Tag Archives: United Nations

Israel should stop settlements, Palestinians must stop violence; Quartet report

Palestinian schoolgirls walk with a donkey as the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim is seen in the background

By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Israel should stop building settlements, denying Palestinian development and designating land for exclusive Israeli use that Palestinians seek for a future state, the Middle East peace “Quartet” recommended on Friday in a an eagerly awaited report.

The report by the Quartet entities sponsoring the stalled peace process – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – said the Israeli policy “is steadily eroding the viability of the two-state solution.”

“This raises legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions, which are compounded by the statements of some Israeli ministers that there should never be a Palestinian state,” according to the report.

The day before Israeli elections in March 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would never be a Palestinian state on his watch, only to reverse himself days later and recommit to the objective of a two-state solution.

Diplomatic sources said the report carries significant political weight as it has the backing of close Israeli ally the United States, which has struggled to revive the peace talks amid tensions between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Relations between the rightist Israeli leader and the Democratic president have yet to recover from their feud over last year’s U.S.-led international nuclear deal with Israel’s foe Iran.

The Quartet report said Israel had taken for its exclusive use some 70 percent of Area C, which makes up 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and includes the majority of agricultural lands, natural resources and land reserves.

“The transfer of greater powers and responsibilities to Palestinian civil authority in Area C, contemplated by commitments in prior agreements, has effectively been stopped and in some ways reversed and should be resumed to advance the two state solution and prevent a one state reality from taking hold,” the report said.

PALESTINIAN LEADERS SHOULD CONDEMN TERRORISM

The report said at least 570,000 Israelis are living in the settlements, which most countries deem illegal.

“Israel should cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion, designating land for exclusive Israeli use and denying Palestinian development,” the report recommends.

It said only one permit for Palestinian housing construction in Area C was reportedly approved in 2014, while there did not appear to have been any approved in 2015.

The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem – areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. The last round of peace talks broke down in April 2014 and Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged in recent months.

On Friday, a Palestinian woman tried to knife an Israeli police trooper in the West Bank city of Hebron and was shot dead, police said. Since October, Palestinian street attacks that have killed 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans. Israel has killed at least 201 Palestinians, 136 of whom it said were assailants. Others were killed during clashes and protests.

“Regrettably … Palestinian leaders have not consistently and clearly condemned specific terrorist attacks,” the report said.

“The Palestinian Authority should act decisively and take all steps within its capacity to cease incitement to violence and strengthen ongoing efforts to combat terrorism, including by clearly condemning all acts of terrorism,” the Quartet report said.

The Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas is based in the West Bank, while Islamist group Hamas has been in control of Gaza since 2007. The Quartet said Gaza and the West Bank “should be reunified under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian authority.”

U.N. Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov briefed the U.N. Security Council on Thursday on the Quartet report and said it would be up to the council and the international community to use the report to decide the way forward.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Bill Trott)

Up to 4.8 million South Sudanese face severe food shortage

By Denis Dumo

JUBA (Reuters) – Up to 4.8 million people in South Sudan face severe food shortages in coming months, the highest level since a conflict erupted more than two years ago, U.N. agencies said on Wednesday.

Clashes have continued to flare in South Sudan even though warring factions signed a peace deal in August last year to end the conflict that erupted in December 2013.

But the deal has only been implemented slowly, leaving the country’s economic crisis to deepen. Rains at this time of year add to the challenge of supplying those in need by making many roads impassable. Most roads in the area are just dirt tracks.

“The deteriorating situation coincides with an unusually long and harsh annual lean season, when families have depleted their food stocks and new harvests are not expected until August. The level of food insecurity this year is unprecedented,” the U.N. agencies said in a joint statement.

The U.N. World Food Programme, one of three agencies behind the statement, said it expected to assist 3.3 million people this year with emergency food assistance, life-saving nutrition support and other aid.

