Exclusive: Politicians accuse China of organising a ‘Potemkin-style tour’ for Michelle Bachelet
A group of 40 politicians from 18 countries have told the UN high commissioner for human rights that she risks causing lasting damage to the credibility of her office if she goes ahead with a visit to China’s Xinjiang region next week.
Michelle Bachelet is scheduled to visit Kashgar and Ürümqi in Xinjiang during her trip, which starts on Monday. Human rights organisations say China has forced an estimated 1 million or more people into internment camps and prisons in the region. The US and a number of other western countries have described China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority living there as genocidal, a charge Beijing calls the “lie of the century”.
Indigenous peoples suffer one of the highest incarceration rates of any racial or ethnic group in the United States, and they are also disproportionately sentenced to serve life and long sentences in state prisons. Indigenous prisoners depend upon their freedom to engage in traditional religious practices for their rehabilitation, survival, and ability to maintain their identity as Indigenous peoples.
But according to remarks Galanda delivered to the Special Rapporteur, “Indigenous prisoners in the United States are subject to an ongoing and pervasive pattern of state and local prisons illegally restricting their freedoms to possess religious items, participate in religious ceremonies, and otherwise engage in traditional religious practices.”
The Russia-Ukraine war has quickly turned into a global conflict. One of the likely outcomes of this war is the very redefinition of the current world order, which has been in effect, at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union over three decades ago.
Indeed, there is a growing sense that a new global agenda is forthcoming, one that could unite Russia and China and, to a degree, India and others, under the same banner. This is evident, not only by the succession of the earth-shattering events underway, but, equally important, the language employed to describe these events.
The Russian position on Ukraine has morphed throughout the war from merely wanting to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine to a much bigger regional and global agenda, to eventually, per the words of Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, “put an end to the unabashed expansion” of NATO, and the “unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage.”
On April 30, Lavrov went further, stating in an interview with the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, that Russia’s war “contributes to the process of freeing the world from the West’s neocolonial oppression,” predicated on “racism and an exceptionality.”
But Russia is not the only country that feels this way. China, too, even India, and many others. The meeting between Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on March 30, served as a foundation of this truly new global language. Statements made by the two countries’ top diplomats were more concerned about challenging US hegemony than the specifics of the Ukraine war.
Those following the evolution of the Russia-China political discourse, even before the start of the Russia-Ukraine war on February 24, will notice that the language employed supersedes that of a regional conflict, into the desire to bring about the reordering of world affairs altogether.
But is this new world order possible? If yes, what would it look like? These questions, and others, remain unanswered, at least for now. What we know, however, is that the Russian quest for global transformation exceeds Ukraine by far, and that China, too, is on board.
While Russia and China remain the foundation of this new world order, many other countries, especially in the Global South, are eager to join. This should not come as a surprise as frustration with the unilateral US-led world order has been brewing for many years, and has come at a great cost. Even the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, though timid at times, has warned against this unilaterality, calling instead on the international community to commit itself to “the values of multilateralism and diplomacy for peace.”
However, the pro-Russian stances in the South – as indicated by the refusal of many governments to join western sanctions on Moscow, and the many displays of popular support through protests, rallies and statements – continue to lack a cohesive narrative. Unlike the Soviet Union of yesteryears, Russia of today does not champion a global ideology, like socialism, and its current attempt at articulating a relatable global discourse remains, for now, limited.
It is obviously too early to examine any kind of superstructure – language, political institutions, religion, philosophy, etc – resulting from the Russia-NATO global conflict, Russia-Ukraine war and the growing Russia-China affinity.
Though much discussion has been dedicated to the establishing of an alternative monetary system, in the case of Lavrov’s and Yi’s new world order, a fully-fledged substructure is yet to be developed.
New substructures will only start forming once the national currency of countries like Russia and China replace the US dollar, alternative money transfer systems, like CIPS, are put into effect, new trade routes are open, and eventually new modes of production replace the old ones. Only then, superstructures will follow, including new political discourses, historical narratives, everyday language, culture, art and even symbols.
The thousands of US-western sanctions slapped on Russia were largely meant to weaken the country’s ability to navigate outside the current US-dominated global economic system. Without this maneuverability, the West believes, Moscow would not be able to create and sustain an alternative economic model that is centered around Russia.
True, US sanctions on Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and others have failed to produce the coveted ‘regime change’, but they have succeeded in weakening the substructures of these societies, denying them the chance to be relevant economic actors at a regional and international stage. They were merely allowed to subsist, and barely so.
Russia, on the other hand, is a global power, with a relatively large economy, international networks of allies, trade partners and supporters. That in mind, surely a regime change will not take place in Moscow any time soon. The latter’s challenge, however, is whether it will be able to orchestrate a sustainable paradigm shift under current western pressures and sanctions.
Time will tell. For now, it is certain that some kind of a global transformation is taking place, along with the potential of a ‘new world order’, a term, ironically employed by the US government more than any other.
The governing body of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) met in Rome on April 8, 2022 in an Extraordinary Session to examine the “impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on global food security and related matters under its mandate” and advise on how it should proceed. Meanwhile, just two days earlier, the Civil Society and Indigenous People Mechanism (CSIPM) at U.N. Committee on World Food Security (CFS) called for an Extraordinary Plenary Session of the CFS.
We must consider these developments along with a new initiative from the U.N. and against the background of the FAO’s global food prices index reaching its highest level ever.
Israel’s fatal shooting of leading Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh as she covered clashes in the West Bank city of Jenin is a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists, says the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
It has called for an independent international investigation into her death as soon as possible.
Witnesses said Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American, was killed by a shot to the head although she was wearing a bulletproof vest with the word “PRESS” that clearly identified her as a journalist.
Ali al-Samudi, a Palestinian journalist working as an Al Jazeera producer who was beside her at the time, was also targeted, sustaining a gunshot wound in the back, RSF reported.
Samudi, who is now in hospital, said in a video: “We were filming. They did not ask us to stop filming or to leave. They fired a shot that hit me and another shot that killed Shireen in cold blood.”
Following Abu Akleh’s death, Israeli security forces raided her East Jerusalem home as her family was making arrangements for her funeral.
Her body was transferred to Nablus for an autopsy prior to be taken to Jerusalem, where her funeral took place yesterday in emotional scenes with massive crowds. She was buried beside her parents in Mount Zion.
Israeli riot police attacked the pallbearers and a hearse carrying her coffin in the peaceful march, and ripped away Palestinian flags. International protests have followed this latest attack.
Popular in Middle East
Abu Akleh was very popular in the Middle East and was respected by fellow journalists for her experience in the field.
Al Jazeera issued a statement accusing the Israeli security forces of “deliberately” targeting Abu Akleh and of killing her “in cold blood.”
Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh … assassinated in “cold blood” in Jenin. Image: AJ screenshot APR
The Israel Defence Forces announced an investigation into her death, but IDF spokesman Amnon Shefler said Israeli soldiers “would never deliberately target non-combatants”.
Several witnesses, including an AFP photographer, denied seeing any armed Palestinians at the place where Abu Akleh was killed. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said he held the Israeli authorities “fully responsible” for her death.
“RSF is not satisfied with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s proposal of a joint investigation into this journalist’s death,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.
“An independent international investigation must be launched as soon as possible.”
The shooting of these two Palestinian reporters during an IDF “anti-terrorist operation” in Jenin is the latest of many disturbing cases.
Two journalists fatally shot
In the spring of 2018, two Palestinian journalists were fatally shot by Israeli snipers while covering the weekly “Great March of Return” protests near the Israeli border in the Gaza Strip.
Also in 2018, Ain Media founder Yaser Murtaja was killed on the spot on March 30, while Radio Sawt al Shabab reporter Ahmed Abu Hussein died in hospital on April 25 from the gunshot injury he suffered on April 13.
According to RSF’s tallies, more than 140 journalists have been the victims of violations by the Israeli security forces on Friday’s marches since 2018, and at least 30 journalists have been killed since 2000.
And now they won’t even let one of Palestine’s giants in journalism have a dignified and peaceful funeral — all in plain sight. (There’s a reason Reporters Without Borders ranks Israel 86th in Press Freedom.) https://t.co/y8SLL1qY7P
Middle of North America – The 1894 Sioux Nation Treaty Council (SNTC) which has been going to the United Nations (UN) for nearly forty (40) years, is recommending a “theme” to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The recommendation is that the Sioux Nation, which has a valid treaty with the United States (US), and other Indigenous nations with treaties and agreements with colonizing governments, be recommended in the CERD report to the General Assembly and allowed to participate in the processes of the UN Decolonization Committee as a colonized nation. This would mean the liberation and freedom of such Indigenous nations with the help of the UN. The processes take a few years.
The English speaking countries have been a block to this process since the inception of the UN nearly 77 years ago.
The head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has warned that the civilian death toll in Ukraine may be thousands higher than the official toll of 3,381, with deaths in the port city of Mariupol alone likely to add significantly to the total.
“We have been working on estimates, but all I can say for now is that it is thousands higher than the numbers we have currently given to you,” Matilda Bogner, the head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, told a press briefing in Geneva, when asked about the total number of deaths and injuries.
She was referring to plans to now bring legal action to prove that it is Norfolk Islanders who control the site, not the Commonwealth of Australia.
“This now frees them to take the case to court to prove that it is not Commonwealth land, that it is Crown land in Norfolk Island’s name and belongs to the people here. It was sad but it was the best decision to make,” she said.
Mary Christian-Bailey said relations with the police were very good with them suggesting the couple give themselves a couple of days to leave the property.
In January 2020, The Canberra Times reported that the Australian government moved more than two decades ago to quash Norfolk Islanders’ hopes for independence, pointing to the island’s strategic importance deep in Canberra’s sphere of influence in the Pacific.
“The move, revealed in cabinet documents released [in January 2020], provides insight into the final decision from 2016 to strip Norfolk of self-government, a move that has ignited the islands who are now asking the United Nations to intervene,” reported The Canberra Times.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This is a commentary upon N.Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s statement on May 6 that Ukraine’s Government is and ought to be the U.S. Government’s agent in its war against Russia, not representing the interests of the Ukrainian people in it. He introduced the statement by noting that Ukraine is a bad country,
a country marbled with corruption. That doesn’t mean we should not be helping it. I am glad we are. I insist we do. But my sense is that the Biden team is walking much more of a tightrope with Zelensky than it would appear to the eye — wanting to do everything possible to make sure he wins this war but doing so in a way that still keeps some distance between us and Ukraine’s leadership. That’s so Kyiv is not calling the shots [I boldfaced that — he didn’t] and so we’ll not be embarrassed by messy Ukrainian politics in the war’s aftermath.
He starts there by putting down Ukraine as a “country,” and then asserts that, fortunately, “Kyiv is not calling the shots and so we’ll not be embarrassed by messy Ukrainian politics in the war’s aftermath.” Perhaps an underlying assumption of his in saying this is that America is NOT “a country riddled with corruption,” and, so, that it is right and good that Ukraine is America’s slave in this matter.
He continues there:
The view of Biden and his team, according to my reporting, is that America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty and beat the Russians back — but not let Ukraine turn itself into an American protectorate on the border of Russia. We need to stay laser-focused on what is our national interest and not stray in ways that lead to exposures and risks we don’t want.
I believe that Friedman truly does represent the U.S. Establishment that he is a part of, and that “Biden and his team” likewise do. I accept Friedman’s statement as reflecting accurately the way that “Biden and his team” (which, given the U.S. Congress’s virtually 100% voting for it in this matter of Ukraine, also includes virtually every U.S. Senator and Representative) feel about the matter: they feel that Ukraine must be their slave in it and must do whatever the U.S. Government demands that it do in its war with Ukraine’s next-door-neighbor, Russia.
