Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 23rd August. Secretary General António Guterres completed his trip to Europe and arrived into Istanbul on Saturday morning from Chisinau, Moldova, sccording to UN spokesman’s office in New York.
Mr. Guterres oversaw the departure of two ships involved in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a UN-brokered operation to bring urgently needed hunger relief aid to the Horn of Africa.
He was hosted for a working dinner with President Maia Sandu on Friday evening and boarded a pilot boat in the Sea of Marmara, where he sailed next to the M/V Brave Commander, the World Food Programme ship of over 23,000 of wheat in the port of Yuzhny/Pivdennyi, before making its journey to deliver the precious cargo to the Horn of Africa, to help people facing dire famine, UN spokesman’s office said in a statement issued.
Guterres with a group of inspectors from the Black Sea Grain Initiative UN Joint Coordination Centre for the Initiative also boarded the vessel SSI INVINCIBLEII, it said.
UN said that the ship is on its way to Chornomorsk in Ukraine to load close to 50,000 tonnes of grain – the largest shipment to leave Ukraine since the start of the war.
Turkish Minister of Defence, Hulusi Akar, and Mr. Guterres toured the Joint Coordination Center, the statement said.
He met the Russian and Ukrainian delegations to the JCC separately, and then for an official session of the JCC, where he thanked all of the participants for their professionalism and humanity in ensuring that this initiative is a success for people around the world, the statement added..
Mr. Guterres praised the government of Türkiye for their pivotal role in the Black Sea Grain Initiative in a joint press conference with Minister Akar.
He told reporters that the collaborative work of the teams sitting around the table at the JCC embodies what we can achieve with political will, top operational expertise, and collective effort.
Secretary General described the ships that he had just seen in the Marmara Sea and Istanbul is only the more visible part of the solution.
He said that the other part of this package deal is the unimpeded access to the global markets of Russian food and fertilizer, which are not subject to sanctions.
Mr. Guterres said that “Without fertilizer in 2022, there may not be enough food in 2023,”. “Getting more food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and Russia is critical to further calm commodity markets and lower prices for consumers.”
He arrived in Lviv on August 17 from NYC via Warsaw.
Guterres visited the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv before a trilateral meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkiye, the statement noted.
He was greeted, and given a tour, by Volodymyr Melnyk, the rector of the university, which is considered a centre for the study of human rights.
Mr. Melnyk explained the important contributions to the world’s science, international law and diplomacy made by the university and its scholars. One of the graduates of the School of International Law, Louis Son, is co-author of the UN Charter and Raphael Lemkin, another graduate, coined the term genocide.
He stressed that some graduates were judges in the International Criminal Court or nominated to Nobel Prizes, including Jan Karski, the famous Polish diplomat who alerted the world to the on-going holocaust during World War II.
Mr. Guterres noted the links between the UN and the university added that today “more and more the contribution of civil society and the contribution of academia are essential in the development of modern democracies.”
He reiterated that the United Nations will go on working in full solidarity with the Ukrainian people to mobilize all of its capacities and resources alongside national partners to continue to provide humanitarian support to people in need wherever it is required, at the press conference after the trilateral meeting
SG Guterres underscored that the positive momentum on the food front reflects a victory for diplomacy and multilateralism. Getting food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and Russia in larger quantities is crucial to further calm commodity markets and lower prices. “It is essential to provide relief to the most vulnerable people and countries,” he added.
He said he had discussed the investigation of the tragic incident in a detention facility in Olenivka, eastern Ukraine, on 29 July, in which over 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in a blast.
Mr. Guterres said that he has named Carlos dos Santos Cruz of Brazil to lead a fact-finding mission into the killings.
He told the press that in order for the mission to work, it needs to have the necessary assurances to guarantee secure access to the site and any other relevant locations. To put it simply, the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, a fact-finding mission must be free to find the facts.
UN spokesman’s office stated that Mr. Guterres is now on his way back to New York.
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