Category: Politics

The U.N. General Assembly will vote this week on a resolution underscoring the urgency to find a lasting peace in Ukraine, one year after Moscow invaded its neighbor.

The text, drafted by Ukraine in consultation with allies and discussed with interested countries, will be put to a vote at the end of a special emergency session of the assembly that will start Wednesday afternoon and run into Thursday.

It underscores the urgency to find “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in line with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations” and calls on United Nations members and international organizations to support that effort.

“I think it is striking that it contains more language about the need for peace than some of the previous resolutions,” International Crisis Group’s U.N. Director Richard Gowan told VOA. “I think that is actually really reflecting a sort of an emerging push from countries in the global south, like Brazil and South Africa, which are arguing that there has to be some sort of peace effort.”

The resolution also demands a cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Russia’s military forces from Ukrainian territory “within its internationally recognized borders,” in other words, including territories Russia claims to have annexed.

A European diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations said the choice of words — “cessation of hostilities” rather than a “cease-fire” — was deliberate.

“We feel that the term is one that is actually stronger,” the diplomat said. “A cease-fire could be a lull in the hostilities that allows one side to reorganize itself and ready itself for another onslaught.”

A cessation of hostilities refers to a more permanent arrangement that goes beyond just silencing the guns, which the diplomat said could lay the groundwork for an eventual diplomatic solution.

More than 60 countries have signed on to co-sponsor the resolution, which is not legally binding but carries the moral weight of the international community. Ukraine and its allies hope to get an overwhelming majority of the 193-member states’ votes. (Only 191 member states will be eligible to vote. Lebanon and Venezuela are in deep arrears on their dues to the organization and have temporarily lost their right to vote).

Resolutions over the past year condemning Russia’s invasion, and later its attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine, received strong support with 141 and 143 countries, respectively, condemning and rejecting these moves, and only a handful supporting Moscow. Diplomats say they hope to do as well with this text, signaling consistent international support for Kyiv.

But eventually getting Moscow to talk peace will be difficult.

Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called a meeting in the U.N. Security Council on Friday to discuss “lessons learned” from the Minsk agreements, which were intended to de-escalate tensions between the neighbors eight years ago, but obviously failed.

He said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to power on promises of peace and dialogue, but instead “created a neo-Nazi nationalist beehive at our borders.”

Nebenzia expressed no confidence in the U.N. secretary-general, who the General Assembly resolution expresses “strong support” for promoting an end to the conflict, accusing him of taking an “ostrich position” — echoing Western criticism of Moscow and never criticizing Kyiv.

“Today, many are saying that the U.N. must be an intermediary between Russia and Ukraine,” Nebenzia told the council. “Taking into account what I just said, do you think we can trust such mediation? What are the guarantees that the secretariat will behave differently this time?”

Crisis Group’s Gowan said Russia hopes some large, non-Western countries will call for talks without preconditions — a move that would favor Moscow.

“What the Russians want is for it to look like Ukraine is the country that is blocking these talks, even though there is not really much evidence that Moscow wants to talk in good faith,” Gowan said. “But again, I think the way the resolution has been designed is to sort of show that Ukraine is not ruling out peace talks, even if they are not very likely to come any time soon.”

Diplomats say it is important that the resolution conveys the cost of the war beyond Ukraine and includes language on energy and food security. Next month, the Black Sea Grain Initiative is due for renewal, something the developing world is eager to see continue.

The European diplomat said the resolution sets out “the principles and framework that will inspire our action in the coming months.”

The draft resolution includes language on the need for accountability for war crimes. Ukraine is considering whether to pursue a separate General Assembly resolution later this year on the setting up of a special international tribunal to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for its invasion — the crime of aggression.

The International Criminal Court at The Hague is already investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on Ukrainian territory since Russia’s invasion. The U.N. Human Rights Council also created a commission of inquiry that has been mandated to investigate all human rights violations committed in the context of Russia’s invasion. Their second report is due in the coming months.

Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s foreign minister is expected to open a session focused on the human rights situation of prisoners of war and the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia.

On Friday, the actual one-year mark of Russia’s all-out invasion, several foreign ministers are expected to attend a Security Council meeting at which U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will hold a briefing.