That view — the view that it’s not only true but good that “Kyiv is not calling the shots” in this matter — reflects the view that an imperialist government has toward one of its colonies or vassal-nations (which the imperialist nation nowadays calls instead its ‘allies’). And this is the reason why they treat not only their armies but all of the residents in their ‘allies’ as being appropriate cannon-fodder or ‘proxy soldiers’ in their foreign wars, wars to conquer other countries — such as, in this case, Russia.
The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.
It could as well have been said by England’s royals and other aristocrats during their imperialistic heyday.
All other nations are “dispensable.” America’s military is an extension of international economic competition so that America’s billionaires will continue to rule the world in the future, as they do now. “Rising middle classes compete with us” and are consequently America’s enemies in the “dispensable” countries (everywhere in which vassalage to America’s billionaires — being “America’s allies” — is rejected), so that “it will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.” So he told America’s future generals, regarding those who live (as the 2017 U.S. Army report put it) “in the shadow of significant U.S. military capability and the implied promise of unacceptable consequences in the event that capability is unleashed.” America’s military are the global gendarmes not of Hitler’s nazi regime in WW II, but of America’s nazi regime in the lead-up to WW III.
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all of the other U.S. major ‘news’-media, feel this way about it, and report and comment upon the ’news’ that way, but I think that it was a slip-up that Friedman and the Times expressed it, for once, so honestly, especially given that they are master-liars on most international-news reporting and commentary. The pièce de résistance in his commentary was its ludicrously hypocritical line that “America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty.” (They must be America’s slaves but restore their sovereignty. How stupid do they think that the American public is?) That too is typical of aristocrats’ hypocrisies and general corruptness — including that of the U.S. Government itself, which represents ONLY America’s billionaires and other super-rich — it’s a regime and no democracy at all.
Incidentally, the title of Friedman’s commentary was “The War Is Getting More Dangerous for America, and Biden Knows It.” It’s an interesting title, because it concerns ONLY what Friedman and America’s other aristocrats care about, which is themselves, and not at all about what any of the ‘dispensable’ countries (including Ukraine) care about. Since the publics everywhere care about preventing a WW III (nuclear war between Russia and America — including all NATO countries), that is a stunningly narrow sphere of concern regarding a potentially world-ending catastrophe. Clearly, America’s aristocrats are rank psychopaths. They control the U.S. Government, and this is the result of that. It’s a Government in which the worst come first, the public last. Russia is up against that: it is up against America, and Ukraine is only the first battleground of WW III, now only at the proxy stage for the U.S. regime but not for the Russian Government, which, in this matter, truly does represent the most-vital national-security interests of its citizens. Everyone except U.S.-and-allied aristocracies (many of whom are buyers of billionaires’ bunkers) have an overriding interest in America’s defeat in this war, before it ever reaches the nuclear stage, of direct Russia vs. U.S. warfare.
The shame of today’s U.N. is that it’s not enraged against the U.S. Government. This is shaping up to be the biggest scandal and failure in the U.N.’s entire history, virtually its own collapse.
The following calls for inputs have been issued by UN Human Rights Mechanisms with deadlines in May-June 2022 and law professors whose practice, research, and/or scholarship touches on these topics may be interested in submission: Special Rapporteur on trafficking in…
While international news headlines remain largely focused on the war in Ukraine, little attention is given to the horrific consequences of the war which are felt in many regions around the world. Even when these repercussions are discussed, disproportionate coverage is allocated to European countries, like Germany and Austria, due to their heavy reliance on Russian energy sources.
The horrific scenario, however, awaits countries in the Global South which, unlike Germany, will not be able to eventually substitute Russian raw material from elsewhere. Countries like Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Ghana and numerous others, are facing serious food shortages in the short, medium and long term.
The World Bank is warning of a “human catastrophe” as a result of a burgeoning food crisis, itself resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war. The World Bank President, David Malpass, told the BBC that his institution estimates a “huge” jump in food prices, reaching as high as 37%, which would mean that the poorest of people would be forced to “eat less and have less money for anything else such as schooling.”
This foreboding crisis is now compounding an existing global food crisis, resulting from major disruptions in the global supply chains, as a direct outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as pre-existing problems, resulting from wars and civil unrest, corruption, economic mismanagement, social inequality and more.
Even prior to the war in Ukraine, the world was already getting hungrier. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 811 million people in the world “faced hunger in 2020”, with a massive jump of 118 million compared to the previous year. Considering the continued deterioration of global economies, especially in the developing world, and the subsequent and unprecedented inflation worldwide, the number must have made several large jumps since the publishing of FAO’s report in July 2021, reporting on the previous year.
Indeed, inflation is now a global phenomenon. The consumer price index in the United States has increased by 8.5% from a year earlier, according to the financial media company, Bloomberg. In Europe, “inflation (reached) record 7.5%”, according to the latest data released by Eurostat. As troubling as these numbers are, western societies with relatively healthy economies and potential room for government subsidies, are more likely to weather the inflation storm, if compared to countries in Africa, South America, the Middle East and many parts of Asia.
The war in Ukraine has immediately impacted food supplies to many parts of the world. Russia and Ukraine combined contribute 30% of global wheat exports. Millions of tons of these exports find their way to food-import-dependent countries in the Global South – mainly the regions of South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Considering that some of these regions, comprising some of the poorest countries in the world, have already been struggling under the weight of pre-existing food crises, it is safe to say that tens of millions of people already are, or are likely to go, hungry in the coming months and years.
Another factor resulting from the war is the severe US-led western sanctions on Russia. The harm of these sanctions is likely to be felt more in other countries than in Russia itself, due to the fact that the latter is largely food and energy independent.
Although the overall size of the Russian economy is comparatively smaller than that of leading global economic powers like the US and China, its contributions to the world economy makes it absolutely critical. For example, Russia accounts for a quarter of the world’s natural gas exports, according to the World Bank, and 18% of coal and wheat exports, 14% of fertilizers and platinum shipments, and 11% of crude oil. Cutting off the world from such a massive wealth of natural resources while it is desperately trying to recover from the horrendous impact of the pandemic is equivalent to an act of economic self-mutilation.
Of course, some are likely to suffer more than others. While economic growth is estimated to shrink by a large margin – up to 50% in some cases – in countries that fuel regional and international growth such as Turkey, South Africa and Indonesia, the crisis is expected to be much more severe in countries that aim for mere economic subsistence, including many African countries.
An April report published by the humanitarian group, Oxfam, citing an alert issued by 11 international humanitarian organizations, warned that “West Africa is hit by its worst food crisis in a decade.” Currently, there are 27 million people going hungry in that region, a number that may rise to 38 million in June if nothing is done to stave off the crisis. According to the report, this number would represent “a new historic level”, as it would be an increase by more than a third compared to last year. Like other struggling regions, the massive food shortage is a result of the war in Ukraine, in addition to pre-existing problems, lead amongst them the pandemic and climate change.
While the thousands of sanctions imposed on Russia are yet to achieve any of their intended purpose, it is poor countries that are already feeling the burden of the war, sanctions and geopolitical tussle between great powers. As the west is busy dealing with its own economic woes, little heed is being paid to those suffering most. And as the world is forced to transition to a new global economic order, it will take years for small economies to successfully make that adjustment.
While it is important that we acknowledge the vast changes to the world’s geopolitical map, let us not forget that millions of people are going hungry, paying the price for a global conflict of which they are not part.
The topic of the discussions centered on the two-months long Russian military intervention in Ukraine which has been fueled by the imposition of unprecedented sanctions by the United States and the European Union (EU) alongside the massive transferal of weapons to the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky by key member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Two distinct positions were articulated during one-on-one talks between Putin and Guterres which were broadcast internationally. Later there was a press conference held featuring Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary General Guterres where differences over the Ukraine situation were aired publicly.
After leaving Moscow, Guterres travelled to the capital of Ukraine where he reviewed damage from the war which has killed untold numbers of people and dislocated millions.
Humans have had an unprecedented impact on land – with vast consequences for climate change, food systems and biodiversity, a major new UN report concludes.
It says that human activities have already altered 70% of the Earth’s land surface, degrading up to 40% of it. Four of the nine “planetary boundaries” – limits on how humans can safely use Earth’s resources – have already been exceeded.
Food systems – a catch-all term to describe the way humans produce, process, transport and consume food – are the largest culprit when it comes to land degradation, the report says. They account for 80% of deforestation, 29% of greenhouse gas emissions and the leading share of biodiversity loss.
The degradation of land is perpetuated by steep inequalities, it adds. It notes that 70% of the world’s agricultural land is controlled by just 1% of farms, primarily large agribusinesses.
The report, from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), urges world leaders to adopt a “crisis footing” to solve land degradation. The authors warn that “at no other point in modern history has humanity faced such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks and hazards”.
It projects that, if “business as usual” continues to 2050, an additional 16m square kilometres (km2) – an area almost the size of South America – could be degraded.
By contrast, if the world prioritises land protection and restoration, it could lead to the creation of 4m km2 of new “natural areas” by 2050, with benefits for tackling climate change and biodiversity loss.
In this article, Carbon Brief walks through five key takeaways from the UN’s milestone land report.
Agenda 21 from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, calling for an international convention to combat desertification.UN SDG Knowledge Platform.
The UNCCD is focused on the rehabilitation, conservation and sustainable management of land and water resources and is the “custodian” for Sustainable Development Goal Target 15.3, which aims to:
“By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.”
Five years in the making, the second edition of the Global Land Outlook (GLO2) analyses future land scenarios and the contributions of land-based restoration to climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, health and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. (The first edition, published in 2017, mostly outlined the drivers of desertification.)
The report comes just two weeks before the UNCCD’s 15th “desertification COP” (COP15), scheduled to take place in Abidjan, Ivory Coast from 9 to 20 May this year.
Governments are expected to “build on the report’s findings” and offer a concrete response to the interconnected challenges of land degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss, the UN says.
The report is split into three parts.
The first part presents the many challenges to land systems: from biophysical drivers in the Earth system to social and economic systems and their demands on land.
The second part assesses land restoration activities and practices globally.
The third part assesses the effectiveness and feasibility of global, national and financial commitments to restoration. It sets out three scenarios through 2050: “business as usual”, a “restoration scenario” and a “restoration and protection scenario”.
The report was welcomed by UN Biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema (who was interviewed in depth by Carbon Brief last month), who called it a “must-read for the biodiversity community”. In a statement, she said:
“The future of biodiversity is precarious. We have already degraded nearly 40% and altered 70% of the land. We cannot afford to have another ‘lost decade’ for nature and need to act now for a future of life in harmony with nature. The GLO2 shows pathways, enablers and knowledge that we should apply to effectively implement the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.”
Here, Carbon Brief presents five key takeaways from the GLO2 and their significance for the world’s climate and biodiversity.
1: Humans Have Already Transformed More Than 70 Percent of the Earth’s Land Area
Humans have already altered more than 70% of the Earth’s land area from its natural state, the report says.
This has caused “unparalleled environmental degradation” and contributed “significantly to global warming”, according to the report.
Because of human activity, an estimated $44tn – roughly half the world’s annual economic output – is being put at risk by the depletion of natural resources, the report says.
These resources “underpin human and environmental health by regulating climate, water, disease, pests, waste and air pollution, while providing numerous other benefits such as recreation and cultural benefits”, the report states.
It cites analysis finding at least 20% of the global land surface is now degraded – an area the size of the African continent. However, it adds that this estimate is “conservative” and notes that other assessments put the proportion of land degraded at between 20 and 40%. (The report says land degradation can happen “in many ways”, including through the loss of trees from forests, the conversion of grasslands to croplands and the over-exploitation of water and soil in drylands.)
Degradation is “particularly acute” in dryland regions, which are today home to one in three people, the report adds. (Drylands is a collective term for water-scarce parts of the world, including arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. The UNCCD’s definition of desertification is land degradation in these areas.)
