Representational Photo
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A United Nations (UN) body that regulates deep international waters is preparing to elect its next leader, a crucial position as it faces pressure to either ban, approve or place a moratorium on seabed mining. The upcoming election comes as the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) ended a two-week session on July 26 without reaching a consensus on a regulatory framework for deep-sea mining.

The drawn-out debate raises concerns that the authority could receive an application later this year seeking the first deep-sea mining exploitation license without having rules or regulations in place. The Metals Company, a Canadian-based mining company, is largely expected to be the first to apply for such a license.

Mining exploration has been ongoing in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, which covers 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million square kilometers) between Hawaii and Mexico. It is occurring at depths ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 feet (4,000 to 6,000 meters).

Read Also:Explained | What is deep sea mining and what are the concerns related to the industry?

However, no exploitation licenses have been issued. That could soon change given that some companies and countries are eager to mine the seabed and meet a surging demand for precious metals including cobalt, nickel and copper that are used in green technology. Scientists have warned that minerals in the deep sea take millions of years to form, and that mining them could unleash noise, light and suffocating dust storms.

More than two dozen countries have called for a ban, pause or moratorium on deep-sea mining. Companies including BMW and Samsung SDI also have pledged not to use raw materials from deep-sea mining. However, proponents of deep-sea mining say it is cheaper and has less of an impact than land mining.

Olav Myklebust, the authority’s council president, told reporters Friday that there are still outstanding issues regarding a proposed regulatory framework, including inspection, compliance and enforcement and how best to determine payments related to exploitation.

He and secretary general Michael Lodge, who is seeking a third term, did not say if exploitation should start despite the absence of rules and regulations. “It’s the council and member states that decide these issues,” Mr. Lodge said.

He is seeking to lead the International Seabed Authority for another four years but faces a challenge from Leticia Carvalho, a Brazilian oceanographer and former oil-and-gas regulator. Mr. Lodge also has faced allegations of financial irregularities within the authority, which he has rejected.

The authority is scheduled to elect its next leader on August 2.

Representational Photo
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A United Nations (UN) body that regulates deep international waters is preparing to elect its next leader, a crucial position as it faces pressure to either ban, approve or place a moratorium on seabed mining. The upcoming election comes as the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) ended a two-week session on July 26 without reaching a consensus on a regulatory framework for deep-sea mining.

The drawn-out debate raises concerns that the authority could receive an application later this year seeking the first deep-sea mining exploitation license without having rules or regulations in place. The Metals Company, a Canadian-based mining company, is largely expected to be the first to apply for such a license.

Mining exploration has been ongoing in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, which covers 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million square kilometers) between Hawaii and Mexico. It is occurring at depths ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 feet (4,000 to 6,000 meters).

Read Also:Explained | What is deep sea mining and what are the concerns related to the industry?

However, no exploitation licenses have been issued. That could soon change given that some companies and countries are eager to mine the seabed and meet a surging demand for precious metals including cobalt, nickel and copper that are used in green technology. Scientists have warned that minerals in the deep sea take millions of years to form, and that mining them could unleash noise, light and suffocating dust storms.

More than two dozen countries have called for a ban, pause or moratorium on deep-sea mining. Companies including BMW and Samsung SDI also have pledged not to use raw materials from deep-sea mining. However, proponents of deep-sea mining say it is cheaper and has less of an impact than land mining.

Olav Myklebust, the authority’s council president, told reporters Friday that there are still outstanding issues regarding a proposed regulatory framework, including inspection, compliance and enforcement and how best to determine payments related to exploitation.

He and secretary general Michael Lodge, who is seeking a third term, did not say if exploitation should start despite the absence of rules and regulations. “It’s the council and member states that decide these issues,” Mr. Lodge said.

He is seeking to lead the International Seabed Authority for another four years but faces a challenge from Leticia Carvalho, a Brazilian oceanographer and former oil-and-gas regulator. Mr. Lodge also has faced allegations of financial irregularities within the authority, which he has rejected.

The authority is scheduled to elect its next leader on August 2.

United Nations, US:

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday it had enough funds to continue operating through September, following a pledging conference for the embattled body where UN chief Antonio Guterres pleaded for help from donors.

