UN Secretary-General makes remarks at the Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul, Turkey.Speaking to reporters afterwards, the Secretary-General noted the links between the United Nations and the university adding that today “more and more the contribution of civil society and the contribution of academia are essential in the development of modern democracies.”
Students from this University were later 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.
Pivotal role of Türkiye
He also 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.
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.
Joined by the Turkish Minister of Defence, Hulusi Akar, the Secretary-General toured the Joint Coordination Center. 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 Secretary-General’s trip began on Wednesday, 17 August , when he arrived in Lviv, Ukraine, having travelled from New York via Warsaw, Poland.
Ukraine’s contribution to human rights
The Secretary-General said he had discussed the investigation of the tragic incident in a detention facility in Olenivka, eastern Ukraine, on 29 July, in which more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in a blast.
He described the ships that he had just seen in the Marmara Sea and added that what we see here in Istanbul and in Odesa is only the more visible part of the solution. The other part of this package deal, he said, is the unimpeded access to the global markets of Russian food and fertilizer, which are not subject to sanctions.
The Secretary-Genera, along with a group of inspectors from the Black Sea Grain Initiative UN Joint Coordination Centre for the Initiative (JCC), also boarded the vessel SSI INVINCIBLE II. 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.
Mr. Guterres flew into Istanbul on Saturday morning from Chisinau, Moldova – where he was hosted for a working dinner with President Maia Sandu the previous 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 (WFP) ship which picked up more than 23,000 of wheat in the port of Yuzhny/Pivdennyi, before making her way to deliver its precious cargo to the Horn of Africa to help people on the verge of famine.
In his remarks to the press after the trilateral meeting, the Secretary-General, 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.
So moving to see in Istanbul the @WFP ship Brave Commander loaded with tonnes of Ukrainian wheat destined for much needed hunger relief in the Horn of Africa. I salute all those involved in this amazing humanitarian operation. pic.twitter.com/MqUuK98sCY— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 20, 2022