It says that of the nine “planetary boundaries” – limits on how humans can safely use Earth’s resources – four have already been exceeded: climate change, biodiversity loss, land use change and geochemical cycles (including, for example, the carbon cycle).
The graphic below shows the four planetary boundaries that have been exceeded in red. (Many more are at a high risk of being exceeded, as Carbon Brief has previously reported.)
Four of Earth’s nine “planetary boundaries” have already been exceeded.UNCCD (2022) GLO2 Figure 1.1.
The report says the breaches of the planetary boundaries are “directly linked to human-induced desertification, land degradation and drought”. It adds:
“If current trends persist, the risk of widespread, abrupt, or irreversible environmental changes will grow.”
Looking specifically at biodiversity loss, the report says populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish decreased by an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016.
It adds that, in tropical central and South America, populations fell by 94% – “primarily due to land use change, largely the conversion of grasslands, savannahs, forests, and wetlands for agriculture and extractive industries”.
On land-use change, the report says that 5-10m hectares of forest were razed every year between 2000 and 2015, leading to a total global loss of 125m hectares – an area twice the size of France.
It adds that “hidden in the numbers is the loss of biodiverse and carbon-rich tropical forests”, which “have been offset by an almost fivefold increase in the rate of expansion of temperate forests”.
2: Food Systems Are Responsible for 80 Percent of Deforestation, 29 Percent of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Are the Single Largest Cause of Biodiversity Loss on Land
“More than any other activity”, the report reads, modern agriculture is responsible for “alter[ing] the face of the planet”. At least 40% of the Earth’s land surface is dedicated to agriculture, and more than half of these lands are degraded.
Large-scale and industrial agricultural operations generate high levels of greenhouse gas emissions – 29% of the world’s total. Much of these emissions are the result of deforestation and other land-use change. According to the report, 80% of global deforestation is caused by agriculture, which also accounts for 70% of the world’s freshwater use.
Thus far, regulations have not been sufficient to protect ecosystems from agricultural expansion, the report says. From 2013-9, more than two-thirds of agriculture-driven tropical forest clearance was carried out “in violation of national laws or regulations” – an area totalling 32m hectares, approximately the size of Norway.
Cattle, palm oil and soya are three of the largest culprits for this illegal deforestation, which is driven by “short-sighted national development priorities”, lax enforcement of existing regulations and “ultimately, consumer demand in developed countries”, the report states.
In addition, land degradation by food systems is not limited to deforestation. Agricultural expansion and climate change pose the “greatest threats” to grasslands, which make up more than two-thirds of the land being converted to cropland in wet regions of the planet.
Below-ground biodiversity and soil health have also “been largely neglected” by the transition to industrial agriculture, with serious ramifications. The report states:
“While agricultural intensification can increase yields in the short term, unless done in a sustainable manner, it tends to cause high levels of land and soil degradation and contamination. Faced with long-term declines in productivity and water scarcity, farmers paradoxically resort to the increased use of harmful agrochemicals and inefficient irrigation systems.”
With the industrialisation of agriculture has come the expansion of large-scale agribusinesses. Just 1% of the world’s farms control more than 70% of agricultural land, the report notes. In contrast, 80% of farms comprise less than two hectares, totalling just 12% of the total. At the same time, the report says, family farms are “key sources of the diverse diets that provide food and nutrition security for local communities”.
Furthermore, these small-scale farms are more suited for agroecological and other regenerative farming practices. The report lays out several case studies of communities where a shift towards “nature-positive” food production has resulted in the restoration or maintenance of ecosystems.
For example, the Campesino a Campesino movement – a grassroots ecological farming collective in Cuba – has helped farmers boost production without the use of agrochemicals, which are scarce and expensive in the country.
The report says that a “logical first step” towards reducing the impacts of agriculture would be a transition towards more plant-based diets. It notes that almost 80% of agricultural land is used to raise livestock, “while providing less than 20% of the world’s food calories”.
The report also calls for elimination of subsidies for harmful farming practices. More than $700bn of subsidies are paid out each year, the report says, but only 15% of this funding “positively impacts natural capital, biodiversity, long-term job stability and livelihoods”.
3: Protecting and Restoring Ecosystems Could Provide More Than a Third of the Land-Based Climate Action Needed to Meet Global Warming Goals
Protecting and restoring natural environments could provide more than a third of the land-based climate action needed between now and 2030 to meet global warming goals, the report says.
A section of the report is dedicated to the role that land can play in “boosting climate action”.
It notes that the world has set a goal to limit global warming to well-below 2C by 2100 – with an aspiration of keeping temperatures at 1.5C – under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Protecting and restoring land “reduces emissions and sequesters carbon”, the report says. It cites analysis finding that this could provide a third of the “cost-effective, land-based climate mitigation needed between now and 2030” to meet the Paris goals.
In addition to reducing emissions, land-based climate solutions could also help the world adapt to the impacts of warming, the report adds.
It says that “effective management and expansion of conserved and protected areas” and “ecological restoration or rewilding of biodiversity and well-functioning ecosystems” could play a role in climate adaptation.
The report also notes that, while the land and ocean have historically removed over half of the CO2 released by humans, the rate of removal “is now declining”. It continues:
“If land degradation continues unabated, this could potentially trigger a reversal from land being a net sink to being a net source.”
(As the first part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report explains (pdf): “…while natural land and ocean carbon sinks are projected to take up, in absolute terms, a progressively larger amount of CO2 under higher compared to lower CO2 emissions scenarios, they become less effective, that is, the proportion of emissions taken up by land and ocean decrease with increasing cumulative CO2 emissions. This is projected to result in a higher proportion of emitted CO2 remaining in the atmosphere.”)
The degradation of land is already contributing to climate change, the report adds.
CO2 emissions from land largely come from deforestation and the draining and burning of peatlands, as well as from the degradation of soils due to agriculture, it says.
It cites a study finding that, throughout history, farming has released roughly 116bn tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, with the rate of loss “increasing dramatically” in the last 200 years.
Meanwhile, emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, two potent greenhouse gases, largely come from nitrogen fertiliser use and the rearing of livestock, respectively, the report says.
In addition to land degradation driving climate change, the impacts of warming are further contributing to the decline of land, the report notes. It says:
“Hotter temperatures, along with longer, more intense droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall events, weaken ecological integrity and resilience in both managed and natural land systems.”
Because of human-caused climate change, “many forests and grasslands around the world are now more susceptible to pest and disease outbreaks” and crop yields have been “reduced”, the report says.
Climate change poses a particular threat to peatlands and permafrost, which “store huge amounts of greenhouse gases and provide essential services and unique habitats for many species”, according to the report.
It says that climate change is increasingly causing peatlands to “dry out” and causing permafrost to thaw.
Further degradation of these ecosystems could create “feedback loops” that could “surpass climate thresholds and accelerate global warming far beyond human control”. (For more on climate tipping points, read Carbon Brief’s dedicated explainer.)
4: Land Degradation Threatens Marginalized Communities the Most — But These Groups Have Much to Contribute to Ecosystem Restoration and Protection
More than 3 billion people are already living with the impacts of desertification, land degradation and drought, the report says. These are “mostly poor rural communities, small-scale farmers, women, youth, Indigenous peoples and other at-risk groups”.
These historically marginalised groups “are often the most exposed” to the risks associated with land degradation.
But land restoration measures that are not responsibly designed “could risk disenfranchising the most vulnerable and threaten their health, homes and livelihoods”, the report warns.
For example, expanding protected areas could have the unintended consequence of threatening Indigenous peoples who “legitimately occupy or claim these lands through customary systems that rarely are legally documented”.
Indigenous peoples represent around 6% of the global population, yet they act as stewards for at least 38m km2 – an area spread out across 87 countries and spanning all six inhabited continents. In total, Indigenous peoples have tenure rights over about one-quarter of the Earth’s surface, and 40% of intact ecosystems and protected areas.
However, Indigenous peoples have also been frequently forced from their lands and subjected to discrimination, with the result that “their fundamental rights and freedoms are often severely curtailed”, the report says. It discusses the Land Back movement – a growing push for these communities to reclaim their ancestral lands. It states:
“The Land Back movement offers many opportunities for the restoration of traditional, regenerative land and water management practices, which could be applied throughout large parks, public lands, and protected areas. The movement is aligned with global campaigns to protect biodiversity, expand Indigenous management of protected areas and restore natural capital to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
In the US, for example, the return of forest management duties to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana in 1988 “led to increased species diversity and a healthier tree age distribution”. As a result, the forests on the reservation were “less prone to wildfires while providing better wildlife habitat and higher water quality compared to land managed by the US Forest Service”.
The report notes that “despite being a major store of carbon with great potential for achieving environmental and development goals”, rangelands – areas used for grazing or hunting animals – are “often neglected” in discussions of land restoration.
Around 500 million people around the world are pastoralists – typically nomadic livestock-keepers who occupy rangelands around the world. Their management of these ecosystems is “now threatened by climate change and mobility restrictions, as well as appropriation and encroachment”.
The report cites examples of collective land tenure and management from several continents as one potential method for maintaining pastoralist lifestyles.
Although the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for the protection and restoration of ecosystems, the agenda contains a “critical void”, the report says – “a lack of attention to the social and political dimensions of land restoration initiatives”.
It notes that historically, programmes that have been “gender blind” have exacerbated existing gender inequalities, “with women’s access to land and natural resources further restricted, women’s voices and agendas undermined and their work burden increased”.
The report calls for “inclusive decision-making” processes to ensure equitable outcomes for marginalised communities. It says:
“Addressing past and ongoing injustices will help create a robust and enduring dynamic for future equity and sustainability through improved land management, social cohesion and more responsible governance.”
5: The World Faces a Stark Choice Between Protecting and Restoring Land and “Business as Usual”
The report outlines three scenarios for land from 2015 until 2050:
A “business as usual” baseline scenario, where current trends in land and natural resource degradation are projected to continue through to 2050;
a “restoration scenario”, where restoration is carried out on a “massive scale” and 5bn hectares of land (50m km2) are restored by 2050, through measures such as low- or no-till farming, agroforestry and silvopasture, improved grazing management, grassland rehabilitation, forest plantations and assisted natural regeneration;
a “restoration and protection scenario”, where vital ecosystems are specifically restored and protected, in addition to other efforts.
The figure below shows these restoration scenarios for future land health, relative to the current trajectory of land commitments.
Three future land health outlooks as mapped in the GLO2: baseline “business as usual,” restoration, and restoration and protection scenarios.UNCCD (2022) GLO2
If the world proceeds at the pace of “business as usual”, the report estimates that by 2050, land almost the size of South America (16m km2) would show continued degradation.
In total, an additional 69bn tonnes of carbon would be emitted because of land-use change and soil degradation – divided between soil organic carbon (32bn), vegetation (27bn) and peatland degradation/conversion (10bn). Per year, these emissions “represent 17% of current annual greenhouse gas emissions”, the report says.
Agricultural yields might continue to rise, but land degradation will curb increases and so will associated risks of drought and water scarcity, the report says. An agricultural slowdown could be especially acute in the Middle East, north and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, brought on primarily by the loss of organic soil carbon and soil’s ability to hold water and nutrients. Sub-Saharan Africa would be the worst affected, under this scenario.
Nature and biodiversity suffer the most under business as usual, the report says. Natural areas the size of India’s landmass would need to be cleared to feed a hungry world, with food demand projected to rise 45% between 2015 and 2050.
As a result, the report warns that “business as usual is not an option”.
Under the “restoration”scenario – where 16m km2 of cropland, 22m km2 of grazing land, and 14m km2 of natural areas are restored – 11% of biodiversity loss is averted, the report estimates.