“We have worked tirelessly with partners to restore confidence in the agency,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said, after several nations withheld funding following Israeli allegations in January that a number of UNRWA’s employees participated in the October 7 attack by Hamas.

Lazzarini said new pledges of funds would help ensure emergency operations until September.

Guterres had pleaded with donors to fund the embattled UN agency, warning that Palestinians would lose a “critical lifeline” without UNRWA.

“Let me be clear — there is no alternative to UNRWA,” he said.

“Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza — somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell,” Guterres added.

According to Guterres, 195 UNRWA staff members have been killed in the war, the highest death toll for staff in UN history.

The US Congress has barred further funding for UNRWA. President Joe Biden’s administration has instead directed funding for Palestinian civilians to other bodies while saying that UNRWA is uniquely equipped to distribute aid.

The war started with Hamas’s October attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

Halving food waste could cut climate-warming emissions and end undernourishment for 153 million people globally, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UN’s food agency said in a joint report Tuesday. 

Around a third of food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted globally, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization — resulting in useless emissions and less available food for those who need it. 

By 2033, the number of calories lost and wasted between produce leaving farms and reaching shops and households could be more than twice the number of calories currently consumed in low-income countries in a year, the report warned. 

Cutting in two the amount of food lost and wasted along the journey from farm to fork “has the potential to reduce global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by four per cent and the number of undernourished people by 153 million by the year 2030,” according to the report.

“This target is a highly ambitious upper bound and would require substantial changes by both consumers and producer side,” they added. 

Agriculture, forestry and other land use account for around one-fifth of global human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. 

UN nations have committed to cutting per capita food waste by 50 percent by 2030 as part of sustainable development goals but there is no global target for reducing food loss along the production supply chain.

Between 2021 and 2023, fruit and vegetables accounted for more than half of the lost and wasted food given their extremely perishable nature and relatively short shelf life, according to the report. 

Cereals followed, accounting for over a quarter of lost and wasted food.  

The FAO estimates that approximately 600 million people will be facing hunger in 2030.

“Measures to reduce food loss and waste could significantly increase food intake worldwide as more food becomes available and prices fall, ensuring greater access to food for low-income populations,” the report said. 

Halving food loss and waste by 2030 could result in increased food intake by 10 per cent for low-income countries, six per cent in lower middle-income nations and four per cent in upper middle-income ones, it added. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Doha, Qatar:

Taliban authorities were told women must be included in public life, UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo said on Monday as she defended a decision to sideline civil society groups at official talks in Doha.

Rights organisations have strongly criticised the controversial UN move to exclude the groups, including women’s rights activists, from the two-day meeting on Afghanistan as the price for the Taliban government’s participation.

“Authorities will not sit across the table with Afghan civil society in this format, but they have heard very clearly the need to include women and civil society in all aspects of public life”, DiCarlo told a Doha news conference.

The UN-hosted meeting began on Sunday and is the third such gathering to be held in Qatar in a little over a year, but the first to include the Taliban authorities who seized power in Afghanistan for a second time in 2021.

The talks were due to discuss increasing engagement with Afghanistan and a more coordinated response to the country, including economic issues and counter-narcotics efforts.

The international community has wrestled with its approach to the Taliban since they returned to power, with no country officially recognising its government.

 ‘Gender apartheid’ 

The group has imposed a strict interpretation of Islam, with women subjected to laws characterised by the UN as “gender apartheid”.

The Taliban refused an invitation to Doha talks in February, insisting on being the only Afghan representatives, to the exclusion of civil society groups. But their condition was accepted in the build-up to this latest round.

The United States said it agreed to participate in Monday’s talks after receiving assurances that the talks would meaningfully discuss human rights.

US point man on Afghanistan Thomas West and Rina Amiri, the US special envoy on the rights of Afghan women and girls, in Doha “made clear that the Afghan economy cannot grow while half the population’s rights are not respected”, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.

DiCarlo, who chaired the UN talks in the Qatari capital, said she “hopes” that “there’ll be new consideration” of Taliban government policy on women in public life including girls’ education.

The UN and international delegations will have the chance to meet with civil society representatives, including women’s rights groups, following the close of the main meetings.

But Amnesty International chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement ahead of the talks that “caving into the Taliban’s conditions to secure their participation in the talks would risk legitimising their gender-based institutionalised system of oppression”.

