11.13.12
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UN to (Again) Call on U.S. to End Cuban Embargo

Nov. 12, 2012 – The United Nations General Assembly will vote Tuesday on a resolution calling on the United States to end its 52-year embargo against Cuba, but there’s little reason to believe the outcome will alter the Obama administration’s Havana policy.

The U.S. bans its citizens from travelling to or doing business in Cuba.

Ending the embargo is seen as a move that could strengthen Obama’s relationship with his Latin American neighbors who are unanimously against “el bloqeo.”

The resolution has been approved every year since first introduced in 1990.

Brazil’s representative said after the vote last year that the embargo “went against international law and inhibited regional relations” while Argentina’s said “it went against the principles of international law and the UN charter.”

After Monday’s success in the General Assembly vote for election to the Human Rights Council, which the U.S. topped with 131 votes in the Western Group, Tuesday’s vote is likely to see the U.S in the tiniest minority when the votes are tallied.

Last year, 186 countries voted for the text while only Israel joined the U.S. in voting against it. Even Canada, normally a staunch ally of the U.S. and Israel, voted for lifting the embargo.

While President Obama has laxed some of the travel restrictions – making it easier for students and religious groups to visit and allowing Cuban-Americans to visit Cuba as much as they want – he has renewed the trade ban each year of his presidency.

Cuba is the only country placed on the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 after the removal of North Korea in 2008.

There’s speculation that Obama’s strong showing among Cuban-Americans in last week’s election will harbor a change in policy but that’s unlikely to include a lifting of the trade embargo.

The continuing detention of Alan Gross is currently the main source of tension between Havana and Washington with the State department contractor reported to have lost 105 pounds since his arrest in December 2009 for crimes against the state.

Arguably, more important factors are that Havana-born Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R), who will continue as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez (D), set to take over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – should John Kerry get a cabinet post, – are both firmly opposed to any easing of the embargo.

The Senate’s two other Hispanic senators, recently elected Texas tea party candidate, Ted Cruz, and Florida’s Marco Rubio, both Cuban-American like Menendez, are also firmly opposed to lifting the embargo.

Cuba says as a result of the embargo the U.S. Treasury department has frozen $245 million in funds destined for Havana as of December 2011.

It also says the embargo is preventing Cuban medical facilities from importing artificial skin for burn patients and faces challenges importing replacement stent valves for heart patients, among other medical restrictions, that all result in delayed treatment and higher patient costs.

Havana made these claims in a report prepared by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon which is available here.

– Denis Fitzgerald 

Nov 13 Update: The resolution was adopted by a vote of 188 in favor and 3 opposed – the U.S., Israel and Palau.

11.08.12
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Obama’s Next Bid for Re-Election – the UN Human Rights Council

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Ban Ki-Moon addresses the opening of the Human Rights Council’s current session in Geneva on Sept. 10 (photo credit: UN photo)

Nov. 7, 2012 – Among those running for 18 available seats on the UN Human Rights Council in Monday’s election is the United States, whose newly re-elected president, Barack Obama, decided to embrace the controversial body after his 2008 victory, arguing that Washington could better change and influence from inside than from outside.

Former US president George W. Bush boycotted the Council and its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, but Obama reversed course and the US was elected to a three-year term in 2009.

The 47-nation Council has seen its influence grow in the past two years. With the Security Council deadlocked on taking action on Syria, the Human Rights Council appointed a commission of inquiry that’s investigating and documenting allegations of human rights abuses and possible war crimes in the country over the past 19 months. It also suspended Libya’s membership during Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal crackdown and prevented Damascus from vying for a seat in 2012, as well as blocking Sudan’s bid.

The Council has won praise too from pro-Israel groups – who’ve criticized the body for its disproportionate focus on the Jewish state – for appointing a human rights investigator on Iran in March 2011 and it has also won plaudits from Human Rights Watch for addressing human rights situations in Guinea, Myanmar and North Korea.

The US is one of five countries vying for three seats available in the Western European and Other States category. The other four candidate countries in the group are Germany, Greece, Ireland and Sweden.