Crop yields increase by 5-10% in most developing countries – especially in Latin America, north and sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East – and food price spikes are limited. In rain-fed croplands, soil water holding capacity would increase by 4%,
Because of gains in soil carbon and reduced emissions, soil carbon stocks would be 55bn tonnes larger in 2050 compared to the baseline. Russia, eastern Europe, Central Asia and Latin America will see the largest gains, while the “worst losses” will be averted in sub-Saharan Africa.
The “restoration and protection” scenario in the report envisages a world where land protection measures are expanded to cover close to half of the Earth’s land surface by 2050 – a threefold increase on the current coverage.
If this takes place, an additional 83bn tonnes of carbon are stored compared to the baseline, the report says:
“Avoided emissions and increased carbon storage would be equivalent to more than seven years of total current global emissions.”
However, this scenario would also mean escalating food prices – particularly in south and south-east Asia, where the report says a shortfall of agricultural land is “already impacting food security”.
To date, more than 115 countries have committed to restore close to 10m km2 of degraded land, be it in their climate plans, national biodiversity plans, voluntary pledges to the Bonn Challenge or otherwise. Today’s commitments, however, are “still insufficient to realise a nature-positive and climate-resilient future” and “must be backed by clear action plans and sustained financing”, the report says.
The figure below provides a snapshot of the extent of land countries have voluntarily pledged to restore under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) pledges to the UNCCD, National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP) under the Convention on Biological Diversity and commitments to the Bonn Challenge.
Global land restoration commitments under different UN conventions.UNCCD (2022) GLO2 Figure 3.4.
These commitments are estimated to cost between $305bn and $1.7tn – significant, but “far less than the amount of subsidies currently provided to the agriculture and fossil fuel industries”, says the report. The figure below lays out the estimated cost ranges for most restoration measures.
Cost ranges of most land restoration measures.UNCCD (2022) GLO2 Figure 3.5
The report says that to expect most developing countries to meet these costs would be “unrealistic and unfair” and they would need “extra-budgetary support in the form of investments, development aid (for trade), debt relief, or other financial instruments”. It adds:
“Countries that are disproportionately responsible for the climate, biodiversity and environmental crises must do more to support developing countries as they restore their land resources and make these activities central to building healthier and more resilient societies.”
The report observes that “gender-responsive” land restoration – illustrated in the figure below – is an “obvious pathway” to reduce poverty and hunger.
The elements of “gender-responsive” land restoration identified by the UN’s new Global Land Outlook 2, by which all genders “have an equal voice and influence in land use and management decisions and their outcomes”.UNCCD (2022) GLO2 Figure 1.4
It also finds that community-based restoration initiatives “tend to be the most successful” and that Indigenous peoples and local communities “represent a vast store of human and social capital that must be respected and embraced” to restore the planet.
Human rights lawyer addressed economic and social council at the United Nations on the situation in Ukraine. Clooney is a part of a legal task force advising the country on ‘securing accountability’ for war crimes that could be pursued at a national level as well as institutions such as the international criminal court
In general, in a deep conflict, the eyes of the downtrodden are more acute about the reality of the present.
– Immanuel Wallerstein (The Modern World System, Introduction, p. 4)
Introduction
On April 7 the UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution intended to signal support for the US/NATO effort in Ukraine. This gesture of support came in the form of a resolution removing Russia from its seat on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).1 Just as with the March 2 UNGA resolution condemning Russia’s military intervention of February 242 (passed by countries representing just 41% of world population3 ), the April 7 vote is dizzyingly lopsided. Western media presented passage of both resolutions as victories. But when adjusted for world population, these votes appear as popular losses for US/NATO and its sphere. The April 7 resolution had support from countries representing just 24% of global population, a drop of 17% from the March 2 vote and an even more striking popular defeat for US/NATO.4
The April 7 Vote to Remove Russia From the UN Human Rights Council
Here is the result of the April 7 vote to remove Russia from the UNHRC:
93 IN FAVOR
24 AGAINST
58 ABSTENTIONS
18 NOT VOTING
(TOTAL: 193 COUNTRIES)
If you count people instead of countries, the vote means that countries representing only 24.33% of the world’s population voted in favor of the resolution, with 75.67% of humanity’s nations voting AGAINST, ABSTAINING, or NOT VOTING:
VOTING FOR THE RESOLUTION: 24.33%
AGAINST, ABSTAINING, OR NOT VOTING: 75.67%
(AGAINST 27.52%; ABSTENTIONS 45.17%; NOT VOTING 2.98%)5
Just as with the March 2 vote to condemn the February 24 Russian intervention in Ukraine, the April 7 vote divides richer from poorer countries and “white countries” from “countries of color.” For both the March 2 and the April 7 votes, when adjusted for population, the great majority of richer “white countries” voted with US/NATO, and the great majority of poorer “countries of color” did not.
Much popular sentiment in US/NATO countries and their sphere, including on the Left, condemns Russia’s intervention. But judging by these two recent United Nations General Assembly votes, world opinion seems contrary, especially among governments of countries that are poorer, “of color,” and in the global periphery or semi-periphery of the world system.
There have been many official government statements contradicting condemnations of Russia from the Global North. Two came from Cuba and Nicaragua, countries which happen to fit the profile just given. But this article will not consider such statements, nor add to the reams of gigabytes filled with discussion of the merits or demerits of Russia’s intervention, war crimes in Ukraine and questions as to who might have committed them, Russia’s intentions expressed or unexpressed, nor who, if anyone, is winning or losing the war.
Instead I will try to analyze the demography of the April 7 UNGA vote to remove Russia from the UNHRC.
The Wealth and Color of Nations: Definitions
Before analyzing the vote, and for the purpose of this article, I want to make a picture of the world in over-simplified economic and racial terms, and define my terms “poorer countries,” “richer countries,” “countries of color,” and “white countries.” I will also use the established terms of world-system theory, “core,” “periphery” and “semi-periphery.”6
Wealth
First, to get some idea of what a “wealthy country” might be, I’ll compare nominal GDPs per capita (GDPcn). Instead of the four national income categories used by the World Bank, I’ll put all countries into just two groups based on GDPcn. I’ll call “richer” any country with a GDPcn of $13,000 or above. All other countries I’ll call “poorer.” This means:
85% of the world’s population lives in “poorer countries
15% of world population lives in “richer countries.”7
Here are some examples of countries in each group. In the list I rely on, Luxembourg is the richest country in the world with a GDPcn of $131,782; South Sudan is the poorest country in the world with a GDPcn of $315. “Poorer countries” include Ethiopia $952, China $11,819, Russia $11,654, Vietnam $3,609. “Richer countries” include some with GDPcn’s that are multiples of China’s or Russia’s, like France $44,995; Germany $51,860; Japan $42,928; United Kingdom $46,344; United States $68,309.
Color
I will call countries that are predominantly inhabited by or dominated by people North Americans generally (but inconsistently) perceive as “of color,” “countries of color.” (See Appendix 2.) All others I’ll call “white countries.” This means:
85% of world population lives in “countries of color.”
15% lives in “white countries.”
Core vs. Periphery (& Semi-Periphery)
World-systems theory puts the global wealth split into relief, dividing the nations of the world into the “core” and “periphery” of the global system. In world-systems theory the surplus value of labor flows disproportionately from the periphery to the core: “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20) The core countries include most of the richest and most powerful countries, historically and currently.
Here are the core countries, each followed by its GDPcn: Australia $62,723, Austria $53.859, Belgium $50,103, Canada $49,222, Denmark $67,218, Finland $54,330, France $44,995, Germany $51,860, Greece $19,673, Iceland $65,273, Ireland $94,556, Israel $47,602, Italy $33,190, Japan $42,928, Luxembourg $131,782, Netherlands $58,003, New Zealand $47,499, Norway $81,995, Portugal $25,065, Singapore $64,103, Spain $30,996, Sweden $58,997, Switzerland $94,696, United Kingdom $46,344, United States $68,309.
Here is the distribution of population between core and periphery:
88% of world population lives in countries in the periphery (or semi-periphery)8
12% of world population lives in core countries
Intersection of Wealth and Race
Looking at the world through these categories of wealth, race, core and periphery (including semi-periphery), this is what we see (rounded):
“Poorer” “countries of color” have 82% of world population.
“Poorer” “white countries” have 3% of world population.
“Richer” “countries of color” have 3% of world population.
“Richer” “white countries” have 12% of world population.
Using the core/periphery (& semi-periphery) analysis:
2% of the world population living in “countries of color” live in the core nations.
71% of the world population living in “white countries” live in the core nations.
Both analyses show the world sharply divided between its great majority of “countries of color” concentrated among the “poorer countries” and a small global minority of “white countries” constituting most of the “richer countries.” This is important to the following discussion of the UNGA vote on the April 7 resolution.
The UN Vote by Share of World Population
Here again are the results of the April 7 vote to remove Russia from the UNHRC, given by share of world population, not country:
VOTING FOR THE RESOLUTION: 24.33%
AGAINST, ABSTAINING, OR NOT VOTING: 75.67%
(AGAINST 27.52%; ABSTENTIONS 45.17%; NOT VOTING 2.98%)
For simplicity, I’ll round off the numbers, and reduce the vote to two categories: YES and NAN (No; Abstention; Not voting):
24% YES
76% NAN
The Vote and the Wealth, Color and World System Status of Nations
The point of this article is to demonstrate both how little global support there is for the US/NATO position in Ukraine, and also to show just how much the results of the April 7 vote split the world along the lines of the reigning global hierarchies of populations and nations. (Dear reader, I think this blizzard of statistics is worth suffering through.)
1. The Vote by “Poorer” and by “Richer” Countries, by Population
“Poorer countries” declined to support the resolution roughly 9 to 1, while richer countries supported the resolution more by than 30 to 1:
All “poorer countries”:
11% YES
89% NAN
All “richer countries”:
97% YES
3% NAN
2. The Vote by “Countries of Color” and by “White Countries,” by Population
The racial divide is almost as extreme as the wealth divide. “Countries of color” declined to support the resolution by more than 6 to 1, while “white countries” supported it by a nearly identical margin:
All “countries of color”:
13% YES
87% NAN
All “white countries”:
86% YES
14% NAN
3. The Vote by Core and Periphery (& Semi-Periphery), by Population
The periphery overwhelmingly declined to support the resolution, while the core was virtually unanimous in support of it:
All peripheral (& semi-peripheral) countries:
13% YES
87% NAN
All core countries:
99% YES
1% NAN
4. The Vote by Intersectional Categories of Race and Wealth, by Population
In this series of statistics the YES vote rises from only 10% for “poorer” “countries of color” to a unanimous 100% for “richer” “white countries,” while the NAN vote, of course, drops from 90% to zero.
All “poorer” “countries of color”:
10% YES
90% NAN
All “poorer” “white countries”:
33% YES
67% NAN
All “richer” “countries of color”:
75% YES
25% NAN
All “richer” “white countries”:
100% YES
0% NAN
5. The Vote by Intersectional Categories of Race and Wealth in the Core and Periphery (& Semi-Periphery), by Population
Again, notice how the YES vote rises from 11% for “countries of color” in the periphery, to a unanimous 100% for “white countries” in the core.
All “countries of color” in the periphery (& semi-periphery):
11% YES
89% NAN
All “white countries” in the periphery (& semi-periphery):
53% YES
47% NAN
All “countries of color” in the core:
95% YES
5% NAN
All “white countries” in the core:
100% YES
0% NAN
Conclusion
These numbers show the global divides of wealth, color, core and periphery deeply etched in the April 7 UNGA vote.
Here is a possible explanation.
The war in Ukraine is not just a conflict in Eurasia between two countries. Nor is it only a contest between two power blocks, with the US and its sphere on one side, and Russia and its sphere on the other. It may be that this conflict concerns unequal and contested economic, political and social relations between all nations and peoples of the world. Economist and economic historian Michael Hudson sees the contest as part of a clash of economic systems, between US-led neoliberal finance capitalism and socialist industrialization led by Russia, China and Eurasia.