The deadly conflict has displaced more than 6.5 million Ukrainians inside the country, sent nearly 8 million others to seek safety in other countries and left almost 18 million Ukrainians in need of humanitarian assistance.

Source: Voice of America

South Africa hosted the world’s biggest mining investment conference this week, with industry experts in attendance saying the U.S. and China are in a race for the critical minerals — such as cobalt and lithium — that will likely power the projected transition to clean energy.

African countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo have some of the largest deposits of these resources, but China currently dominates the supply chain as well as their refinement and the U.S. wants to reduce its reliance on the Asian giant.

In his remarks at the mining conference in Cape Town this week, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernandez hinted at this saying, “I don’t need to remind you of what happens when the supply chain breaks down or when we depend on a single supplier. We lived it during the COVID pandemic, and this is a vulnerability that we need to solve together.”

Fernandez — who did not mention China by name — noted that electric vehicles are expected to command half the global market by 2030 and that demand for lithium is expected to increase 42-fold by 2040. China is responsible for some 80 percent of the world’s lithium refining.

Tony Carroll, the director of Acorus Capital and an international adviser to the conference known as the Africa Mining Indaba, told VOA the session came at a critical time for the West.

The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt. The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since,” he said.

Rare earth minerals are essential for electric vehicle production and expanding the production of green technologies. However, their extraction can come at an environmental or social cost to African countries that have big deposits.

Fernandez echoed remarks made by Pope Francis on his recent trip to Congo denouncing “economic colonialism” in Africa, which could be seen as a swipe at Beijing. He also assured African countries the United States would respect “environmental, social, and governance standards.”

“While late to the game, the U.S. has awakened with more ambition in mining and processing and building alliances with like-minded partners,” said Carroll, who is also an adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

A first-time sponsor of the Mining Indaba this year was Chinese company Zijin, one of the largest mining groups in the world with interests in lithium, copper and other metals.

Asked for comment by VOA on whether China is now in a race for rare earth metals with the U.S., as well as other questions about Chinese mining interests in Africa, the PR manager of South Africa Zijin Platinum said the CEO was unable to respond before the deadline for this article.

African governments are now trying to get the best deals for their people. Namibia’s Mines Minister Tom Alweendo told Reuters at the Cape Town conference that his country is insisting that all lithium mined in Namibia has to be processed in the country.

Similarly, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, who was one of the key speakers at the mining conference, has been demanding better terms from China for several years. China sources the majority of its cobalt from DRC, which produces some 70 percent of the world’s total.

Despite its vast mineral resources, Congo is one of the world’s least developed countries and Tshisekedi said in January it hadn’t benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China signed by his predecessor.

“The Chinese, they’ve made a lot of money and made a lot of profit from this contract,” Tshisekedi told Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The Democratic Republic of Congo has derived no benefit from it. There’s nothing tangible, no positive impact, I’d say, for our population.”

“Now our need is simply to re-balance things in a way that it becomes win-win,” he added.

There are signs Tshisekedi could be moving toward the West.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden organized the Minerals Security Partnership last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union. At its first meeting last year, the DRC was one of the non-partner nations in attendance.

Then at Biden’s U.S.-Africa Summit in December, the DRC and Zambia inked a deal with the U.S. to jointly develop the supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.

“Dependency on China for rare earths is viewed with alarm,” said Jay Truesdale, CEO of the risk advisory firm Veracity Worldwide, and a speaker at the Indaba. “Given that Beijing has the means to severely restrict access to these minerals, in the event of a geopolitical crisis it could choose to use its market dominance to cripple non-Chinese manufacturers in such sectors as electronics, automotive manufacturing, aerospace, and renewable energy.”

Besides the rising tensions between China and the West in Africa, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will also force mining companies to make hard decisions, Truesdale said.

“The war in Ukraine has placed greater scrutiny on Russian mining activities across the continent. Russia benefits from a lack of transparency and weak governance where its mining companies operate. African governments are now more closely observing how Moscow trades promises of greater security for deeper access to mineral resources and the state capture that can result,” he told VOA.

