12, July 2023
World leaders deliver closing press conference at NATO summit 0
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed new security commitments from the G7 powers on Wednesday, but warned that these could not be a substitute for eventual NATO membership.
Speaking after talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Zelensky said the G7 promises should be seen “not instead of NATO, but as security guarantees on our way to integration”.
“We can state that the results of this summit are good, but should we receive an invitation, then that would be the optimum,” he said at NATO’s summit in Vilnius.
The G7 announcement will provide a framework under which individual nations will later agree bilateral deals with Kyiv detailing the weapons they will give.
The West wants to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he cannot keep the war grinding in the hope that international backing for Ukraine will eventually falter.
“This multilateral declaration will send a significant signal to Russia that time is not on its side,” White House advisor for European affairs Amanda Sloat said.
US President Joe Biden has previously suggested a model for Ukraine similar to one under which Washington has committed to giving Israel $3.8 billion in military aid per year over a decade.
Russia launched drone strikes on Kyiv for the second night in a row, the head of the city’s military administration said early Wednesday.
All of the Iran-made Shahed explosive drones launched at Kyiv were were “detected and destroyed”, Sergiy Popko said on Telegram, adding “there was no information about victims or destruction as of now”.
‘Absurd’
Western backers have already sent weapons worth tens of billions to Ukraine to help it fight back against Russia’s invasion.
Germany on Tuesday said it would provide more tanks, Patriot missile defences and armour vehicles worth another 700 million euros ($772 million).
France said it was sending long-range missiles and a coalition of 11 nations announced they will start training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 jets from next month.
But the pledges, while desperately needed by Ukraine’s troops, fall short of Zelensky’s aspirations of putting Kyiv under NATO’s collective defence umbrella.
NATO leaders vowed after the first day of their summit that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and shortened the eventual process Kyiv would have to go through to enter the alliance.
“We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met,” a statement said.
But that didn’t go much beyond a 2008 vow on future membership, and reflects the concerns of dominant power the United States about being dragged into a potentially nuclear conflict with Russia.
Zelensky had earlier fired a broadside saying that failure to issue Ukraine a timeframe for joining was “absurd”. “Uncertainty is weakness,” he thundered.
Frustration
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said she understood Ukraine’s “frustration” as it desperately seeks to get into NATO’s protective embrace.
She said she hoped written security commitments would show Ukraine that Western arms will keep flowing even if leaders are voted out in key countries supporting Kyiv.
As part of their attempt to convince Zelensky that Kyiv is moving closer to the alliance, NATO organised an inaugural meeting of a Ukraine-NATO council with him in Vilnius.
That gives him more of a seat around the table to set the agenda in talks with the alliance, but is still far from being in the club.
On the sidelines of the sit-down, Zelensky held meetings with key allies, including Biden, to press for more support.
Biden will later also give a keynote speech at Vilnius university laying out Washington’s commitment to defending every inch of NATO territory.
Source: AFP
12, July 2023
“World hunger stops rising but remains elevated” UN 0
World hunger stopped rising in 2022 after growing for seven years but remains above pre-pandemic levels and far off track to be eradicated by 2030, UN agencies said Wednesday.
Between 691 million and 783 million people faced hunger last year, with a midrange of 735 million, the five agencies said in a report.
The proportion of people facing chronic hunger rose from 7.9 percent of the world population in 2019 — before the pandemic — to 9.2 percent in 2022.
The annual rise “has stalled”, however, with the total falling by about 3.8 million people between 2021 and 2022, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report.
“There is no room for complacency though, as hunger is still on the rise throughout Africa, Western Asia and the Caribbean,” they warned.
The report is “a snapshot of the world still recovering from a global pandemic and now grappling with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which has further rattled food and energy markets.”
Since 2019, those crises have plunged an additional 122 million people into hunger, according to the UN, with women and those living in rural areas hit particularly hard.
The post-pandemic economic recovery helped improve the situation, “but there is no doubt that the modest progress has been undermined by rising food and energy prices magnified by the war in Ukraine,” said the report.
The report was prepared by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.
The estimates indicate that hunger “is no longer on the rise at the global level” but it remains “far above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels and far off track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2” of a world free of hunger, the report said.
The UN agencies warned that if the world fails to redouble and better target its efforts, the “goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach.”
‘New normal’
“There are rays of hope, some regions are on track to achieve some 2030 nutrition targets,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
“But overall, we need an intense and immediate global effort to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals.”
Formulated in 2015 by the UN General Assembly, the Sustainable Development Goals include 17 interlinked objectives including ending hunger and poverty.
If the pace of progress does not pick up, nearly 600 million people could still suffer from hunger in 2030, mostly in Africa.
The UN agencies warned that the major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition — conflicts, economic shocks, natural catastrophes — as well as glaring inequality seem to become the “new normal”.
“What we are missing is the investments and political will to implement solutions at scale,” said Alvaro Lario, head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
The worst drought in four decades in the Horn of Africa region threatens to create a famine affecting more than 23 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the World Food Programme warned in May.
Some 2.4 billion people — three out of 10 people on the planet — suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity in 2022.
The pandemic hit the incomes of many people and the Ukraine war sent prices rising, leaving “billions without access to an affordable healthy diet,” the UN agencies said.
More than 3.1 billion people did not have enough money for a healthy, balanced diet last year, according to UN figures.
“Hunger is rising while the resources we urgently need to protect the most vulnerable are running dangerously low,” the WFP’s executive director Cindy McCain warned on Wednesday.
“As humanitarians, we are facing the greatest challenge we’ve ever seen.”
Source: AFP