UN chief strongly hopes war in Ukraine will end in 2023
and expects the already escalating military conflict to continue. But he called for everything possible to be done to halt the most devastating conflict in Europe since World War II by the end of 2023 — which he strongly hopes will happen.
Looking back at 2022, Guterres said “there may be plenty of reasons for despair” — geopolitical divides that have made solving global problems difficult if not impossible, a cost-of-living crisis, growing inequalities with most of the world’s poorest countries “staring down the abyss of insolvency and default,” with debt service payments skyrocketing by 35%, the largest increase in decades.
Even in Ukraine, he said, the July agreements brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to restart grain deliveries from Ukraine and food and fertilizer exports from Russia “are making a difference.” The U.N. is also very interested in accelerating the exchange of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war before Orthodox Christmas which both countries celebrate in January, the U.N. chief said.
The secretary-general was also sharply critical of Iran’s crackdown on peaceful protesters, who took to the streets in September after the death of a 22-year-old woman taken into custody by the morality police and accused of not wearing her headscarf properly. Over 450 people have been killed and over 18,000 detained, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the protests.
Negotiations on the U.S. rejoining the deal, which eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, have stalled. “We are at the present moment, in a serious risk of losing the JCPOA,” Guterres said, “which in my opinion would be a very negative factor for peace and stability in the region and further afield.”
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