The Western group is the only one with a competitive election as the other categories (Asia, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Eastern Europe) are running on a pre-arranged clean slate.

Countries ending their terms this year include China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Each country is elected to a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms.

Among the US allies who will join the Council in 2013 are Japan, South Korea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Estonia.

A list of all candidate countries and the current composition of the Council is here.

– Denis Fitzgerald 

UPDATE Nov 12: US reelected to Council with 131 votes along with Germany, 127, and Ireland, 124 – both serving for first time. Greece, 77, and Sweden, 75, defeated.

10.08.12
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Competing Draft Statements Illustrate UNSC Division on Syria

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Syria’s UN envoy, Bashar Jaafari, speaks outside the Security Council chamber on Thurs Oct 4. He offered condolences for the shelling inside Turkey but no apology saying the incident is under investigation (photo credit: UN Photo)

Oct 8, 2012 – Illustrative of the Security Council’s division on Syria are the competing draft statements that were circulated last week when the 15-nation body endeavored to speak on Syrian shelling inside Turkey.

Here’s the original Western-backed draft proposed Wednesday (Oct 3) by non-permanent Council member Azerbaijan, on behalf of Turkey:

“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the shelling by the Syrian armed forces of the Turkish town of Akcakale which resulted in the deaths of five civilians, all of whom were women and children, as well as a number of injuries. The members of the Security Council expressed their sincere condolences to the Government and people of Turkey, and to the families of the victims.

This represents a demonstration of the spilling over of the crisis in Syria into neighboring states to an alarming degree.

Such violations of international law constitute a serious threat to international peace and security. The members of the Council demanded that such violations stop immediately.

The members of the Security Council call on the Syria Government to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours.”

Here’s the draft as amended by Russia:

“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the shelling from the Syrian territory of the Turkish town of Akcakale which resulted in the deaths of five civilians, all of whom were women and children, as well as a number of injuries. The members of the Security Council expressed their sincere condolences to the Government and people of Turkey, and to the families of the victims.

This represents a demonstration of the spilling over of the crisis in Syria into neighboring states to an alarming degree. The members of the Council demanded that such violations stop immediately. The members of the Security Council requested the Government of Syria to carry out a speedy and full investigation of the shelling. The members of the Security Council called on the Syrian Government to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours.

The members of the Security Council called on the parties to exercise restraint and avoid military clashes which could lead to a further escalation of the situation in the border area between Syria and Turkey, as well as to reduce tensions and forge a path toward a peaceful resolution of the Syrian crisis.” 

Syrian Armed Forces becomes Syrian territory, violations of international law that threatened international peace and security simply become violations and the Syrian government is asked to conduct a speedy investigation. 

Here’s the final statement as agreed by all 15 Council members on Thursday evening (Oct 4):

“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the shelling by the Syrian armed forces of the Turkish town of Akcakale, which resulted in the deaths of five civilians, all of whom were women and children, as well as a number of injuries. The members of the Security Council expressed their sincere condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government and people of Turkey. 

The members of the Security Council underscored that this incident highlighted the grave impact the crisis in Syria has on the security of its neighbours and on regional peace and stability. The members of the Council demanded that such violations of international law stop immediately and are not repeated. The members of the Security Council called on the Syrian Government to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours. 

The members of the Security Council called for restraint.”

Both sides got some of what they wanted in the final version. Key for Russia is deletion of the phrase “a serious threat to international peace and security,” which speaks directly to the Council’s mandate, – maintaing international peace and security – and instead the shelling is a threat to “regional peace and stability.”

For the West, Syrian armed forces are squarely blamed and the statement demands an end to “such violations of international law.” 

