MADRID, April 5 (EUROPA-PRESSE) –
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday requested an investigation to determine whether the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha constituted a war crime as part of the Russian invasion.
Speaking before the UN Security Council, the UN Secretary-General indicated that an “independent” investigation was needed to ensure “effective” accountability of those responsible.
Guterres has described the conflict in Ukraine as a “full-blown invasion” and called it “one of the greatest challenges ever presented to the international order and to the architecture of world peace founded on the UN Charter”.
To date, the Russian offensive has displaced more than 10 million people in just one month, the fastest forced population movement since World War II, according to Guterres.
Of those, more than 4.2 million have fled Ukraine’s borders amid continuous bombing and indiscriminate use of weapons between February 24 and the attack on 86 health and safety facilities, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). medical facilities have passed April 2, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Given the urgency of the situation, the UN chief recalled that he had tasked Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths with traveling to Russia and Ukraine to urge an urgent humanitarian ceasefire.
Guterres has also lamented that the disruption in global supply chains caused by the war has led to a massive spike in food, energy and fertilizer prices, as Russia and Ukraine are the world’s largest producers.
“In the last month alone, wheat prices are up 22 percent, corn prices are up 21 percent and barley prices are up 31 percent,” he stressed, before noting with “concern” that 74 countries with a combined population of 1.2 billion in development are people who are “particularly vulnerable” to rising costs for food, energy and fertilizers.
The UN official also warned that debt repayments now account for 16 percent of developing countries’ export earnings, while the burden on small island developing countries is double that due to rising interest rates and higher import prices.