UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has welcomed al-Assad’s decision to open the two crossing points of Bab al-Salam and Al Ra’ee to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid from Turkey to rebel-held parts of northwest Syria.
“As the toll of the February 6 earthquake continues to mount, delivering food, health, nutrition, protection, shelter, winter supplies, and other life-saving supplies to all the millions of people affected is of the utmost urgency,” Guterres said in a statement.
“Opening these crossing points, along with facilitating humanitarian access, accelerating visa approvals, and easing travel between hubs, will allow more aid to go in faster,” he added.
Currently, the UN has only been allowed to deliver aid to the northwest Idlib area through a single crossing at Bab al-Hawa, at Syrian allyRussia’s insistence.
Antonio Guterres, the head of the UN, criticised “Big Oil” and cautioned that nations are not limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.
He continued by saying that efforts to address global issues are being undermined by geopolitical division.
In his remarks on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering in Davos,UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the state of the world as “sorry.”
According to Guterres, a number of problems are “piling up like cars in a chain reaction crash,” including climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The UN chief claimed that efforts to address issues like skyrocketing inflation and supply-chain disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic are being undermined by growing geopolitical division. Developing countries are being “pounded” by high debt levels, he continued.
Guterres said the world is “looking into the eye of a Category 5 hurricane.”
“Our world is being plagued by a perfect storm on a number of fronts,” he added.
We are facing the gravest levels of geopolitical division and mistrust in generations.
At Davos, I urged leaders to bridge divides and restore cooperation to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.
Guterres speaks on climate change, takes aim at ‘Big Oil’
Guterres called climate change an “existential challenge” for humanity. He added that the commitment to limit the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius “is nearly going up in smoke,” referring to the target set by the Paris Agreement in 2015.
He said that the “battle is being lost” and that every week brings “a new climate horror.”
Guterres also criticized oil firms for promoting skepticism on climate change, referring to a recent study that found scientists at US oil and gas giant ExxonMobil made predictions with “shocking accuracy” several decades ago at a time when the company publicly doubted global warming.
“We learned last week that certain fossil fuel producers were fully aware in the 1970s that their core product was baking our planet,” he said in his speech. “Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie.”
“Just like the tobacco industry, they rode rough-shod over their own science,” Guterres said. “And like the tobacco industry, those responsible must be held to account.”
ExxonMobil is the target of a number of lawsuits in the United States.
Forces in the embattled northern Ethiopian region of Tigray say government forces and their allies have reached Shire, one of the country’s largest cities, and that they are still engaged in a “life and death struggle.”
On Monday, the Ethiopian government said it intended to control airports in Tigray.
“During war movement out of areas is natural,” a statement by the Tigrayan rebel forces says.
It called the entering into the Shire by the government “temporary”.
Fighting broke out in August after five months of relative peace and there are growing concerns that the humanitarian crisis is worsening with transportation of aid into the region suspended because of the renewed clashes.
Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes fearing the violence in the region, the Tigrayan force’s statement says.
Tigrayan forces have called on the international community to “fulfill its duty and stop the hostilities”.
They also called on Tigrayans to continue fighting “in this crucial phase of the conflict”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday said that the situation in Tigray was “spiralling out of control” and hostilities must end immediately.
