President Alberto Fernández and the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Portuguese António Guterres, addressed this Thursday the problem of the war in Russia and Ukraine and its consequences in terms of energy and food, when meeting within the framework of the IX Summit of the Americas.
The meeting took place this afternoon in one of the halls of the Convention Center in the US city of Los Angeles, site of the Summit, where the Head of State analyzed with the head of the UN the different actions that the multilateral organization has been carrying out due to the war conflict.
During the talk coincided on “the need to put an end to the war”informed Télam official sources, for which initiatives that are being promoted with that objective on the horizon were reviewed.
The shared concern about the consequences of the armed confrontation in Europe was exposed in Fernández’s speech, who warned his peers who participated in the plenary session that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has a full impact” on the whole world, and underlined the present the urgent need to “build negotiation scenarios that put an end to the war catastrophe”.
“Without humiliation or desire for domination. Without dehumanized geopolitics or privileges of violence”remarked the head of state in the paragraph of the read document that he dedicated to the events in Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, Guterres, who also participated as a speaker at the Summit and spoke after Fernández’s intervention, also presented as a priority the drama of the war and its consequences in terms of food and price escalation.
In a speech delivered in English and Spanish, he described current affairs in the Americas and linked it to the impact of the war, thus listing problems in the hemisphere such as “rising prices of raw materials, food insecurity and high levels of of poverty and inequality”, among others.
In his diagnosis of current affairs in the Americas, the head of the UN mentioned some difficulties deepened by the armed conflict, such as “that many countries lack fiscal space and financial support to invest in recovery” as well as that “other middle-income nations that desperately need that help are deemed ineligible by international financial institutions.”
In addition, he exhorted all the countries of the continent to advocate “a renewed multilateralism that can bring together all the nations of the world in search of common solutions”, which guarantees -among other values- full respect for human rights.
The Portuguese also analyzed the problem of immigration, for which he called for “a new look” that allows people to be protected in their rights in the countries to which they migrate, as established by the Global Compact for Migration, as he remarked.
“Greater cooperation is needed between countries of origin, transit and destination, with human rights at the core. Impartial and corruption-proof justice systems and new efforts to tackle crime and violence are also required,” he added.
The concern about the global effects of the war, with the interruption of foreign trade in wheat and the rise in fuel prices, was repeated in Guterres’ latest statements as well as in the official pronouncements of the UN as a body.
This week, the United Nations warned that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food insecurity, rising energy costs and instability in the world of finance have multiplied.
The Secretary General himself warned that 1.6 billion people are likely to be affected around the world and he anticipated that this year’s potential food crisisbased on lack of access and blocked trade routes, could deepen in 2023 with food shortages in various parts of the globe.
“Three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine we are facing a new reality. For those on the ground, every day there is new bloodshed and suffering, and for people around the world, war, along with with the other crises, it threatens to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and misery, leaving economic and social chaos in its wake,” he predicted.
Given this scenario, Guterres demanded that an initiative be discussed at the international level to transport the 20 million tons of grain that are in the warehouses of the Ukrainian port of Odessa, on the Black Sea.
In addition, when presenting a UN report on the consequences of the war, the Portuguese diagnosed that the world is facing the biggest “cost of living crisis” in a generation, with food prices close to record highs, with fertilizer prices doubling and oil and gas rising to record highs.
“Vulnerable people and countries are already being hit hard, but make no mistake: no country or community will be spared from this cost-of-living crisis,” Guterres predicted.
