The U.N. Security Council is planning to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Myanmar's violent crackdown that led about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh at a meeting later this month.
British Ambassador Karen Pierce, the council president for August, said at a news conference Wednesday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who called the Rohingya crisis "ethnic cleansing," is expected to brief the council at the session.
Pierce said Britain wants the Aug. 28 meeting to focus on gaining "unconditional access" to Myanmar for the U.N. refugee and development agencies so they can work with the Myanmar and Bangladesh governments "to make a credible plan to get the refugees back home in safety, dignity and security."
She said it's "a huge issue" that will also depend on Rohingya having "livelihoods" and places to live when they return. She also cited two other major issues — accountability for what happened and citizenship for Rohingya.
Rohingya face official and social discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, which denies most of them citizenship and basic rights because they are looked on as immigrants from Bangladesh even though the families of many settled in Myanmar generations ago. Dire conditions led more than 200,000 to flee the country between 2012 and 2015.
The latest crisis began with attacks by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security personnel last Aug. 25. The military responded with counterinsurgency sweeps and a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages. It was accused of widespread human rights violations, including rape, murder, torture and the burning of Rohingya homes. Thousands are believed to have died.
The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, has insisted that the possibility of genocide against Rohingya was real and has called for the issue to be referred to the International Criminal Court.
Pierce said the plight of the Rohingya would have to be referred by the Security Council and at the moment "we are a hundred percent sure there would not be a positive decision." China, a veto-wielding permanent council member close to Myanmar's government, would almost certainly oppose a referral.
But, Pierce said, "there's a lot of collection of evidence going on in Bangladesh in the camps — evidence to a sufficiently high investigative standard against the day when there might be an accountability mechanism, and this might lead to some form of justice."
She said this is being done by independent lawyers and the issue of whether there should be a more formal process to collect evidence is expected to be discussed in the coming weeks.
One possibility is turning to the U.N. General Assembly. The 193-member world body, where there are no vetoes, established an investigative body in December 2016 to assist in documenting and prosecuting the most serious violations of international law in Syria, including possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Pierce said the Aug. 25 council meeting will also review the humanitarian situation of Rohingya in Bangladesh, where they are currently struggling through monsoon rains, and encourage donors to help support them.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The world hasn’t seen anything like the unprecedented destruction of housing in Gaza since World War II, and it would take at least until 2040 to restore the homes devastated in Israel’s bombing and ground offensive if the conflict ended today, the United Nations reported Thursday.
The U.N. assessment said the social and economic impact of the war launched after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 has been increasing “in an exponential manner.”
It called the level of casualties – 5% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population -- “unprecedented” in such a short time. By mid-April, it said, over 33,000 Palestinians had been killed and more than 80,000 injured. About 7,000 others remain missing, most believed to be buried under the rubble.
“Every additional day that this war continues is exacting huge and compounding costs to Gazans and all Palestinians” said United Nations Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner.
The report by UNDP and the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia paints a dire picture of the struggle to survive in Gaza where 201,000 jobs have been lost since the war began and the economy contracted 81% in the last quarter of 2023.
Abdallah Al Dardari, UNDP’s regional director for Arab states, told a U.N. press conference launching the report that almost $50 billion in investments in Gaza are estimated to have been wiped out in the conflict, and 1.8 million Palestinians have fallen into poverty.
Gaza has been under blockade by Israel and Egypt since Hamas’ 2007 takeover, putting tight controls on what enters and exits the territory. Even before the war, it faced “hyper-unemployment” of 45%, reaching nearly 63% among younger workers.
According to the report, the U.N. Human Development Index – which measures key issues for a long and healthy life, for gaining knowledge and for achieving a decent standard of living – has been pushed back more than 20 years in Gaza.
The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed,” the report said, with sectors experiencing losses of more than 90%. It estimated that the GDP of Gaza could decrease by 51% in 2024.
“The scope and scale of damages have been unprecedented and still mounting as the war still rages on,” it said.
At least 370,000 housing units in Gaza have been damaged, including 79,000 destroyed completely, the report said, along with commercial buildings.
After previous Israel-Hamas conflicts, housing was rebuilt at a rate of 992 units a year, it said. Even if Israel allows a five-fold increase of construction material to enter Gaza, it would take until 2040 to rebuild the destroyed houses, without repairing the damaged ones.
Al Dardari said that after 51 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas in 2014 there were 2.4 million tons of debris in Gaza. In the current war, he said, there are already 37 tons of debris that need to be removed to make space for temporary shelters and other structures which are critical to return some sort of normalcy to Palestinians in Gaza.
“We haven't seen anything like this since 1945, since the Second World War — that intensity in such a short time, and the massive scale of destruction,” he said.
Al Dardari said the preliminary estimate of the cost of an early recovery program for three years, which would bring hundreds of thousands of Palestinians back to temporary shelters in their original locations with community support, is between $2 billion and $3 billion.
The rough estimate for the overall reconstruction of Gaza is between $40 billion and $50 billion, he said.
But Al Dardari stressed that the immediate focus now is on planning for early recovery.
He said the U.N. senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, and other officials met earlier Thursday with 22 U.N. agencies and went through plans by each one for the initial years after the war ends.
“We are on the verge of developing and finalizing a unified view and early recovery framework that is Palestinian-centered, Palestinian-led and owned by the Palestinian people,” Al Dardari said.
Associated Press Writer Lee Keath contributed to this report from Cairo
The unprecedented destruction of housing in Gaza hasn't been seen since World War II, the UN says
The unprecedented destruction of housing in Gaza hasn't been seen since World War II, the UN says
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