“We are very worried to see that food insecurity is spreading beyond conflict areas as rising prices, impassable roads and dysfunctional markets are preventing many families, even those in towns and cities, from accessing food,” said Serge Tissot, representing the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation.

The conflict in South Sudan, which pitted President Salva Kiir against his former deputy Riek Machar, killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 2 million from their homes, with many fleeing to neighboring countries.

Machar returned to Juba in April to take up the post of first vice president, similar to the position he had left.

The U.N. agencies said in the last few months 100,000 people had fled South Sudan to Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. It said this figure would rise to 150,000 by the end of June.

South Sudan’s economy, already in a dire state before the fighting erupted, has faced further pressure. Plunging oil pries have hit the biggest source of government revenues, while conflict has reduced production sharply.

Inflation stood at 295 percent year-on-year in May, up from 266.4 percent a month earlier, driven higher largely by food and drink prices, figures from the statistics office showed.

(Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Edmund Blair and Gareth Jones)

U.N. Security Council condemns North Korea missile launches

part of a North Korean missile washed up on Japanese beach

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council on Thursday condemned North Korea’s most recent ballistic missile launches as a grave violation of an international ban and called on the 193 U.N. member states to enforce toughened sanctions on the Asian state.

North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, launched what appeared to be an intermediate-range missile on Wednesday to a high altitude in the direction of Japan before it plunged into the sea about two hours after a similar test failed.

“The members of the Security Council deplore all DPRK ballistic missile activities noting that such activities contribute to the DPRK’s development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and increase tension,” the 15-member body said.

“The members of the Security Council further regretted that the DPRK is diverting resources to the pursuit of ballistic missiles while DPRK citizens have great unmet needs,” it said.

After supervising the missile launches, North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said his country now has the capability to attack U.S. interests in the Pacific, official media reported.

The U.N. Security Council met on Wednesday evening to discuss the missile launches. The statement issued on Thursday is almost identical to a condemnation by the council on June 1 over several previous ballistic missile tests by Pyongyang.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power signaled that the United States would seek “to identify individual, entities who may be responsible for this repeated series of tests” and could be sanctioned by the Security Council.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006. In March, the Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket in February.

Power said that since the new sanctions were imposed in March North Korea had carried out 10 ballistic missile tests.

“As DPRK continues to test these delivery systems they make progress and they learn things and thus it is extremely important that we come together and we address any hidden gaps there may be in the enforcement” of the March resolution, Power said on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

U.N. to clarify Syria talks outlook on June 29

Damaged Buildings in Old Aleppo

GENEVA (Reuters) – The prospects for a new round of Syria peace talks should be clearer after the U.N. Security Council discusses options on June 29, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters on Thursday.

De Mistura said he had accompanied U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week to St Petersburg, where they had “quite a comprehensive and long meeting” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that mostly focused on Syria.

The last round of talks between the Syrian government and opposition broke up at the end of April as government forces, backed by Russia, escalated their assault on rebel-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo.

A “cessation of hostilities” that had brought peace to much of Syria for two months largely broke down, and the war has resumed in many areas.

De Mistura told reporters he was aiming for a July date for a new round of talks to meet an August deadline for a deal, but first he wanted the United States and Russia to make a “critical mass” of progress on a deal for political transition in Syria.

Despite the suspension of negotiations on a political transition – involving, crucially, the future of President Bashar al-Assad – officials have continued “technical” talks on some of the questions that need to be solved in any political deal.

De Mistura’s team has held technical talks in Moscow and Cairo and plans more in Riyadh and Damascus, and he said so far they had been very useful.

“They are under the radar, calm and quiet and discreet but they have been providing us with quite a lot of substantive points that can be, will be useful, when the (next round of) intra-Syrian talks take place,” he said.

De Mistura’s humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said the U.N. was still asking the government for permission to get into two besieged zones, Arbin and Zamalka in Rural Damascus. He hoped to reach the towns next week.