– Denis Fitzgerald
 

09.29.12
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Iceland Takes on Israel and Iran at UNGA

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Sept 29, 2012 – Saturday morning is far from top billing at the UNGA but Iceland’s Foreign Minister Össur Skarphÿinsson delivered one of the more creative speeches of the 67th General Assembly in his 9.30am slot. (photo by UN Photo)

In Skarphÿinsson’s own words:

“[T]he first letters of the themes I have broached here today – Palestine, Energy, the Arctic, Climate Change and the Economy, form the word we should all hold dearest here in this hall and towards each other, whatever our differences – P-E-A-C-E, Peace.”

Nice, though if he makes headlines it will likely be for the ‘I” part of his speech when he delivered tough messages to the Israeli and Iranian leaders.

“I listened to Mr. Netanyahu’s speech on Thursday, and I have a comment to make on behalf of the Icelandic people: Don’t bomb Iran. Don’t start another war in the Middle East. At the same time I say to President Ahmadinejad and the Iranian leadership: Don’t build a bomb. Let diplomacy work, not rabblerousing or fearmongering. Let’s work for peace together.”

When he spoke last year, he told the Assembly that the Icelandic parliament would vote to recognize Palestine as a sovereign, independent state: “I’m happy to tell you today, that we have fulfilled that promise. What’s more, not a single member of the Icelandic Parliament voted against the recognition of Palestine,” Skarphÿinsson said Saturday.

He had strong words too on the Gaza blockade saying, “I have visited Gaza and I met with fishermen who are not allowed to go fishing in the waters off Gaza – and it hurts my heart, being an old fisherman myself. I met the children of Gaza whose lives are made impossible by poverty, violence and a blockade that by others than myself has been described as an open door prison.”

And on the West Bank barrier, invoking a politician of times past, Skarphÿinsson said: “I have seen for myself how the human rights of the people of the West Bank are violated every day by a man-made barrier cutting through their roads, their lands, their lives. When I was in Qalqilya the words of a former statesman we all know rung in my head. Mr. Netanyahu – tear down this wall!”

As for the U.N. Security Council: “We must reform it, so as to make it a tool, not a hindrance, for progress in situations such as in Syria this year, or – as we saw last year – concerning the Palestinian application.”

He finished by addressing the sparsely filled GA hall: “Thank you for your beautiful silence.”

– Denis Fitzgerald 

Full text (as prepared) and video of Skarphÿinsson address.

(His strong support of Palestinians was evident too in January 2009 when he refused to meet with Israel’s Minister for Education Yael Tamir who was touring Europe to explain Tel Aviv’s version of its invasion of Gaza, according to a classified U.S. cable released by Wikileaks).

09.25.12
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Ahmadinejad’s Swan Song But UNGA Debut For Others

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Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pictured above at Monday’s General Assembly high-level meeting on the rule of law, is attending his final UNGA as Iranian president (credit: UN Photo)

Sept 24, 2012 – Much focus at this year’s UNGA will be on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who’s attending his eight and last General Assembly as Iranian president (notwithstanding a future run) but some other presidents will make their debut at this year’s gathering.

Among those are Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi, Yemen’s Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Tunisia’s Moncef Marzouki, Libya’s Mohamed Magariaf, Senegal’s Macky Sall and Malawi’s Joyce Banda, who in April became Southern Africa’s first female president and only the second female head of state ever for the African continent.

While U.N. detractors complain about corrupt leaders of cash-strapped countries coming to New York for the UNGA on private jets with large delegations, including family, friends and companions, who will use scarce state coffers on fancy dinners and fine clothes while getting chauffeured around in limousines, Banda’s first few months in office are worth looking at for an alternative view.

In early June, just weeks after coming to power, Banda announced that a $13.5 million jet bought by her predecessor was up for sale and so were 60 limousines used by cabinet ministers.

That same month she said Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, was not welcome in Malawi for an African Union summit, forcing the regional bloc to move the summit to Addis Ababa. Her predecessor had allowed Bashir visit Malawi in October 2011.

She also announced in her first national address that she wants to decriminalize homosexuality. Two Malawian men were sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2010 for stating they wanted to get married. (The sentence was commuted after international outcry).