The Taliban authorities have repeatedly said the rights of all citizens are guaranteed under Islamic law.

The head of the Taliban delegation, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, told the more than 20 assembled special envoys and UN officials at the opening session that diplomats should “find ways of interaction and understanding rather than confrontation”, despite “natural” differences in policy.

 ‘Engaging constructively’ 

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is keen on engaging constructively with Western nations as well,” Mujahid said.

“Like any sovereign state, we uphold certain religious and cultural values and public aspirations that must be acknowledged,” he added.

Mujahid also pressed to end sanctions, saying Afghans are “being ganged up on”.

The Taliban government spokesman questioned whether ongoing sanctions were “fair practice” after “wars and insecurity for almost half a century as a result of foreign invasions and interference”.

Russia, which has maintained an embassy in Kabul, hinted it could drop its own sanctions, saying the group were the de facto authorities.

“We’ve been saying consistently that you have to recognise this fact and deal with them as such because, whether you like it or not, this movement is running the country now. You cannot simply ignore that,” said Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya.

DiCarlo said the issue of sanctions was “raised” but not discussed in depth.

“It’s a member-state issue whether they’re going to continue certain sanctions or not. The sanctions are on people, not on the country at large,” she said

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The United Nations (UN) political chief who will chair the first meeting between Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and envoys from about 25 countries answered sharp criticism that Afghan women have been excluded, saying on June 26 that women’s rights will be raised at every session.

Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo stressed to a small group of reporters that the two-day meeting starting on Sunday is an initial engagement aimed at initiating a step-by-step process with the goal of seeing the Taliban “at peace with itself and its neighbours and adhering to international law,” the UN Charter and human rights.

This is the third UN meeting with Afghan envoys in Qatar’s capital, Doha, but the first that the Taliban are attending. They weren’t invited to the first and refused to attend the second. Other attendees include envoys from the European Union, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the United States, Russia, China and several of Afghanistan’s neighbours, DiCarlo said.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as United States and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. No country officially recognises them as Afghanistan’s government, and the UN has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place and women can’t go out without a male guardian.

When Ms. DiCarlo met with senior Taliban officials in Kabul in May, she said she made clear that the international community is concerned about four things: the lack of an inclusive government, the denial of human rights especially for women and girls, and the need to combat terrorism and the narcotics trade.

“The issue of inclusive governance, women’s rights, human rights writ large, will be a part of every single session,” she said. “This is important, and we will hear it again and again, I’m sure from quite a number of us.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticised the United Nations for not having Afghan women and civil society representatives at the table with the Taliban.

Ms. DiCarlo described the meeting as a process. “This is not an inter-Afghan dialogue,” she stressed. “I would hope we could get to that someday, but we’re not there.”

The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry on June 26 reiterated the concerns they want to raise — restrictions on Afghanistan’s financial and banking system, development of the private sector and countering drug trafficking. Ms. DiCarlo said they also raised Afghanistan’s vulnerability to climate change.

She said discussions on the first day of the Doha meeting on Sunday will focus on how the world would engage with the Taliban to achieve the objectives of peace and its adherence to international law and human rights.

The assessment calls for a step-by-step process, where each side would respond to actions taken by the other.

On the second day, the participants will discuss the private sector, including getting more women into the workforce through microfinance projects, as well as counter-narcotics efforts, such as alternative livelihoods and support for drug addicts, she said. “Hopefully, it will achieve some progress, but it will be slow,” Ms. DiCarlo said.

She stressed that the meeting isn’t about the Taliban and doesn’t signify any recognition of Afghan’s rulers as the country’s official government. “That’s not in the cards,” she said.

“This is about Afghanistan and the people and their need to feel a part of the international community and have the kinds of support and services and opportunities that others have — and they’re pretty blocked off right now,” Ms. DiCarlo said.

Before the meeting, the UN political chief met with the Afghan diaspora. After the meeting on Tuesday, she said the UN and the envoys will meet with civil society representatives including women, and private sector representatives mainly living in Afghanistan.

Geneva:

Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in the Gaza conflict, the UN human rights office said on Wednesday.

Separately, the head of a UN inquiry accused the Israeli military of carrying out an “extermination” of Palestinians.

In a report on six deadly Israeli attacks, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said Israeli forces “may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack”.