What is clear is that with this UNGA vote the nations representing most of the downtrodden of the world have acted in defiance of US/NATO demands, pressure, and inordinate power.
Appendix 1: UN Countries (193)
Here are each of the countries on the UNGA roster for April 7, 2022, followed by its GDPcn, world population share, and vote (YES, NO, abstention [AB], not voting [NV]). GDPcn numbers are from a compilation of International Monetary Fund statistics for 2021 and, where noted, statistics from the World Bank (WB) or the United Nations (UN).
Afghanistan; Algeria; Angola; Antigua and Barbuda; Argentina; Azerbaijan; Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh; Barbados; Belize; Benin; Bhutan; Bolivia; Botswana; Brazil; Brunei; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cabo Verde; Cambodia; Cameroon; Central African Republic; Chad; Chile; China; Colombia; Comoros; Congo (Democratic Republic of the); Congo (Republic of); Costa Rica; Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast); Cuba; Djibouti; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; Egypt; El Salvador; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Eswatini; Ethiopia; Fiji; Gabon; Gambia; Ghana; Grenada; Guatemala; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Guyana; Haiti; Honduras; India; Indonesia; Iran; Iraq; Jamaica; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kenya; Kiribati; Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of); Korea (Republic of); Kuwait; Kyrgyzstan; Lao (Peoples Democratic Republic of); Lebanon; Lesotho; Liberia; Libya; Madagascar; Malawi; Malaysia; Maldives; Mali; Marshall Islands; Mauritania; Mauritius; Mexico; Micronesia (Federated States of); Mongolia; Morocco; Mozambique; Myanmar; Namibia; Nauru; Nepal; Nicaragua; Niger; Nigeria; Oman; Pakistan; Palau; Panama; Papua New Guinea; Paraguay; Peru; Philippines; Qatar; Rwanda; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Samoa; Sao Tome and Principe; Saudi Arabia; Senegal; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; Singapore; Solomon Islands; Somalia; South Africa; South Sudan; Sri Lanka; Sudan; Suriname; Syria; Tajikistan; Tanzania (United Republic of); Thailand; Timor-Leste; Togo; Tonga; Trinidad and Tobago; Tunisia; Turkey; Turkmenistan; Tuvalu; Uganda; United Arab Emirates; Uruguay; Uzbekistan; Vanuatu; Venezuela; Vietnam; Yemen; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 7 April 2022 ES-11/3. “Suspension of the rights of membership of the Russian Federation in the Human Rights Council [Excerpt:] Expressing grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, in particular at the reports of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Russian Federation, including gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights, recognizing the strong expressions of concern in statements by the Secretary-General and by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and noting the latest update on the human rights situation in Ukraine by the human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, of 26 March 2022, [par.] 1. Decides to suspend the rights of membership in the Human Rights Council of the Russian Federation…”
Resolution adopted March 2 by the General Assembly: “Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter.” (Article 2 (4) reads: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”) The resolution also “[d]eplores the 21 February 2022 decision by the Russian Federation related to the status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine as a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter.” Beyond Russia, the resolution “[d]eplores the involvement of Belarus in this unlawful use of force against Ukraine, and calls upon it to abide by its international obligations.”
This article will concentrate on the April 7 vote. I wrote about the March 2 vote in Divided World: The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population, found here, here, here, here.
Another March 24 resolutionpassed in the UNGA blamed Russia for the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. It received a vote nearly identical to the March 2 vote.
These figures and similar ones throughout this article are the sums of the share of global population for each country in each voting category.
Two Appendices follow this article. Appendix1 lists the 193 countries on the April 7 UNGA roster, each followed by its nominal GDP per capita, its % share of world population, and how it voted. Appendix 2 lists, for the purpose of this article, “countries of color.” (All other countries will be considered “white countries.”)
My source gives population share figures out to two decimals. This overlooks populations of a number of very small countries, adding up to 1.2% of world population. Assuming the distribution of “poorer” and “richer” countries is roughly similar in that 1.2%, I approximated the “poorer”/“richer” split as 85%/15% and assigned 85% of the 1.2% to the “poorer” group and the rest to the “richer” group. “Richer countries” have 14.93% of world population; “poorer countries” have 83.87%. Distributing the remaining 1.2% of world population according to an 85%/15% split (“poorer”/“richer”), means “poorer” countries have 84.89% of world population and “richer” countries have 15.11%. This rounds to 85% and 15%. I used the same method to find the percentages for “countries of color” and “white countries” (below). Because of these vagaries, among the many statistics given below, some may be off by a percentage point.
Some name a semi-periphery that may include Russia and China.
Michelle Bacheletdue to visit Uyghur region in May after United Nations long pushed China for ‘unfettered, meaningful’ access
A United Nations team is in China ahead of a visit to Xinjiang, in preparation for the human rights commissioner’s long sought inspection expected next month.
The delegation was quarantining in Guangzhou, the South China Morning Post reported, before heading to Xinjiang. The five-member team was there “at the invitation of the [Chinese] government” said Liz Throssell, UN human rights spokesperson, the Post reported.
On Tuesday April 26, 2022, at 9am ET, the American Society of International Law’s Human Rights Interest Group will hold the next event of their series “Human Rights Talks”, in which the presidents or heads of regional and universal human…
Fiji is making a mockery of its stand in the United Nations in condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine by allowing the Russian super yacht Amadea to berth in the western port of Lautoka, says opposition People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka.
He called on government to send it on its way immediately.
He made the comment as police are investigating why the Amadea had entered and stopped inside Fiji’s territorial waters before a clearance from Customs was issued.
Fiji’s People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka … says the government should order the Russian super yacht out of Fiji. Image: Fiji Times File
Police Commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho said the super yacht was being investigated for alleged breach of Fiji’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
The super yacht belonging to a Russian billionaire sanctioned by the USA, United Kingdom and Europe came into port at Lautoka on Tuesday.
Public sources say the Amadea is owned by Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian oligarch who is currently sanctioned over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Marine Traffic, a marine analytics service, started showing Amadea in Fiji waters from daytime on Tuesday and by 6pm it was headed to the Lautoka Wharf.
Left Mexico last month
The Amadea left Manzanillo port in Mexico on March 24.
The 106-metre yacht risks being seized by the US, UK or any European Union country after they placed sanctions on Kerimov’s assets.
According to Fiji port requirements, any yacht arriving into Fiji must obtain approval from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade and Transport and the Immigration Department.
“We have heard about it [Amadea] but nothing has come to Immigration,” said Immigration Secretary Yogesh Karan.
Questions sent to the Ministry of Health had not been answered on publication by The Fiji Times.
Anish Chandis the Fiji Times West Bureau chief reporter. Republished with permission.
Kristina B. Daugirdas, Funding Global Governance, Law & Economics Working Papers. 216 (Oct. 1, 2021). Abstract below. Funding is an oft-overlooked but critically important determinant of what public institutions are able to accomplish. This article focuses on the growing role…
Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner David Manning — who is also head of the country’s Covid-19 National Control Centre — has placed United Nations agencies on notice that they must reveal how they have spent virus emergency funding over the past two years.
Manning said Prime Minister James Marap and other Members of Parliament, and independent organisations such as Transparency International, have all called for the release of information on how covid-19 funds have been spent and they have been ignored.
“Unfortunately, these United Nations bodies have refused to provide financial information to the government and people of Papua New Guinea,” he said.
This matter has now come to a head with the Controller writing to the World Bank Acting Country Director in Papua New Guinea, Paul Vallely, on March 29, advising that he would no longer endorse any further increase in allocation of funds, or disbursements, under the PNG Covid-19 Emergency Response Project.
“I have repeatedly requested both directly and through auditors, acquittals of previously disbursed funds under this and other similar projects,” the Controller said in his letter to the World Bank on the loan money.
“The recipients of these funds have refused to provide any reasonable account for these monies.
“There is over US$1.3 billion (K4.5 billion) identified on the self-reporting donor tracker as being committed for managing the covid-19 pandemic in PNG.
‘How are UN agency funds used?’
“What our people need to know, and the global community needs to know, is how are these UN agencies using the funds allocated to them.”
Manning advised that the project is to receive no further funds until he is satisfied that previous disbursements have been acquitted.
“Enough is enough, I have called for the past year for this expenditure to be acquitted and they have refused, so now I am demanding compliance with transparency requirements in PNG,” he said.
“With the country going through the height of the pandemic, these agencies were provided with some leniency, but we have heard enough excuses and misleading information.
A substantial part of the funds being spent by these UN organisations had also become a part of national sovereign debt that must be repaid by future generations of the Papua New Guinean people, he said.
“But the terrible irony is that we do not even know what they spent this money on, particularly in areas such as communications and awareness in which they have failed.
“Details that have been revealed on the Covid-19 Donor Tracking Dashboard shows that UNDP, as one example, has facilitated the following funding of their own activities in PNG to an amount of K9 million (US$2.6 million).
“This is one just source of funding that is shrouded in secrecy and there are several others for which we have demanded information but is being ignored by this global body.”
Outraged by wording
Manning said he was outraged by the almost identical wording from UNICEF, WHO and UNDP in response to his requirement for an independent auditor to access their records, in which these agencies essentially said they would ignore the request.
In documents seen by the Post-Courier, UNDP Resident Representative Dirk Wagener and UNICEF PNG Representative Claudes Kamenga wrote to Manning with the same “contemptuous and arrogant” language stating that: “We would like to inform you that UNICEF, as a United Nations Agency, is submitted to the ‘Single Audit principle’ that gives the exclusivity of external audit and investigation to the United Nations Board of Auditors (UNBoA) founded in 1946 through the UN resolution 74 (I) of 7 December 1946.”
Manning said what UNICEF and UNDP were saying to PNG is that they would spend funds that were intended for the people, and they would not tell how they used this money.
“In other words, if these agencies have wasted money that was intended for our people, they claim they can keep it a secret,” Manning said.
“This is exactly what we have seen with the way UNICEF uses public funding for communications and awareness and delivers limited results.
“This is a matter that must be addressed at the highest level of the United Nations, because if this lack of transparency is happening in PNG, you have to ask how many other smaller developing countries are being treated with such contempt.”
The Controller said he would ensure the PNG public and international support partners were kept aware of developments in the matter and if acquittals were forthcoming.
Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.
It was big news that Russia was stripped of its seat in the Un human Rights Council.
In March 2014 in one of my first blog posts I argued for making better use of the possibility to suspend member states (be it in the context of reprisals): “The resolution establishing the new Human Rights Council – replacing the previous Commission – states that “members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.” And one of the novelties touted was that the General Assembly, via a two-thirds majority, can suspend the rights and privileges of any Council member that it decides has persistently committed gross and systematic violations of human rights during its term of membership.
The chilling effect that reprisals can have – especially when met with impunity – is potentially extremely damaging for the whole UN system of human rights procedures and will undo the slow but steady process of the last decades. Taken together with the above-mentioned seriousness of the aggravating character of reprisals, a powerful coalition of international and regional NGOs could well start public hearings with the purpose of demanding that States that commit reprisal be suspended.
UN members voted on Thursday 7 April to strip Russia from its seat at the Human Rights Council, over alleged civilian killings in the region around Kyiv, Ukraine. The proposal, presented at a UN General Assembly emergency session in New York, was backed by 93 countries. Russia, China, Belarus, Syria and Iran were among the 24 countries to vote against, while 58 countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa abstained.
Introducing the US-led resolution, Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told fellow members that suspending Russia’s right to sit on the Council, was “not an option, but a duty”.
This is the first time a permanent member of the UN Security Council has been removed from any UN body.