Egeland also warned that four towns covered by a single local peace deal – Zabadani, Foua, Kefraya and Madaya – had not had food deliveries since April. The humanitarian situation was in danger of sliding back to conditions at the start of the year, when people in Madaya were starving to death.

The agreement to get supplies into another besieged zone, the al-Waer suburb of Homs, was also “going badly”, he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Andrew Roche)

Heroin use at 20-year high in U.S. drug ‘epidemic’, U.N. says

Heroin Pile

By Shadia Nasralla

VIENNA (Reuters) – A heroin “epidemic” is gripping the United States, where cheap supply has helped push the number of users to a 20-year high, increasing drug-related deaths, the United Nations said on Thursday.

According to the U.N.’s World Drug Report 2016, the number of heroin users in the United States reached around one million in 2014, almost three times as many as in 2003. Heroin-related deaths there have increased five-fold since 2000.

“There is really a huge epidemic (of) heroin in the U.S.,” said Angela Me, the chief researcher for the report which was released on Thursday.

“It is the highest definitely in the last 20 years,” Me said, adding that the trend was continuing.

The rise could be linked to U.S. legislation introduced in recent years which makes it harder to abuse prescription opioids such as oxicodone, a powerful painkiller that can have similar effects to heroin, Me said.

The law meant the texture of the pills was changed to make it more difficult to crush them and inject them into the blood stream, Me said.

“This has caused a partial shift from the misuse of these prescription opioids to heroin.”

Another reason for the increase in the use of heroin, which in the United States mainly comes from Mexico and Colombia, is greater supply that has depressed prices in recent years, Me said.

The United States has also seen a spike in deaths related to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more so than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fentanyl has been named as the drug that killed pop singer Prince this year.

At least 207,000 deaths globally were drug-related in 2014, with heroin use and overdose-related deaths increasing sharply also over the last two years, according to the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“Heroin continues to be the drug that kills the most people and this resurgence must be addressed urgently,” Yury Fedotov, the executive director of the UNODC, said.

U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year asked Congress for $1.1 billion in new funding over two years to expand treatment for users of heroin and prescription painkillers.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

drcolbert.monthly

North Korea leader says missile launch shows ability to attack U.S. in Pacific

Kim Jon Un at a test launch

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said after supervising the test launch of an intermediate-range missile that the country now has the capability to attack U.S. interests in the Pacific, official media reported on Thursday.

South Korean and U.S. military officials have said the North launched what appeared to be two intermediate-range missiles dubbed Musudan on Wednesday. The first of the two was considered a failure.

The second reached a high altitude in the direction of Japan before plunging into the sea about 400 km (250 miles) away, they said.

The test-fire was successful without putting the security of neighboring countries at risk, the North’s KCNA news agency said, referring to the missile as a “Hwasong-10.” Hwasong is Korean for Mars.

“We have the sure capability to attack in an overall and practical way the Americans in the Pacific operation theater,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

The missile, which is fired from mobile launchers, has a design range of more than 3,000 km (1,860 miles), meaning all of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam are potentially within reach.

A spokesman for South Korea’s military, Jeon Ha-gyu, said the second launch demonstrated “technical progress in terms of its engine capacity”. However, Jeon said it would not be meaningful to discuss whether it was a success because it was not a normal flight.

Japan and South Korea said the missile flew to a height of 1,000 km (620 miles). Experts said it appeared North Korea had deliberately raised the angle of the launch to avoid hitting any territory of Japan.

South Korea and the United States condemned the launch as an unacceptable violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Japan’s Defence Minister Gen Nakatani said the launch was an indication that North Korea’s threat to Japan was intensifying.

The United Nations Security Council, which in March imposed new sanctions on the North following its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February, met at the request of the United States and Japan.

“All expressed a strong concern as well as their opposition (to) these launches,” Alexis Lamek, Deputy U.N. Ambassador of France, which holds the Security Council presidency for June, told reporters. He said he hoped a statement condemning the move could be agreed on soon.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launches as a “brazen and irresponsible act”.