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Malawian President Joyce Banda (photo: Lindsay Mgbor/DFID)

Banda will address the UNGA on Wednesday afternoon (Sept 26), while Ahmadinejad will take to the podium in the morning session that same day.

– Denis Fitzgerald  

09.19.12
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On This Day, 1959 – Khrushchev Becomes First Soviet Premier to Address U.N. General Assembly

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Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev greeted by United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld* (left) at UNHQ in New York City, Sept 18, 1959 (photo: UN Photo)

Sept 18, 2012 – On this day 53 years ago, Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet premier to address the U.N. General Assembly, where he presented a solution to the Berlin crisis, called for the admission of the People’s Republic of China, and pleaded for universal disarmament.

Khrushchev told the then 82-nation member General Assembly that tensions in Berlin could be ameliorated if the U.S. signed a peace treaty with East Germany and Allied troops were withdrawn from West Berlin, though he made no such reference to a similar withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Berlin, according to the book Khrushchev in America.

On PR China, he told delegates that Beijing’s exclusion from the U.N. directly contributed to the Cold War and its admission would reduce East – West tensions (PRC was admitted to the United Nations in 1971 and recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan) was withdrawn).

He concluded with a vigorous call for global disarmament.

“The new proposal of the Soviet Government is prompted by the sole desire to ensure truly lasting peace among nations,” he said.

“We say sincerely to all countries: In contrast to the ‘Let us arm!’ slogan, still current in some quarters, we put forward the slogan ‘Let us completely disarm!’ Let us rather compete in who builds more homes, schools and hospitals for the people; produces more grain, milk, meat, clothing and other consumer goods; and not in who has more hydrogen bombs and rockets. This will be welcomed by all the peoples of the world,” Khrushchev implored.

That was three years before the Cuban missile crisis.

Russia currently has an estimated stockpile of 10,000 nuclear warheads while the U.S. has about 8,000.

– Denis Fitzgerald 

*Exactly two years later, on Sept 18, 1961, Hammarskjöld would lose his life in a plane crash along with 15 others in then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)

09.11.12
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Taliban On The Take For More Than $1 Million Every Day

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Sept. 11, 2012 – The Taliban are raking in more than $1 million every day through extortion, the drugs trade, and skimming from international aid projects.

A report from the U.N. Security Council’s Sanctions Monitoring Team estimates that the group had income of about $400 million from March 21, 2011 to March 20, 2012 (the Afghan calendar year).

About one-third of that money is used to finance attacks, which are increasing in intensity and frequency.

There were 3,021 civilians killed in Afghanistan last year (double the number recorded in 2007) and more than 75 percent of the deaths were attributed to anti-government forces, namely the Taliban and its associated networks.

The report says the Taliban raised about $100 million from the drugs trade by taxing poppy farmers, providing protection for drug convoys, and from taxing heroin laboratories. 

Shopkeepers and other small businesses are taxed between 2.5 – 10 percent by the Taliban, despite the group providing no government services.

One of the most fruitful sources of income for the Taliban is the international aid sector.

In one instance recorded in the report, the Taliban took $360 million from a $2.16 billion contract awarded to an Afghan trucking company by the United States military over a period of three years.

“Organizations involved in providing development assistance regard these overheads as a cost of doing business,” the report says. 

Fifteen individuals associated with Taliban finances are on the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions list and subject to an assets freeze and travel ban.

“However, the sanctions themselves do not appear yet to have disrupted the financial arrangements of the Taliban,” the report states.

Average weekly income in Afghanistan is about $18 and only seven percent of Afghans have a bank account, according to U.N. and World Bank figures.

Full UNSC Sanctions Monitoring Team report here.

– Denis Fitzgerald

09.05.12
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Only 14 Countries Have Contributed to U.N. Humanitarian Appeal for Syria

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Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos speaks with a young Syrian refugee living in a school in Zahera, Damascus in this Aug. 14 photo (credit: UN)
Sept. 4, 2013 – Less than 10 percent of U.N. members states have stumped up funds to assist the 2.5 million Syrians that the United Nations says are in need of assistance.

