NEW YORK: Minister for Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto Zardari called on the United Nations Security Council to provide the leadership to address the root causes of food insecurity and conflict.
Taking part in a debate at the United Nations Security Council on “Conflict and Food Security”, the foreign minister said throughout history, hunger and war had been grim handmaidens, although the world had made progress in promoting prosperity. “The systemic causes of conflict and poverty have yet to be overcome. Inequality and insecurity are the hallmarks of our era,” he said.
He added that “in this decade of action to achieve sustainable development goals, we instead have confronted a series of disasters, the COVID pandemic, economic recession, spiraling prices and the escalating impacts of climate. These have reversed global growth and for the first time in 30 years increased poverty and hunger.”
Meanwhile, with the rising great power rivalries, political dialogue had often been frozen and the United Nations Security Council had been paralysed, he noted. He said the United Nations had been founded for the purpose to resolve conflicts, end wars, make peace and battle hunger, poverty and desperation.
“Old conflicts have festered and new conflicts have emerged eroding the world order established 76 years ago by the principles of the UN charter. Eighty percent of the 800 million undernourished and 40 million facing famine, inhabit countries riven by conflict or emerging from conflict.”
Bilawal said the UN initiative on global food security will go a long way in addressing the immediate crisis of food security and the leadership behind such humanitarian efforts must be appreciated.
“The call to action will help ramping up food production, help keep supply chains open, address blockages, mobilise financial and agricultural resources to where they are needed and help poor farmers expand local production and much more.”
Kashmir and UN
He said Pakistan looked forward to playing its part in this UN call to action. “The people of Ukraine go hungry due to ongoing conflict. 95 percent of the people of Afghanistan are under the threat of poverty as a direct result of conflict.”
“People of occupied territories in Palestine and Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir are constantly imprisoned by perpetual conflict. They are arbitrarily and inhumanely suffering from immense misery including hunger.
“Kashmir has become a symbol of the dysfunction of this institution and this council. The actions of August 5, 2019 and May 5, 2022 by India in Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is not only an assault on the people of Jammu and Kashmir but it is an assault on the United Nations and the Security Council and its resolutions and the fourth Geneva Convention.”
The minister referred to the inaction of the UN on the internationally recognized disputed Kashmir region. “The inaction of this forum while the Muslim majority of Kashmir is being turned into a minority in their own land and home, leads the youth of Kashmir to question as to who will resolve this conflict and who will deliver the peace they were promised,” he remarked.
He said, “resolve the Kashmir dispute and open the doors to peace in South Asia and watch how the farmers in Pakistan and India can feed the world.”
Food insecurity
“Even those involved directly in the conflict pay the price of war. The conflict in Ukraine means that many across the world will become food insecure and risk going hungry.”
“Pakistan relies heavily on wheat and fertilizer from the region. Our farmers are suffering and so are our people. The price of such conflict is paid at the petrol pumps and at the grocery store. For every one who finds it difficult to make the ends meet, things just got a lot more difficult.”
He observed that the world was in the middle of the most deadly pandemic of our time. “Millions have died, people continue to die and health and economic toll of this pandemic will outlast this pandemic. Our continents are sinking, our planet is under threat. Is it not the right time to rise above conflicts of man and face the threats to humanity?”
“They say history repeats itself, first as a tragedy and then as a farce. When new wars end old wars return. At the end of the last cold war what we saw was the beginning of a new war. Afghanistan was abandoned and out of the wreckage emerged the Taliban, Al Qaeda, extremism and terrorism.”
Aghanistan at risk
“Today Afghanistan runs the risk of being abandoned yet again and we find ourselves at the precipice of what many fear could be a new era of great power conflict,” he asserted.
“Pakistan has seen the costs of war up close. We are exhausted by conflict. We just witnessed how after decades of conflict, ultimately dialogue and diplomacy were the path to a conclusion.”
Bilawal said, “From our own experience we most humbly and respectfully appeal to you to deploy dialogue and diplomacy in the pursuit of peace before and not after the next great war. Save another generation of humanity from the misery of conflict and then watch as the new generation unlocks its true potential.”
“We can rise to the challenges of our time. We can be the generation that ends hunger, we can be the generation that saves our planet. We can be the generation that breaks this cycle,” Bilawal concluded.