Countries react
Taking the floor, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, echoed Russia’s comments and said the move was politically driven. Belarus dubbed it an attempt to “demonise” Russia. Warning that they would abstain, several countries including India, Egypt, Senegal, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, argued it was too soon to vote on such a proposal and that investigations into the allegations should be conducted beforehand.
In a statement published on its website, Russia’s permanent mission in Geneva called the decision “an unlawful and politically motivated step, the sole purpose of which – to exert pressure on a sovereign state that pursues an independent domestic and foreign policy”.
Russia’s deputy ambassador, Gennady Kuzmin, said after the vote that Russia had already withdrawn from the council before the assembly took action, apparently in expectation of the result. By withdrawing, council spokesman Rolando Gomez said Russia avoided being deprived of observer status at the rights body.
The United Nations General Assembly voted 93-24 with 58 abstentions to drop the Russian Federation from membership on the UN Human Rights Council, based on allegations and grisly videos and photos appearing to show execution-style slayings of civilians in Ukraine by Russian troops.
While there are calls for independent investigations into those allegations, the US and NATO member state governments have been pushing the claim that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine including the major war crime of invading another country, the unasked question in the US media is: Why hasn’t the US been kicked out of the Human Rights Council for similar war crimes that aren’t at all allegations, but are well documented fact? Why indeed, for all the accusations that Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself a war criminal responsible for all these crimes, haven’t a number of US presidents still living been accused of war crimes?
Russia has been suspended from the United Nations’ leading human rights body as its invasion of Ukraine continues to provoke revulsion and outrage around the world.
At a meeting of the UN general assembly on Thursday, 93 members voted in favour of the diplomatic rebuke while 24 were against and 58 abstained.
New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party says it will not give up on the gains made in terms of decolonisation from France under the 1998 Noumea Accord.
Party president Daniel Goa made the statement in an address at the party congress in the north of the main island Grande Terre at the weekend, outlining its key points ahead of negotiations with Paris about the territory’s institutional future.
Last December, more than 96 percent voted against independence from France in the third and last referendum provided under the Noumea Accord.
However, the plebiscite was boycotted by the pro-independence side after it had unsuccessfully asked Paris to postpone the vote because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on mainly the indigenous Kanak population.
The pro-independence parties said they would not recognise the result, describing it as illegitimate and one not reflecting the will of the people to be decolonised.
Anti-independence parties as well as the French government welcomed the result, with President Emmanuel Macron saying France was “more beautiful” because New Caledonia decided to remain part of it.
Right after the vote, the French Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Paris planned to hold another referendum in June next year about a new statute for a New Caledonia within France.
‘Only emancipation’
However, Goa reiterated at the weekend the pro-independence camp’s stance was that it would not join discussions about re-integrating New Caledonia into France.
He told delegates that “the Caledonian Union had nothing to negotiate except to listen and discuss the process of emancipation that will irreversibly lead to sovereignty”.
Pro-independence parties, united under the umbrella of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), said after the December referendum that they would have no negotiations with France until after this year’s presidential election.
Last month, at the congress of another pro-independence party, Palika, its spokesperson Charles Washetine suggested holding another independence referendum by 2024 to complete the decolonisation process, but this time with the participation of the Kanak people.
Washetine added that the vote should be run by the United Nations, and not by France any longer.
Goa accused France of having failed to be neutral at the last referendum, which was meant to conclude the Noumea Accord process with the Kanak people’s emancipation.
However, he said it turned out that France tried to hide behind a “neo-colonial putsch”.
Gradual transfer of power
Under the Noumea Accord, there has been a gradual transfer of power, which is enshrined in the French constitution and which Goa insisted was an irreversible achievement.
He stressed that there could be no consideration to open the electoral rolls which restrict voting rights to indigenous people and long-term residents in provincial elections and in referendums.
About 41,000 French residents are excluded from such voting.
Goa said freezing the electoral body with the Noumea Accord put an end to the French settlement policy, which French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer still encouraged in 1972.
He said the signatories of the accord wanted to lay the foundation for a citizenship of New Caledonia, allowing the indigenous people to be joined by long term settlers to forge their common destiny.
Goa said that since the December referendum, the French state intended to bring these 41,000 French people back into the electoral body, which he said would destabilise the still very fragile political balances.
He likened attempts to change the rolls to “re-colonisation”.
For sake of ‘handful of French’
He wondered why France would question the achievement of the Noumea Accord for the sake of “a handful of French people” who left their country to settle in New Caledonia.
Goa said France was ready to sacrifice a political process and its word given in front of the international community for what he described as a “handful of adventurers”.
Anti-independence parties, however, expressed support for the push to have the restrictions abolished.
A local interest group, One Heart One Vote, said it would lobby the French Supreme Court, the European Human Rights Court and the United Nations to quash the existing provisions, describing them as discriminatory.
With the first round of the French presidential election due on April 12, the Republicans’ candidate Valerie Pecresse said the eligibility question must be readdressed as to give a full place to those who had been building New Caledonia for years while having no right to vote.
In his address, Goa also alluded to the war in Ukraine and what he called France’s “omnipresent imperialism” in part because of its continued occupation of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean.
The Comoros partitioned
The Comoros, which is between Mozambique and Madagascar, was partitioned after independence in 1975 because France refused to let Mayotte go as its residents had voted to stay with France.
The United Nations asked France to return Mayotte, but Paris integrated the island to become a French department in 2011 and part of the Eurozone three years later.
France will follow the presidential elections this month with National Assembly elections in June.
Proper discussions on how the December referendum outcome will be implemented will have to wait.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Sixty countries will meet in Geneva from Wednesday to discuss curbs on the use of heavy bombs in urban areas in the wake of intense fighting in Ukraine believed to have killed and injured thousands in cities such as Mariupol.
The three-day conference, supported by the UN secretary general, aims to produce a draft international agreement to restrict use of indiscriminate bombing in cities, which statistics show overwhelmingly leads to the death of civilians.
Without shrinking energy demand, reducing emissions rapidly by the end of this decade to keep warming below 1.5C will be almost impossible, the key UN body’s report said.
Even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.
At this point, only severe emissions cuts in this decade across all sectors, from agriculture and transport to energy and buildings, can turn things around, the report said.
IPCC vice-chair Dr Andy Reisinger told RNZ Morning Report the world was “pretty much out of time” to limit warming to 1.5C as agreed in Paris in 2015 and subsequently.
“What our report shows is that the emissions over the last decade were at the highest level ever in human history.
“But on the positive side, that level of emissions growth has slowed and globally we’ve seen a revolution in prices for some renewable energy technologies.” That had led to a rapid uptake of solar and wind energy technologies, he said.
“Also policies have grown. About half of global greenhouse gas emissions that we looked at in our report are now covered by some sort of laws that address climate change.”
The report said the world would need “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) technologies – ranging from planting trees that soak up carbon to grow, to costly and energy-intensive technologies to suck carbon dioxide directly from the air.
Governments had historically seen these technologies as a “cop out” but they were needed alongside reducing emissions,” Reisinger said.
“The time has now run out. If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade, much more so than we’re currently planning to collectively, then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach.
“And the world collectively has the tools to reduce emissions by about a half by 2030.”
Climate Change Minister James Shaw … “Our country has squandered the past 30 years.” Image: James Shaw FB page
NZ has ‘squandered 30 years’, says Shaw Climate Change Minister James Shaw says Aotearoa New Zealand has the political will to tackle climate change but it would have been a lot easier if it had begun decades ago.
“We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world on a per-capita basis and what that means is we’re now in a situation where having essentially fluffed around for three decades the cuts that we need to make over are now far steeper than they would have been.”
“Our country has squandered the past 30 years,” Shaw told Morning Report.
He said the Emissions Reduction Plan to be published next month would set out how the country would reduce emissions across every sector of the economy.
“I think what’s different about the plan that we’re putting out in May is that it’s a statutory instrument”, he said, and was required under the Zero Carbon Act. It would have targets to reduce emissions to the year 2025, 2030 and 2035.
New Zealand’s agricultural emissions had not reduced, he said. This was the year when final decisions would be made on whether agriculture was brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the whole sector was involved in the process.
There were farms up and down the country doing a terrific job on emissions but like every sector there was a “noisy group” which was dragging the chain.
“I think the charge that Groundswell are laying that we are not listening to farmers is ‘total bollocks’, he said.
Shaw noted the IPCC report said 83 percent of net growth in greenhouse gases since 2010 had occurred in Asia and the Pacific — and that New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as a group, had some of the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in 2019.
Cut consumer demand While past IPCC reports on mitigating carbon emissions tended to focus on the promise of sustainable fuel alternatives, the new report highlights a need to cut consumer demand.
Massey University emeritus professor Ralph Sims, a review editor of the IPCC report, said one of the overarching messages is that people needed to change behaviours.
Despite New Zealanders having an attitude that our impact was small, in fact the country had some of the highest carbon emissions per capita, he said.
“We need people to look at their lifestyles, look at their carbon footprints and consider how they may reduce them.”
One of the easiest for the individual was to avoid food waste, he said.
Sims was involved in the transport chapter and said it was a key area for New Zealand.
“It’s the highest growing sector, and makes up for 20 percent of the country’s emissions.”
Faster electric vehicles change
He did not believe the country was transitioning fast enough to electric vehicles, and government assistance needed to be ramped up.
Electric vehicle prices would also reduce over time and a second hand market would make them more affordable, he said.
Sims said New Zealand needed to “get out of coal” and some companies were already reducing their coal demand.
Though New Zealand’s coal industry was small, exploration was still on the table and just last year the Southland District Council granted exploration at Ohai, he said.
Methane emissions need to reduce by a third by 2030, which Sims said is “a major challenge, and highly unlikely” to be achieved in New Zealand.
Victoria University of Wellington professor of physical geography James Renwick said curbing greenhouse gas emissions was still possible, with immediate action.
“The advice from the Climate Change Commission does show that we can peak emissions in the next few years and reduce and get down to zero carbon dioxide hopefully well in advance of 2050,” he said.
“It’s impossible to overstate the dangerous threat we face from climate change and yet politicians and policy makers and businesses still don’t act when everything’s at stake. I haven’t really seen the political will yet but we really need to see action.”
Technologies available at present to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere were not able to operate at the scale needed to make a difference to the climate system, he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On March 2 of this year the UN General Assembly met in an Emergency Session to pass a non-binding resolution condemning Russia’s February 24 intervention in Ukraine.1 141 countries voted for the resolution, 5 voted against, 35 abstained, and 12 did not vote. (Reported: Guardian, Al Jazeera, iNews.)
In the absence of any reliable opinion poll of the world’s 7.9 billion people, this vote may indicate that the majority of humanity sympathizes with Russia in Ukraine. The statistics presented below show that only 41% of the world’s people live in countries that joined the US in voting for the UN resolution.
This lopsided vote is even more striking if you consider the demographics. Populations represented by governments that did not vote for the resolution are much more likely to include the world’s poorest nations, nations with younger populations, “nations of color,” nations of the Global South, and nations in the periphery of the world economic system.
To put it another way, although the war is nominally a conflict between two developed and ethnically white nations, Russia and Ukraine, this UN vote suggests the war may be viewed by much of the world as a fight over the global political and economic system that institutionalizes the imperial hierarchy, the distribution of nations between rich and poor, and global white supremacy.
The UN Vote by Population
Of the world’s 7,934,000,000 people, 59% live in countries that did not support the resolution and only 41% live in countries that did.2 But that last figure drops to 34% outside of the immediate belligerents and their allies: Ukraine, US, and NATO countries, and on the other side, Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, and Tajikistan (all the countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization).
41% or 34% amounts to a resounding, humiliating defeat for the US on this non-binding UN resolution. Instead it is reported in the west as a US victory and an “overwhelming” worldwide condemnation of Russia.