“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

Israel’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva characterised the analysis as “factually, legally, and methodologically flawed”. “Since the OHCHR has, at best, a partial factual picture, any attempt to reach legal conclusions is inherently flawed,” it said.

In a separate meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the head of a UN Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillay, said perpetrators of abuses in the conflict must be brought to account.

She repeated findings from a report published last week that both Hamas militants and Israel have committed war crimes but said that Israel alone was responsible for the most serious abuses under international law known as “crimes against humanity”.

She said the scale of Palestinian civilian losses amounted to “extermination”.

“We found that the immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of an intentional strategy to cause maximum damage,” Pillay, a former UN rights chief and South African judge, told the meeting.

Israel, which does not typically cooperate with the inquiry and alleges an anti-Israel bias, chose the mother of a hostage to speak on its behalf and criticised the report on the grounds that it did not give due attention to hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

“We can do better for them. The hostages need us,” Meirav Gonen, the mother of 23-year-old hostage Romi Gonen, said in a tearful appeal.

Heavy Weaponry

Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed more than 37,400 people in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory, according to health authorities there.

Israel launched its assault after Hamas fighters stormed across the border into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The UN rights office report details six incidents that took place between Oct. 7 and Dec. 2, in which it was able to assess the kinds of weapons, the means and the methods used in these attacks.

“We felt that it was important to get this report out now, especially because in the case of some of these attacks, some eight months have passed, and we are yet to see credible and transparent investigations,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office.

She added that in the absence of transparent investigations, there would be “a need for international action in this regard”.

Pillay also condemned Israel’s military methods in Gaza, saying the use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas “constitutes an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”.

Commissioner Chris Sidoti later told reporters that its findings, which are being shared with the International Criminal Court, showed that Israel was “one of the most criminal armies in the world.”

He said the inquiry, which aims to investigate the treatment of hostages, as well as that of thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, had so far been hindered by Israel.

“Far from having cooperation, what we have encountered is obstruction,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

“Thousands of journalists have fled their home countries in recent years to escape political repression, save their lives and escape conflict – but in exile they are often vulnerable to physical, digital and legal threats,” a U.N. investigator said on May 22.

Irene Khan said in a report to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that the number of journalists in exile has increased as the space for independent and critical media has been “shrinking in democratic countries where authoritarian trends are gaining ground.”

Today, she said, free, independent and diverse media supporting democracy and holding the powerful to account are either absent or severely constrained in over a third of the world’s nations, where more than two-thirds of the global population lives.

The U.N. independent investigator on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression said most journalists and some independent media outlets have left their countries so they can report and investigate freely “without fear or favour.”

But Ms. Khan, a Bangladeshi lawyer who previously served as secretary general of Amnesty International, said exiled journalists often find themselves in precarious positions, facing threats against them and their families from their home countries without assured legal status or adequate support to continue working in their country of refuge.

Myanmar journalist gets a 20-year sentence for reporting on cyclone’s aftermath, news site says

“Fearing for their own safety or that of their families back home and struggling to survive financially and overcome the many challenges of living in a foreign country, many journalists eventually abandon their profession,” she said. “Exile thus becomes yet another way to silence critical voices – another form of press censorship.”

Ms. Khan, whose mandate comes from the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, said there are international legal protections for journalists in exile who range from full-time professional reporters to bloggers publishing on the internet and elsewhere. “The problem is “the failure of states to respect their obligations under international law,” she said.

In recent years, Ms. said, hundreds of journalists have fled from Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Ethiopia, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Russia, Sudan, Somalia, Turkey and Ukraine. In addition, smaller numbers have fled from a range of other countries including Burundi, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Tajikistan, “to name just a few,” she said.

Ms. Khan said there is no data on human rights violations committed by countries outside their borders. “But there is anecdotal evidence including victims’ testimony, scholarly research and the experience of civil society organisations suggesting that “a high prevalence” of such “transnational repression” targets exiled journalists and media outlets,” she said.

Ms. Khan said “the butchering of exiled Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul was an outrageous, audacious act of transnational repression.” Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who entered the consulate on October 2, 2018, to get documents for his impending marriage, never emerged and his remains have never been found.