North Korea had failed in at least five previous attempts to launch the intermediate-range missiles.

The North is believed to have up to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed around 2007, although the North had never attempted to test-fire them until this year.

North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy Japan, South Korea and the United States, South Korea’s main ally.

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in Seoul, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and David Brunnstrom and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Paul Tait)

drcolbert.monthly

U.N. council to meet on North Korea’s missile launches

North Korean leader watching missile test

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council will meet on Wednesday to discuss North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launches, at the request of the United States and Japan, diplomats said.

French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, president of the 15-member council for June, said the missile launches were an “unacceptable violation” of a U.N. ban. A senior U.N. official will brief the council, diplomats said.

“We want a quick and firm reaction of the Security Council on this,” said Delattre. “We hope that … we’ll have a press statement on this.”

North Korea launched what appeared to be an intermediate-range missile on Wednesday to a high altitude in the direction of Japan before it plunged into the sea, military officials said, a technological advance for the isolated state.

The launch came about two hours after a similar test failed, South Korea’s military said, and covered 400 km (250 miles), more than halfway towards the southwest coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

The tests are the latest in a string of demonstrations of military might that began in January with North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and included the launch of a long-range rocket in February.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006. In March, the Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country.

(Writing by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Iraqi camps overwhelmed as residents flee Falluja fighting

Refugee camp in Iraq

By Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi government-run camps struggled on Sunday to shelter people fleeing Falluja, as the military battled Islamic State militants in the city’s northern districts.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the jihadists on Friday after troops reached the city center, following a four-week U.S.-backed assault.

But shooting, suicide bombs and mortar attacks continue.

More than 82,000 civilians have evacuated Falluja, an hour’s drive west of Baghdad, since the campaign began and up to 25,000 more are likely on the move, the United Nations said.

Yet camps are already overflowing with escapees who trekked several kilometers (miles) past Islamic State snipers and minefields in sweltering heat to find there was not even shade.

“People have run and walked for days. They left Falluja with nothing,” said Lise Grande, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. “They have nothing and they need everything.”

The exodus, which is likely to be many times larger if an assault on the northern Islamic State stronghold of Mosul goes ahead as planned later this year, has taken the government and humanitarian groups off guard.

With attention focused for months on Mosul, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in May that the army would prioritize Falluja, the first Iraqi city seized by the militants in early 2014.

He ordered measures on Saturday to help escapees and 10 new camps will soon go up, but the government does not even have a handle on the number of displaced people, many of whom are stranded out in the open or packed several families to a tent.

One site hosting around 1,800 people has only one latrine, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“We implore the Iraqi government to take charge of this humanitarian disaster unfolding on our watch,” the aid group’s country director Nasr Muflahi said.

“WE JUST WANT OUR MEN”

Iraq’s cash-strapped government has struggled to meet basic needs for more than 3.4 million people across Iraq displaced by conflict, appealing for international funding and relying on local religious networks for support.

Yet unlike other battles, where many civilians sought refuge in nearby cities or the capital, people fleeing Falluja have been barred from entering Baghdad, just 60 km (40 miles) away, and aid officials note a lack of community mobilization.

Many Iraqis consider Falluja an irredeemable bulwark of Sunni Muslim militancy and regard anyone still there when the assault began as an Islamic State supporter. A bastion of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion, it was seen as a launchpad for bombings in Baghdad.

The participation of Shi’ite militias in the battle alongside the army raised fears of sectarian killings, and the authorities have made arrests related to allegations that militiamen executed dozens of fleeing Sunni men.

Formal government forces are screening men to prevent Islamic State militants from disguising themselves as civilians to slip out of Falluja. Thousands have been freed and scores referred to the courts, but many others remain unaccounted for, security sources told Reuters.

At a camp in Amiriyat Falluja on Thursday, Fatima Khalifa said she had not heard from her husband and their 19-year-old son since they were taken from a nearby town two weeks earlier.