The UN Vote and GDP Per Capita
All the countries in the top third of the GDP per capita (nominal) rankings, including Japan and all the countries of Western Europe and North America, voted for the resolution, Venezuela being the only country in the top third that did not.
Of the countries that did not vote for the resolution, most are ranked the poorest in the world, and almost none came above the approximate midpoint rank of 98. The exceptions were: Venezuela (58), Russia (68), Equatorial Guinea (73), Kazakhstan (75), China (76) Cuba (82), Turkmenistan (92), South Africa (95), Belarus (97).3
Another way to show the wealth divide in the UN vote is by distinguishing core and peripheral countries. In world-systems theory the surplus value of labor flows disproportionately to the core countries: “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20)
The countries usually considered in the core are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
The difference here is stark. Every single core country voted for the resolution and every country that did not is either in the periphery or in some cases, like Russia or China, in the semi-periphery.
The UN Vote and Median Age
All the countries ranked in the top third of median age rankings, from Monaco (51.1 years) to Iceland (36.5 years), voted for the resolution, with the following exceptions: China (37.4), Russia (39.6), Belarus (40), Cuba (41.5).
Of the twenty entries with the lowest median ages (15.4 to 18.9), only half voted for the resolution.
The UN Vote and “Countries of Color”
Of the 7,934,000,000 people in the world, 1,136,160,000 live in what are usually recognized as “white countries” (consistently or not) with about 14% of the world’s population. Yet “white countries,” by population, represent about 30% of the total vote in favor of the resolution. This “white vote” accounts for every one of the core countries (except Singapore and Japan). Compare: 97% of the population in the countries that did not vote for the resolution live in “countries of color.” Only Russia, Belarus and Armenia (which did not vote for the resolution) have dominant populations classed as “white.”
Therefore “white countries” are overrepresented in the group that voted for the resolution (30% vs. 14%), and underrepresented in the group that did not (3% vs. 14%).
Before the Intervention
What follows is a brief sketch of events leading to the February 24 Russian intervention that prompted the UN resolution. It is a history seldom mentioned in the mainstream media, though it is easily found in selected alternative and now-suppressed media. It is presented here as a possible, partial explanation of why the UN resolution had so little support measured by population.
US/NATO has directed aggression toward Russia for decades, advancing NATO forces ever closer to Russia’s western border, ringing Russia with military bases, placing nuclear weapons at ever closer range, and breaching and discarding treaties meant to lessen the likelihood of nuclear war. The US even let it be known, through its planning documents and policy statements, that it considered Ukraine a battlefield on which Ukrainian and Russian lives might be sacrificed in order to destabilize, decapitate and eventually dismember Russia just as it did Yugoslavia. Russia has long pointed out the existential security threat it sees in Ukrainian territory, and it has made persistent, peaceful, yet fruitless efforts over decades to resolve the problem. (See Monthly Review’s excellent editors’ note.)
Recent history includes the 2014 US-orchestrated coup in Ukraine, followed by a war of the central government against those in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk resisting the coup government and its policies. Those policies include a ban on the Russian language, the native tongue of the region and a significant part of the country (ironically, including President Zelensky).
By the end of 2021 the war had taken 14,000 lives, four-fifths of them members of the resistance or civilian Russian speakers targeted by the government. Through years of negotiations Russia tried and failed to keep the Donetsk and Lugansk regions inside a united Ukraine. After signing the Minsk agreements that would do just that, Ukraine, under tight US control, refused to comply even with step one: to talk with the rebellion’s representatives.
As to why the intervention happend now, Vyacheslav Tetekin, Central Committee member of Russia’s largest opposition party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, explains:
Starting from December, 2021 Russia had been receiving information about NATO’s plans to deploy troops and missile bases in Ukraine. Simultaneously an onslaught on the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republics (LPR) was being prepared. About a week before the start of Russia’s operation the plan was uncovered of an offensive that envisaged strikes by long-range artillery, multiple rocket launchers, combat aircraft, to be followed by an invasion of Ukrainian troops and Nazi battalions. It was planned to cut off Donbas from the border with Russia, encircle and besiege Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities and then carry out a sweeping “security cleanup” with imprisonment and killing of thousands of defenders of Donbas and their supporters. The plan was developed in cooperation with NATO. The invasion was scheduled to begin in early March. Russia’s action pre-empted Kiev and NATO, which enabled it to seize strategic initiative and effectively save thousands of lives in the two republics.
All this may have informed the world’s overwhelming rejection of the US-backed UN resolution condemning Russia, which western media perversely considers a US victory simply because the resolution passed. Never mind that it passed in a voting system where Liechtenstein’s vote carries the same weight as China’s.
The Global South also knows from bitter experience that unlike the West, neither Russia nor it’s close partner China habitually engage in bombings, invasions, destabilization campaigns, color revolutions, coups and assassinations against the countries and governments of the Global South. On the contrary, both countries have assisted the development and military defense of such countries, as in Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran and elsewhere.
Conclusion
Just as the imperial core of North America, Europe and Japan does not represent the world in their population numbers, demographics, wealth, or power, neither does the imperial core speak for the world on crucial issues of war, peace, justice, and international law. Indeed the Global South has already spoken to the Global North so many times, in so many ways, with patience, persistence and eloquence, to little avail. Since we in the North have not been able to hear the words, perhaps we can listen to the cry of the numbers.
The resolution “Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter.” (Article 2 (4) reads: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”) The resolution also “[d]eplores the 21 February 2022 decision by the Russian Federation related to the status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine as a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter.” Beyond Russia, the resolution “[d]eplores the involvement of Belarus in this unlawful use of force against Ukraine, and calls upon it to abide by its international obligations.”
The population of countries voting for the UN resolution is 3,289,310,000. The population of countries voting against the resolution, abstaining, or not voting is 4,644,694,000. (Against: 202,209,000; abstaining: 4,140,546,000; not voting: 301,939,000.)
Here are the countries that did not vote for the resolution, with their GDP per capita rankings (the lower the number the higher the rank). 5 countries voted against the resolution: Russia 68, Belarus 97, North Korea 154, Eritrea 178, Syria 147. 35 countries abstained: Algeria 119, Angola 128, Armenia 115, Bangladesh 155, Bolivia 126, Burundi 197, Central African Republic 193, China 76, Congo 143, Cuba 82, El Salvador 121, Equatorial Guinea 73, India 150, Iran 105, Iraq 103, Kazakhstan 75, Kyrgyzstan 166, Laos 140, Madagascar 190, Mali 174, Mongolia 118, Mozambique 192, Namibia 102, Nicaragua 148, Pakistan 162, Senegal 160, South Africa 95, South Sudan 168, Sri Lanka 120, Sudan 171, Tajikistan 177, Tanzania 169, Uganda 187, Vietnam 138, Zimbabwe 144. 12 countries did not vote: Azerbaijan 110, Burkina Faso 184, Cameroon 158, Eswatini 117, Ethiopia 170, Guinea 175, Guinea-Bissau 179, Morocco 130, Togo 185, Turkmenistan 92, Uzbekistan 159, Venezuela 58.
The West Papua National Liberation Army-Free Papua Organisation (TPNPB-OPM) has rejected peace talks with the Indonesian government if it is only mediated by the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM).
It is also asking President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to be prepared to sit down with them at the negotiating table.
TPNPB-OPM spokesperson Sebby Sambom said that the OPM wants the peaceful dialogue or negotiations to be mediated by the United Nations because the armed conflict in Papua was already on an international scale.
“In principle we agree [that] if the negotiations are in accordance with UN mechanisms, but we are not interested in Indonesia’s methods,” said Sambom in a written statement.
Sambom said that they also do not want to hold the dialogue in Indonesia but want it to be held in a neutral country in accordance with UN mechanisms.
“The negotiations must be held in a neutral country, in accordance with UN mechanisms”, he said.
Sambom said President Widodo must be aware and must have the courage to sit down at the negotiating table with the TPNPB-OPM’s negotiating team.
He also reminded Widodo that the UN was an international institution which can act as a mediator in resolving armed conflicts.
Peaceful dialogue
“In the statement to Jakarta we are asking that Indonesian President Jokowi be aware and have the courage to sit at the negotiating table with the TPNPB-OPM’s negotiating team together with all the delegates from the organisations which are struggling [for independence],” he said.
Earlier, the Komnas HAM claimed it would initiate peace talks between the government and the OPM.
Komnas HAM had also claimed that the proposal for talks had been agreed to by the government, ranging from President Widodo, Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs Mahfud MD to the TNI (Indonesian military) and Polri (Indonesian police).
Komnas HAM, along with the Komnas HAM Papua representative office, began sounding out peaceful dialogue by meeting with a series of groups in Papua on March 16-23.
In the initial stage, Komnas HAM was endeavoring to hear and ask for the views of key parties on the issue, especially the OPM, both those within the country as well as those overseas. The other key people were religious, traditional community and intellectual figures.
I’m finishing up a “children’s book.” It’s longish. Kati the Coatimundi Finds Lorena. It’s about a precocious (actually, super smart) 12 year old, Lorena, who is in a wheelchair (paraplegic) who ends up finding out the family trip to Playa del Carmen back to San Antonio, Texas, brought with them a stowaway animal — a coati. Yep, the world of the 12 yeare old is full of reading, drawing, smarts. Yep, the girl and the animal can communicate with each other. Yep, lots of struggle with being “the other,” and, well, it’s a story that I hope even keeps grandma on the edge of her seat, or at least wanting to read more and more. She is a mestizo, too. We’ll see how that goes with the woke folk. I think I have a former veterinarian who is retired and now is working on illustrations, art. We shall see where this project heads.
Under this veil of creativity, of course, it’s difficult to just meld into pure art when the world around me is very very pregnant with stupidity, injustice, despotism, and Collective Stockholm Syndrome. Being in Oregon, being in a small rural area, being in the Pacific Northwest, being in USA, now that also bogs down spirits.
It’s really about how stupid and how inane and how blatantly violent this so-called Western Civilization has become. The duh factor never plays in the game, because (a) the digital warriors writing stuff like this very blog are not engaged with centers of power, influence or coalescing. Then (b) so many people are in their minds powerful because with the touch of a keyboard, they can mount an offensive on or against facts . . . or deeply regarded and thought out opinions. So, then (c) everyone has a right to their opinion . . . . that is how the American mind moves through the commercial dungeons their marketing and financial overlords end up putting them.
No pitchforks? How in anybody’s room temperature IQ does this make any sense? Demands for daily procurement of weapons for imbalanced, losing, and Nazified Ukraine?
It is about the food, stupid, okay, Carville?
So, before we move on, this is a communique from the G7 summit of the world’s biggest economies. And, no, EU and USA and Canada, not prepared for the Russian offensive’s affect on global food security. Alas, March 24, the G7 leaders agreed to use “all instruments and funding mechanisms” and involve the “relevant international institutions” to address food security, including support for the “continued Ukrainian production efforts.”
Ukraine has told the US that it urgently needs to be supplied with 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 500 Stinger air defense missiles per day, CNN reported on Thursday, citing a document presented to US lawmakers.
Western countries have been sending weapons and military gear to Kiev but President Volodymyr Zelensky says it is not enough to fend off the Russian attack that was launched a month ago.
CNN quoted sources as saying that Ukraine is now asking for “hundreds more” missiles than in previous requests sent to lawmakers. Addressing the leaders of NATO member states via video link on Thursday, Zelensky said he had not received a “clear answer” to the request of “one percent of all your tanks.” (source)
And, again, this is not blasphemy? Imagine, this “leader” and those “leaders,” smiling away during what is the 30 seconds to midnight doomsday clock. Smiling while Ukraine kills humanitarian refugees, while the biolabs sputtering on in deep freeze (we hope), and while the food prices are rising. Gas cards in California, and food coupons in France?