An appeal launched on June 5 called for $180 million to assist what was then 1.5 million Syrians inside the country needing aid (the corresponding figure for Syrians in neighboring countries needing assistance was 83,000 – it’s now 225,000).

Donations to the humanitarian action plan for Syria currently stand at $95 million.

Figures released by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on Tuesday show that only 14 of the 193 U.N. member states have contributed to the $180 million appeal.

The largest tranche has come from the U.N.’s own emergency relief fund, CERF, which has released almost US$26 million to the Syria appeal.

The top donor country is the United States, $24 million, followed by the U.K, $8.6 million, and Canada, $5.5 million, (the European Commission has donated $9.3 million).

Kuwait is the only one of the wealthy Arab Gulf countries to contribute to the June appeal, donating $250,000.

A full donor list is here.

– Denis Fitzgerald

(Note: The U.N. has received funds from some 30 countries totaling $200 million for all of its various appeals for Syria since the beginning of 2012)

08.27.12
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Close to Two Million Syrians Now Either Internally Displaced or Refugees

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Irish Aid Minister Joe Costello posted this photo on Twitter of his visit Monday to the Zaatari camp in Jordan hosting Syrian refugees. More than 2,000 people, mostly women and children, are arriving daily since late last week. (credit: Dept. of Foreign Affairs, Ireland)

Aug. 27, 2013 – The number of displaced Syrians is closing in on the two million mark, about 10 percent of the country’s population, creating the biggest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq.

The scale of displacement has increased dramatically since March – after the battle of Homs – and even more so since last month, when the International Committee of the Red Cross declared the situation inside Syria a civil war.

Latest figures from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent show 1.5 million are displaced within the country (see map) while the U.N. has registered some 200,000 refugees in neighboring countries (79,000 in Turkey; 45,000 in Jordan; 40,000 in Lebanon; and 16,000 in Iraq).

Thirty-nine percent of the refugees are aged 11 and under.

The figures for internally displaced are estimates and were released before the battle in Aleppo, the escalation of the conflict in Damascus, and the massacre in Daraya last week.

The U.N. Security Council is holding a ministerial meeting on the humanitarian situation in Syria on Aug 30 and Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoglu, who is attending, said it may be time for the United Nations to create a “safe zone” inside Syria.

There’s little chance of China and Russia supporting such a move with both likely to declare that it amounts to intervention.

Denis Fitzgerald

08.24.12
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Brahimi Begins Work Telling Ban He’s Humbled and Scared

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Ban Ki-moon and Lakhdar Brahimi meet in Ban’s office in New York on Friday Aug. 24. (credit: UN photo)

Aug. 24, 2012 – Lakhdar Brahimi met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday telling him that he was “was honored, flattered, humbled and scared” when asked to take on the role of U.N. – Arab League joint special representative for Syria and that he is “still in that frame of mind.”

In a brief press encounter following a photo-opportunity, Ban told him that “you have the full respect and full support of the international community” and that “it is crucially important that the Security Council, the whole United Nations System is supporting your work.”

Whether the Security Council can unite around any proposals that Brahimi puts forward remains to be seen. China and Russia have vetoed three previous efforts to put pressure on Bashar Al-Assad.

Brahimi gave little away in terms of specifics, only saying that the needs of the Syrian people will be put above all others.

“They will be our first masters. We will consider their interests above and before everything else. We will try to help as much as we can. We will not spare any effort,” he said.

Brahimi, who will spend the next week in New York, also met Friday morning with U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos and Jeffrey Feltman, head of political affairs, whose department now has control of the Syria mission, taking over from the department of peacekeeping since the withdrawal of the unarmed observer force from Syria.

Brahimi is meeting with France’s U.N. ambassador, Gerard Araud, later in the afternoon, his spokesman said. France currently preside over the Security Council and have called a ministerial meeting for Aug. 30 to discuss the humanitarian situation in Syria. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he had asked the foreign ministers from neighboring countries (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey) to attend.

– Denis Fitzgerald