See InnerCityPress.com
Inner City Press put questions to
Venezuela's
Ambassador Rafael Ramirez on
Feb 1, 2016, as
UNSC President
Matthew Lee, Inner City Press. On behalf of the
Free UN
Coalition for
Access, we are hoping you will do question and answer stakeouts after
Security Council consultations. On the methods of work on the debate on the 11th – on
Eritrea – you’re the chair of that committee. They say they should not be under sanctions because they’re not doing what they’re accused of doing. Now, in your national capacity, or as chair, what do you think of their argument?
In
Yemen – there’s a lot of talks about the
Syrian peace talks. On Yemen we hear a lot less. What’s your understanding of the status of the envoy,
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, bringing the parties together? Do you think the report on possible war crimes by the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes will be taken up at any
point by the
Council? And do you think that the US, UK, others that are assisting that coalition – is there enough oversight of the civilian harm that’s taking place in the air campaign on Yemen?
Amb
Ramirez:
Thank you. Before anything else, I hope as president of the UNSC to interact with the press, because each time we come out of a meeting of the Security Council , there’s a healthy practice, we’ve always done it that way so we’ll do what’s possible without taking too much time.
On Yemen, in my capacity as president of the SC I can say that all Security Council members are closely following the events which have been escalating and have been affecting the civilian population, which finds itself in an awful situation, in the bombing campaign and the action on the ground of the two parties to the conflict.
It’s our hope that Mr.
Ahmed, when he gives the briefing, will give a better picture of what’s happening there. As president of the Security Council I can’t say in advance what the positions will be of the various members of the Security Council. This will be in closed consultations. But I can say that there is a growing concern on this question, and what you say, that the issue of
Syria is being dealt with in a constant basis and the issue of Yemen not, is not the case with Yemen, this is something that we have raised. There is a lack of balance in terms of the way the UNSC deals with some issues.
Sometimes some issues are pushed forward for political notice, and therefore they’re high on the agenda, they’re always discussed, and then there are others which are on the back burner, which are reserved.
So today we propose that in the Yemen briefing the consultations on Yemen should be in the form of a briefing, so that we can hear about the situation from the
SESG, and that everybody can hear, and we can get a picture of the situation over there, what’s the actual situation, and
Mr. O’Brien, we’re also asking that he should take part in that briefing, so on behalf of
OCHA he would be able to explain what the situation is, what is the humanitarian situation in Yemen.
Now, with regard to Eritrea, I can’t put forward any national position on this, but it is specifically one of the points we wish to introduce on the debate on how we work. The sanctions debates and committees, we as chair of the
Somalia Eritrea committee and also the
Darfur committee, we’ve promoted the idea that the countries under sanctions should speak to the
UNSC members and be heard, and that including the countries of the region, they should have an opportunity to say how the sanctions are affecting individual countries and the region as a whole. Eritrea is one of the most relevant examples in terms of these sanctions. We raised in the UNSC the idea that there should be a political goal, the sanctions committee should have a political goal, and they should move and evolve as the situation changes
. In the horn of
Africa the situation is changing on an accelerating basis. Somalia, Eritrea, they are affected by the advance of terrorist groups, al
Shabaab and the war in Yemen, al Qaeda, which are destabilizing factors throughout the region. So they cannot, the sanctions committees cannot remain on the same track. They must evolve in line with the changing political situation in the region. Of course, we, and
I believe nobody would like to see their own country under sanctions, or see any country under sanctions. The sanctions committees are more definitive in nature than any tribunal on the planet. There are sanctions imposed and nobody can do anything about it. But we need to discuss this. We need to see if there’s any meaning to it, how we can help to ensure the peaceful solution of conflicts. Thank you for your question.
We'll cover these meetings - though on
January 29, the UN Spokesman threw
ICP out of the UN
Press Briefing Room then on
February 1 made this threat, here:
http://www.innercitypress.com/unca20unreformed020116
.html
- published: 02 Feb 2016
- views: 8888