In a normal world, a million pundits would be all over this March 24 group/grope photo. Smiles, while we the people have to watch billions go to ZioLensky and trillions more shunted to these world leaders’ overlords?
As I alluded to in the title — the mighty warring UK, with the highrises in London, with those jet-setters and those Rothschild-loving royal rummies, it has food banks set up for the struggling, working class, and, alas, the gas is so pricey that people can’t boil spuds! Bring back the coal stoves!
These are leaders? The elites? The best of the best?
In an interview with the BBC Radio 4 Today program on Wednesday, Richard Walker said the “cost of living crisis is the single most important domestic issue we are facing as a country.” He cited reports from some food banks that users are “declining products such as potatoes and other root veg because they can’t afford to boil them.” Walker suggested that the UK government could implement measures to take the heat off retailers. He urged that the energy price cap on households could be extended to businesses, which he said would translate into some £100m in savings on consumers. He also called on authorities to postpone the introduction of the planned increase in national insurance, as well as some new environmental taxes. (source)
The operative words are “crumbling,” and, then, “malfescence,” and then, “hubris,” and then, “bilking.”
I just heard some inside stuff from someone working for a high tech company. I can’t get into too much about that, but here, these “engineers” in electronics or in data storage systems, they are, again, the height of Eicchmanns, but with the added twist of me-myself-and-I. Their expectations are $180,000 a year, with six weeks paid vacation, stocks, and, well, the eight-hour day.
I don’t think the average blog reader gets this — we are not talking about celebrities, or the executive team for Amazon or Dell or Raytheon. Yep, those bastards pull in millions a year, like those celebrities, the pro athletes and the thespians of note, or musicians. These are people who are demanding those entry pay rates who have no empathy for the world around them. Sure, they believe they have kids to feed, and they might rah-rah the Ukraine madness (that, of course, means, more diodes, batteries, computer chips, communication systems, et al for the monsters of war), but they laugh at the idea of real people with real poverty issues getting a cheque from Uncle Sam.
These are the everyday folk. I harken to the Scheer Report, tied to this fellow: It’s almost surreal and schizophrenic to valorize this fellow. Here, his bio brief, Ted Postol, a physicist and nuclear weapons specialist as well as MIT professor emeritus, joins Robert Scheer on this week’s edition of “Scheer Intelligence” to explain just how deadly the current brinkmanship between the U.S. and Russia really is. Having taught at Stanford University and Princeton prior to his time at MIT, Postol was also a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations and an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment. His nuclear weapons expertise led him to critique the U.S. government’s claims about missile defenses, for which he won the Garwin Prize from the Federation of American Scientists in 2016. (source)
I’ll go with Mr. Fish, as his illustration, even though it has words, speaks volumes —
It all begs the question, so, now this weapons of war fellow, this US Navy advisor, physcist, he is now having his coming to Allah-Jesus-Moses moment? He gets it so wrong, and, one slice of the Ray-gun play, well, he also misses the point that people brought up in the warring world, and those with elite college backgrounds, or military and elite college backgrounds, and those in think tanks, or on the government deep or shallow state payroll, those in the diplomatic corps, those in the Fortune 5000 companies, the lot of them, and, of course, the genuflect to the multimillionaires and billionaires, they are, quite frankly, in most cases, sociopaths.
But, here, a quote from his interview with Robert Scheer:
And unfortunately, most of what people believe—even people who are quite well educated—is just unchecked. You know, only if you’re a real expert—and these people were not, in spite of the fact they viewed themselves that way—do you understand something about the reality of what these weapons are about. And so basically, to use a term that gets overused a lot, I think the deep state in both Russia and the United States—more the United States than Russia, at least as far as I can see—the deep state in the United States mostly, basically undermined the ideas and objectives of Ronald Reagan. And of course Gorbachev was facing a similar problem in Russia.
So there’s these giant institutions inside both countries. They’re filled with people who, at one level, honestly believe these bad ideas, or think they are right; and because they think they are right, and they convince themselves that it’s in the best interest of the country, what’s really going on, it’s in their best interest as professionals but they mix up their best interest with the interest of the country. They, these people take steps to blunt the directives of the president, and basically the system just moves on without any real modification, independent of this remarkable and actually extraordinarily insightful judgment of these two men. (source)
We know Reagan’s pedigree, and we know the millions who have suffered and died under his watch. And his best and brightest in his crew, oh, they are still around. Imagine, that, Trump 2024. Will another war criminal and his cadre of criminals rise again to national prominence. He will be seeking counsel:
Then, alas, the flags at the post office, half mast, yet again and again and again — Today, that other war criminal:
Go to minute 59:00 here at the Grayzone, and watch this woman (Albright) call Serbs disgusting. Oh well, flags are flapping once again for another war criminal!
Sure, watch the entire two hours and forty-five minutes, and then try and wrap your heads around 1,000 missiles a day on the road to Ukraine, and no-boiling spuds in the UK. And it goes without saying, that any narrative, any deep study of, any recalled history of this entire bullshit affair in the minds of most Yankees and Rebels, they — Pepe Escobar, Scott Ritter, Abby Martin, et al — are the fringe. Get to this one from Escobar, today:
A quick neo-Nazi recap
By now only the brain dead across NATOstan – and there are hordes – are not aware of Maidan in 2014. Yet few know that it was then Ukrainian Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov, a former governor of Kharkov, who gave the green light for a 12,000 paramilitary outfit to materialize out of Sect 82 soccer hooligans who supported Dynamo Kiev. That was the birth of the Azov batallion, in May 2014, led by Andriy Biletsky, a.k.a. the White Fuhrer, and former leader of the neo-nazi gang Patriots of Ukraine.
Together with NATO stay-behind agent Dmitro Yarosh, Biletsky founded Pravy Sektor, financed by Ukrainian mafia godfather and Jewish billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky (later the benefactor of the meta-conversion of Zelensky from mediocre comedian to mediocre President.)
Pravy Sektor happened to be rabidly anti-EU – tell that to Ursula von der Lugen – and politically obsessed with linking Central Europe and the Baltics in a new, tawdry Intermarium. Crucially, Pravy Sektor and other nazi gangs were duly trained by NATO instructors.
Biletsky and Yarosh are of course disciples of notorious WWII-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, for whom pure Ukrainians are proto-Germanic or Scandinavian, and Slavs are untermenschen.
Azov ended up absorbing nearly all neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine and were dispatched to fight against Donbass – with their acolytes making more money than regular soldiers. Biletsky and another neo-Nazi leader, Oleh Petrenko, were elected to the Rada. The White Führer stood on his own. Petrenko decided to support then President Poroshenko. Soon the Azov battalion was incorporated as the Azov Regiment to the Ukrainian National Guard.
They went on a foreign mercenary recruiting drive – with people coming from Western Europe, Scandinavia and even South America.
That was strictly forbidden by the Minsk Agreements guaranteed by France and Germany (and now de facto defunct). Azov set up training camps for teenagers and soon reached 10,000 members. Erik “Blackwater” Prince, in 2020, struck a deal with the Ukrainian military that would enable his renamed outfit, Academi, to supervise Azov.
It was none other than sinister Maidan cookie distributor Vicky “F**k the EU” Nuland who suggested to Zelensky – both of them, by the way, Ukrainian Jews – to appoint avowed Nazi Yarosh as an adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The target: organize a blitzkrieg on Donbass and Crimea – the same blitzkrieg that SVR, Russian foreign intel, concluded would be launched on February 22, thus propelling the launch of Operation Z. (Source: “Make Nazism Great Again — The supreme target is regime change in Russia, Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.”)
In the minds of wimpy Trump and wimpy Biden, or in those minds of all those in the camp of Harris-Jill Biden disharmony, these white UkiNazi hombres above are “our tough hombres.” Send the ZioLensky bombs, bioweapons, bucks, big boys. Because America the Ungreat will be shaking up the world, big time.
So, I slither back to the writing, finishing up my story about a girl, a coati, Mexico, what it means to be disabled, and what it means to be an illegal animal stuck in America, Texas, of all places, where shoot to kill vermin orders are a daily morning conversation with the oatmeal and white toast and jam.
If only the world could be run by storytellers, dancers, art makers, dramatists, musicians everywhere. Here, a great little thing from Lila Downs — All about culture, art, dance, language, food, color. Forget the physicists, man. And the electrical and dam engineers.
If you do not understand Spanish, then, maybe hit the YouTube “settings” and get the English subtitles.. In either case, magnificent, purely magnificent!
The United Nations’ goal was to raise more than $4.2 billion for the people of war-torn Yemen by March 15. But when that deadline rolled around, just $1.3 billion had come in.
“I am deeply disappointed,” said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “The people of Yemen need the same level of support and solidarity that we’ve seen for the people of Ukraine. The crisis in Europe will dramatically impact Yemenis’ access to food and fuel, making an already dire situation even worse.”
With Yemen importing more than 35% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, disruption to wheat supplies will cause soaring increases in the price of food.
“Since the onset of the Ukraine conflict, we have seen the prices of food skyrocket by more than 150 percent,” said Basheer Al Selwi, a spokesperson for the International Commission of the Red Cross in Yemen. “Millions of Yemeni families don’t know how to get their next meal.”
The ghastly blockade and bombardment of Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is now entering its eighth year. The United Nations estimated last fall that the Yemen death toll would top 377,000 people by the end of 2021.
The United States continues to supply spare parts for Saudi/UAE coalition war planes, along with maintenance and a steady flow of armaments. Without this support, the Saudis couldn’t continue their murderous aerial attacks.
Yet tragically, instead of condemning atrocities committed by the Saudi/UAE invasion, bombing and blockade of Yemen, the United States is cozying up to the leaders of these countries. As sanctions against Russia disrupt global oil sales, the United States is entering talks to become increasingly reliant on Saudi and UAE oil production. And Saudi Arabia and the UAE don’t want to increase their oil production without a U.S. agreement to help them increase their attacks against Yemen.
Human rights groups have decried the Saudi/UAE-led coalition for bombing roadways, fisheries, sewage and sanitation facilities, weddings, funerals and even a children’s school bus. In a recent attack, the Saudis killed sixty African migrants held in a detention center in Saada.
The Saudi blockade of Yemen has choked off essential imports needed for daily life, forcing the Yemeni people to depend on relief groups for survival.
There is another way. U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Peter De Fazio of Oregon, both Democrats, are now seeking cosponsors for the Yemen War Powers Resolution. It demands that Congress cut military support for the Saudi/UAE-led coalition’s war against Yemen.
On March 12, Saudi Arabia executed 81 people, including seven Yemenis — two of them prisoners of war and five of them accused of criticizing the Saudi war against Yemen.
Just two days after the mass execution, the Gulf Corporation Council, including many of the coalition partners attacking Yemen, announced Saudi willingness to host peace talks in their own capital city of Riyadh, requiring Yemen’s Ansar Allah leaders (informally known as Houthis) to risk execution by Saudi Arabia in order to discuss the war.
The Saudis have long insisted on a deeply flawed U.N. resolution which calls on the Houthi fighters to disarm but never even mentions the U.S. backed Saudi/UAE coalition as being among the warring parties. The Houthis say they will come to the negotiating table but cannot rely on the Saudis as mediators. This seems reasonable, given Saudi Arabia’s vengeful treatment of Yemenis.
The people of the United States have the right to insist that U.S. foreign policy be predicated on respect for human rights, equitable sharing of resources and an earnest commitment to end all wars. We should urge Congress to use the leverage it has for preventing continued aerial bombardment of Yemen and sponsor Jayapal’s and De Fazio’s forthcoming resolution.
We can also summon the humility and courage to acknowledge U.S. attacks against Yemeni civilians, make reparations and repair the dreadful systems undergirding our unbridled militarism.