Source: Voice of America

After a European Union summit ending February 10 that offered strong support for Ukraine — and calls for stronger measures against illegal migration — the bloc is now challenged to act on its rhetoric. But on both Ukraine and migration, European member states are not marching in complete lockstep.

EU membership, fighter jets and fences counted among the top three buzzwords of a summit, featuring the standing-ovation presence of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and talks about curbing a sharp influx of so-called “irregular migrants” from places like Africa.

Zelenskyy got a rousing welcome from European members of parliament and leaders, as he reiterated calls for more weapons and for fast-tracking his country’s EU membership application.

Ukraine’s leader also called for more EU sanctions against Russia — which European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said will shortly become reality.

“First, we will impose sanctions on a number of political and military leaders,” she said. “But also, dear Volodymyr, we listened very carefully to your messages when we visited you last week in Kyiv – we will target [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s propagandists, because their lies are poisoning the public space in Russia and abroad.”

Despite the show of unity, there does not appear more movement on speeding up Ukraine’s accession into the bloc. And while Zelenskyy said some EU countries appeared receptive to sending fighter jets, it is unclear how much support that proposal has within the bloc, with many nations fearing an escalation in the Ukraine conflict.

Speaking to reporters, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin appeared open to the idea.

When asked if she would rule out fighter jets, Marin responded, “I don’t want to rule out anything in this stage.”

Europe’s traditional heavyweights — France and Germany — were less receptive. French President Emmanuel Macron said he does not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine, but that it does not correspond to today’s needs.

In terms of overall weapons deliveries, timing is critical, said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior analyst at the German Marshall Fund policy institute.

“It is clear, or appears to be clear, that Russian government is determined to push an offensive around the one-year anniversary of the invasion — and hopefully from their point of view before lots of the new western heavy weaponry arrives. And of course, Ukraine has previously said it is their intention to launch their own counter-offensive,” Kirkegaard said.

EU divisions were also apparent on another hot-button issue: migration. European border agency Frontex says last year’s number of so-called irregular migrant crossings into the bloc — 330,000 — was the highest since its 2016 migrant crisis. Many more were asylum-seekers, although EU officials suggest many of those do not merit refugee status.

While the bloc is moving toward tougher policies to curb migration, countries are divided over methods to do it, and whether to use EU funds to build fences — a concept that was largely dismissed not so long ago.

Source: Voice of America

BRUSSELS— European Union (EU) leaders have agreed on tougher rules aimed at making it easier to expel asylum-seekers whose refugee applications are denied, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said.

The measures are a response to increasing European concern over rising irregular immigration that has become a hot-button issue in several member countries.

That problem is “a European challenge that requires a European response,” EU leaders said in a final document at the end of a 16-hour summit looking at that and other topics.

The low numbers of failed asylum-seekers being returned to their home countries is a central preoccupation for the EU.

The bloc is already hosting millions of refugees from conflicts in Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan while facing asylum claims from citizens of safer countries such as Bangladesh, Turkey and Tunisia, many of whom end up being deemed economic migrants ineligible for asylum.

Von der Leyen said “pilot projects” relying on the EU’s border patrol, asylum and police cooperation agencies would look to instil “fast and fair asylum procedures” at the bloc’s external borders.

The EU leaders called on the commission “to immediately mobilise substantial EU funds” to reinforce that external border with “protection capabilities and infrastructure, means of surveillance, including aerial surveillance, and equipment,” according to the summit document.

That decision came after some EU countries, notably Austria, had pushed the commission to pay for reinforced fences designed to keep irregular migrants crossing from neighbouring non-EU nations such as Turkey.

Von der Leyen has repeatedly said EU funds would not pay for fences.

But EU officials and diplomats pointed out that, if Brussels paid for cameras, watch towers and other infrastructure along the external border, that would free up countries to pour their national budgets into paying for fences.

The summit also reached an agreement on a “principle” under which one EU country can use a court decision in another EU member state to return an irregular migrant to their home country.

That would try to prevent “asylum shopping” whereby migrants go to a different country to apply to stay after being turned down in an initial one.

The EU leaders also agreed “to increase the use of the safe-country concepts” that will open the way to the bloc formulating a common list, von der Leyen said.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK