The UN Security Council will meet on Friday following the unprecedented call made by the organization’s Secretary General, António Guterres, who invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter to request a ceasefire in Gaza.
The information was confirmed this Thursday by Ecuador, the country that presides over the UN Security Council this month, indicating that the meeting is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. local time (3:00 p.m. in Lisbon).
For the first time since assuming leadership of the United Nations in 2017, António Guterres on Wednesday invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, the most powerful diplomatic instrument available to a UN Secretary-General.
The UN group of Arab States has been working in recent days on a proposed resolution that will be put to a vote in the UN Security Council and that calls for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group. Hamas.
The representative of Palestine to the UN, Riyad Mansour, today expressed his hope that the resolution will be approved at the meeting on Friday.
“The proposed resolution reflects the urgency of the Security Council to act and this includes an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. The resolution was delivered on Wednesday afternoon to all members of the Council so that they can study it and share it there with their capitals. countries, and so that they can share with us new ideas that can be incorporated into the text,” said Mansour, at a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York.
“We sincerely hope that the Security Council will adopt this resolution and listen to the courageous position of the UN Secretary-General. We all congratulate him for taking this step, which has not been taken by any other Secretary-General for a long period of time. and that shows how dangerous the situation is in the Gaza Strip,” added the diplomat, surrounded by members of the Arab Group.
For the first time since assuming leadership of the United Nations in 2017, António Guterres on Wednesday invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, the most powerful diplomatic instrument available to a UN Secretary-General.
The article in question, formally used only three times (1960, 1979 and 1989) in the entire history of the UN, states that the Secretary General “may draw the attention of the Council to any matter that, in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of peace and security in the world”.
In this sense, given the magnitude of the loss of human life in Gaza and Israel in such a short time, Guterres sent an unprecedented letter to the UN Security Council, calling on the organization to “press to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. , reiterating their calls for a ceasefire that would contain “potentially irreversible implications” for the Palestinians.
This initiative provoked new criticism from the Government of Israel, which accused the Secretary General of “a new level of moral turpitude” for calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and assessed his mandate as “a danger to world peace.”
“I once again call on the Secretary-General to resign immediately. The UN needs a Secretary-General who supports the war on terrorism, not a Secretary-General who acts according to a script written by Hamas,” urged Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan. , on the social network X (formerly Twitter), who on other occasions had already called for Guterres’ resignation.
Today, the Secretary General has reached a new moral level. He writes that he is activating, for the first time, Article 99 of the United Nations Charter in relation to the war between Israel and Hamas, an article that can only be invoked in a situation where international peace and security are … pic.twitter.com/rQm18aT1vq
– Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) December 6, 2023
Since sending the letter to the Security Council, Guterres has spoken by telephone with the foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, while his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said today.
Additionally, Dujarric indicated that Guterres has been in regular contact with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Israel has been carrying out a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip since October 27, after three weeks of intense bombing, in response to the attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, which killed more than 1,200 people. ., mostly civilians, five thousand injured and about 240 hostages.
Israeli military operations have already caused more than 17,000 deaths, 46,000 injuries and around 1.9 million Palestinians displaced, according to the most recent report.
Source: TSF