“We don’t know where they are or where they were taken,” she said. “We don’t want rice or cooking oil, we just want our men.”

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed in Amiriyat Falluja; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Islamic State committing genocide against Yazidis: U.N.

Suspected Yazidi mass grave

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Islamic State is committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the religious community of 400,000 people through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes, United Nations investigators said on Thursday.

Their report, based on interviews with dozens of survivors, said that the Islamist militants had been systematically rounding up Yazidis in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, seeking to “erase their identity” in a campaign that met the definition of the crime as defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

“The genocide of the Yazidis is ongoing,” it said.

The 40-page report, entitled “They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes against the Yazidis”, sets out a legal analysis of Islamic State intent and conduct aimed at wiping out the Kurdish-speaking group, whom the Sunni Muslim Arab militants view as infidels and “devil-worshippers”.

The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions.

“The finding of genocide must trigger much more assertive action at the political level, including at the (U.N.) Security Council,” Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the commission of inquiry, told a news briefing.

Commission member Vitit Muntarbhorn said it had “detailed information on places, violations and names of the perpetrators”, and had begun sharing information with some national authorities seeking to prosecute foreign fighters.

The four independent commissioners urged major powers to rescue at least 3,200 women and children still held by Islamic State (IS or ISIS) and to refer the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution.

“ROAD MAP FOR PROSECUTION”

“ISIS made no secret of its intent to destroy the Yazidis of Sinjar, and that is one of the elements that allowed us to conclude their actions amount to genocide,” said another investigator, Carla del Ponte.

“Of course, we regard that as a road map for prosecution, for future prosecution. I hope that the Security Council will do it because it is time now to start to obtain justice for the victims,” added del Ponte, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor.

Islamic State, which has proclaimed a theocratic caliphate – based on a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam – in areas of Iraq and Syria under its control, systematically killed, captured or enslaved thousands of Yazidis when it overran the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014.

At least 30 mass graves have been uncovered, the report said, calling for further investigations.

Islamic State has tried to erase the Yazidis’ identity by forcing men to choose between conversion to Islam and death, raping girls as young as nine, selling women at slave markets, and drafting boys to fight, the U.N. report said.

Yazidi women are treated as “chattel” at slave markets in Raqqa, Homs and other locations, and some are sold back to their families for $10,000 to $40,000 after captivity and multiple rapes, according to the report.

Militants have begun holding “online slave auctions”, using the encrypted application Telegraph to circulate photos of captured Yazidi women and girls, “with details of their age, marital status, current location and price”,” it said.

“No other religious group present in ISIS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq has been subjected to the destruction that the Yazidis have suffered,” the report added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.N. Human Rights Chief urges alternatives for migrants

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Al Hussein arrives for the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. human rights chief on Monday decried a “worrying rise” in detentions of migrants in Greece and Italy and urged authorities to find alternatives to confining children while asylum requests are processed.

More than one million migrants, many fleeing Syria’s war, have arrived in Europe through Greece since last year. More than 150,000 have come in 2016 so far – 38 percent of them children, according to United Nations refugee agency data. Italy has also set up mandatory detention centers.

“Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison cells or centers ringed with barbed wire. Detention is never in the best interests of the child – which must take primacy over immigration objectives,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“Alternatives to the detention of children must be developed,” he told the start of a three-week council session.

Zeid said it was possible for Europe to create “well-functioning migration governance systems”, with fair assessment of individual requests for international protection while removing what he called “hysteria and panic from the equation”.

Zeid deplored anti-migrant rhetoric “spanning the length and breadth of the European continent … This fosters a climate of divisiveness, xenophobia and even – as in Bulgaria – vigilante violence”.

In April, Bulgarian police arrested a local man who had posted video on social media showing how he tied up three migrants near the Turkish border.

The migrant influx has drawn a rising public backlash, in part because of strains it has imposed on housing and social services. Concerns have also been raised in some EU countries about their ability to integrate many mostly Muslim migrants.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles/Mark Heinrich)