Ms. Khan also pointed to Turkey’s extraterritorial abductions and forcible return of at least 100 Turkish nationals, including journalists, from many countries, and Iran’s targeting of exiled Iranian journalists and media outlets as well as Iranian and Iranian-origin journalists and media staffers working for the BBC Persian-language service.

In February 2020, she said, prominent Iranian exiled journalist Rana Rahimpour received death threats against herself, her husband, her children and her elderly parents.

Ms. Khan said the world witnessed a blatant example of forced abduction when Belarus authorities used a false bomb threat in violation of international law to divert a commercial airliner as exiled media worker Raman Pratasevich was travelling to the country’s main airport in May 2021. He was arrested, convicted, sentenced to eight years in prison and later pardoned.

As for digital transnational repression, the U.N. special rapporteur said attempts to intimidate and silence journalists and their sources and promote self-censorship online have increased over the past decade.

Ms. Khan said common practices include “recruiting armies of trolls and bots to amplify vicious personal attacks on individual journalists to discredit them and their reporting, blocking exiled news sites or jamming broadcasts, and targeted digital surveillance.” “Online attacks including death threats, rape threats and smear campaigns have skyrocketed in the past 10 years,” she said.

“Digital surveillance also surged over the past decade as spyware enables authorities to access journalists’ phones and other devices without their knowledge,” Ms. Khan said. In early 2022, journalists from El Salvador fled to Costa Rica, Mexico and elsewhere after civil society investigations reported the use of Pegasus spyware on their devices.

She said exiled journalists often face two major legal threats from their home countries: “investigation, prosecution and punishment in absentia, and the pursuit of their extradition on trumped up criminal charges.”

Hong Kong’s recently adopted National Security Law, augmented by the Safeguarding National Security Ordnance, “criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and ‘collusion with foreign organizations’ in sweeping terms and with extraterritorial reach,” she said. It has been used extensively against independent journalists in Hong Kong and has hampered the work of journalists in exile and forced many to self-censor.

After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ms. Khan said, it adopted draconian laws punishing anyone discrediting the armed forces or disseminating false information about the military operation. This has led independent media to self-censor, shut down or leave the country. “Russian courts have issued sentences in absentia against several exiled journalists,” she said.

Ms. Khan called for countries hosting exiled journalists to provide them with visas and work permits.

“Exiled journalists also need better protection from physical and online attacks, long-term support from civil society and press freedom groups, and “they need companies to ensure that the technologies that are essential to practice journalism are not disrupted or weaponized against them,” she said.

Palestinian Territories:

The United Nations warned Sunday that “civil order” was starting to collapse in Gaza after thousands of people ransacked its food warehouses.

The UN relief agency for the Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said wheat, flour and other basic supplies had been pillaged at several warehouses.

“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege,” said Thomas White, Gaza’s UNRWA chief.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Geneva:

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned on Saturday there was the potential for thousands more civilians to die as Israel presses a ground operation in Gaza.

Israel’s army relentlessly hammered the territory on Saturday after fierce overnight bombardment that rescuers said destroyed hundreds of buildings three weeks into a war sparked by the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

“Given the manner in which military operations have been conducted until now, in the context of the 56-year-old occupation, I am raising alarm about the possibly catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the potential for thousands more civilians to die,” Turk said.

“There is no safe place in Gaza and there is no way out. I am very worried for my colleagues, as I am for all civilians in Gaza.”

Israel unleashed its bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing more than 220 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli strikes had killed 7,703 people, mainly civilians, including more than 3,500 children.

The UN rights chief also condemned the Internet and telecommunications blackout that has hit the Palestinian enclave since Friday.

“Compounding the misery and suffering of civilians, Israeli strikes on telecommunications installations and subsequent Internet shutdown have effectively left Gazans with no way of knowing what is happening across Gaza and cut them off from the outside world,” he said.

“Ambulances and civil defence teams are no longer able to locate the injured, or the thousands of people estimated to be still under the rubble.

“When these hostilities end, those who have survived will face the rubble of their homes and the graves of their family members,” Turk said.

He called on all parties “to do all in their power to de-escalate the conflict”.

The conflict is the fifth and deadliest in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Palestinian territory in 2005.

The latest Israeli strikes against Hamas, the Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, were the most intense since the war broke out. They coincided with ground operations.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)