The Security Council decided to hold an emergency meeting on Sunday with the whole team of 193 members UN General Assembly on Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. That meeting is going to be held on February 28 Monday.
The step convening the General Assembly session was first adopted by a vote in which 11 votes are necessary to favor Russia voting against, and China, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) abstaining.
The urgent Assembly request to convene a meeting comes after Russia voted on Friday a US-led draft Security Council resolution that would have deplored the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine in the strongest terms.
Since the text acted on today was procedural, none of the five permanent Council members – China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States – could use their vetoes. The measure needed just nine votes in favor to pass.
Only ten such emergency special sessions of the General Assembly have been convened since 1950, following the adoption of resolution 377A, widely called Uniting for Peace.
The text on which they are going to sign generally gives them the power to take up international peace and security matters when the Security Council cannot act because of the lack of agreement among its five veto-wielding permanent members.
They hold an emergency special session. The General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution similar to the one taken up Friday by the Security Council. While Assembly resolutions are non-binding, they are considered to carry political weight as they express the will of the wider UN membership.
The Security Council’s latest steps to end the Ukraine crisis cap a week of activity at the United Nations seeking a diplomatic off-ramp to Russian military action in the country, including near-daily press stakeouts by the Secretary-General, four emergency Council sessions, and one meeting of General Assembly, which saw speaker after speaker called for de-escalation.
According to the reports based on Saturday research, amid reports of casualties and people becoming refugees and tensed for their safety as Russian military operations in the country intensified, the Secretary-General declared that the UN would launch an appeal to fund its humanitarian operations in Ukraine.
According to the UN spokesperson that UN chief ‘Antonio Guterres’ had called and spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’ and conveyed the resolve of the United Nations to enhance the humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine.
During the Secretary-general’s phone call and the announcement of a humanitarian appeal followed on the basis of his past decision Thursday to release 20 million dollars from the UN emergency relief fund, also called CERF, in order to meet the urgent needs in Ukraine.
