right? The UN is the 1,200 or more colleagues that we have in Ukraine. It is the peacekeepers who are on the front lines in the Congo, in the DRC. It is all the humanitarian workers we have in the Sahel. And I think that part of the UN is working and is working as if… is working efficiently and trying to do whatever it can to alleviate the suffering of people around the world,” he declared.

IPS UN Bureau Repor

 

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