Guterres ends his trip to Europe visiting the ships that depart with “grain and hope”

Guterres arrived in Istanbul on Saturday morning from Moldova – where he had a working dinner with President Maia Sandu – and boarded a ship in the Sea of ​​Marmara that sailed alongside the Brave Commander, the ship of the World Food Program which harvested more than 23,000 metric tons of wheat in the port city of Yuzhny. The cargo will go to help people on the brink of famine in the Horn of Africa.

The General secretary, along with a group of inspectors from the Initiative’s Joint Coordination Center also boarded the SSI freighter INVINCIBLE II. The ship is heading to the Ukrainian city of Chornomorskc to load nearly 50,000 tons of grain, the largest shipment to leave Ukraine since the start of the war.

Accompanied by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, Guterres toured the Initiative’s Joint Coordination Center and met separately with the Russian and Ukrainian delegations. Afterwards, he held an official session where he thanked all the participants for their professionalism in making this initiative a success for everyone in the world.

The essential role played by Türkiye

In a press conference with Minister Akar, the Secretary General thanked the Türkiye government for the fundamental role it is playing within the framework of the Initiative.

The joint work of the teams sitting around the table in the Joint Coordination Center represents what we can achieve thanks to political will, high-level operational experience and collective effort, Guterres told reporters covering the event.

He spoke of his visit to the ships he saw in the Sea of ​​Marmara and added that what is seen in Istanbul and Odessa is only the most visible part of the solution. The other part, he said, is unhindered access to world markets for Russian food and fertilizers, which are not subject to sanctions.

“Without fertilizer in 2022, there may not be enough food in 2023,” Guterres said. “Getting more food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and Russia is critical to further calming commodity markets and lowering prices for consumers,” he said.

Ukraine’s contribution to human rights

The Secretary General began his trip last Wednesday when he arrived in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, via Warsaw, in Poland.

Before his trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he briefly visited the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv.

The rector of the university, which is considered a center for the study of human rights, Volodymyr Melnyk, welcomed him and offered him a guided tour of the center.

Melnyk explained to him the important contributions to science, international law and diplomacy made by the university and its academics. One of the graduates of the School of International Law, Louis Son, is a co-author of the UN Charter and another of the graduates, Raphael Lemkin, coined the term genocide.

Some of the students of this university were appointed judges of the International Criminal Court or were candidates for the Nobel prize, among them Jan Karski, the famous Polish diplomat who alerted the world to the holocaust that was taking place during World War II.

Speaking to the press, the Secretary-General highlighted the links between the United Nations and the university and added that “today, many people think that only governments matter, but, on the contrary, the contributions of civil society and the contributions of the academic world are increasingly essential for the development of modern democracies.

Full solidarity with the Ukrainian people

Speaking to the media after the trilateral meeting, Guterres reiterated that the United Nations will continue to work in full solidarity with the Ukrainian people to mobilize all its capacities and resources, in order to continue providing humanitarian support to people in need wherever it is needed. .

He also stressed that the momentum that has occurred in the food field represents a victory for diplomacy and multilateralism. He stressed that it is crucial to get more food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and Russia to further calm commodity markets and lower prices. “It is essential to provide aid to the most vulnerable people and countries,” he added.

Guterres also announced the creation of an investigation commission on the incidents that occurred on July 29 in a detention center in Olenivka, where more than fifty prisoners of war died. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the prison bombing.

General Carlos dos Santos Cruz, from Brazil, will be in charge of directing the investigation.

“Now we will continue to work to get the necessary guarantees to allow safe access to Olenivka and any other relevant places. Simply put, a fact-finding mission must be free to find the facts. The team must be able to gather and analyze the necessary information,” he requested.

The head of the UN is back in New York.