Daily Multilateralism
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
The African Union is making another effort to resolve the dispute surrounding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. A high-level meeting is scheduled for early January:
The meeting is the first after talks have been suspended for a month, and is taking place as South Africa is concluding its chairmanship of the union.
In a phone call Saturday, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and his South African Counterpart and African Union (AU) Chair Cyril Ramaphosa conferred over the tripartite talks on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
While the UN Security Council briefly considered the dispute, the Ethiopia-headquartered African Union has mostly been the diplomatic center of gravity. This summer, key players insisted that a regional solution was appropriate:
Following the tripartite leaders’ meeting, [Ethiopian] Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said the African Union, acting in a spirit of Pan-Africanism, is the right space to dialogue on issues that are of value to Africa, and that the GERD offers all stakeholders the opportunity for unprecedented economic growth and mutual development.
Even as its relations with several fellow NATO members touch new lows, Turkey is taking the helm an alliance quick-reaction initiative, the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF):
NATO heads of state and government decided to create the VJTF at the Wales Summit in 2014 in response to a changed security environment, including Russia’s destabilisation of Ukraine and turmoil in the Middle East. NATO members take turns heading the VJTF. Poland led the VJTF in 2020, Germany in 2019, and Italy had rotational control of the force in 2018.
A UN human rights rapporteur, Alena Douhan, has criticized U.S. sanctions on Syria. She focused in particular on the Caesar Act, enacted by the United States this summer. Named after the Syrian military defector who collected evidence of atrocities in the country, the legislation “provides the U.S. government a powerful way to promote accountability for the regime’s atrocities.” Douhan argues that it does more harm than good:
The Caesar Act raises serious concerns under international law because of its unfettered emergency powers of the Executive and extraterritorial reach, she said. It also results in the high risk of over-compliance.
“What particularly alarms me is the way the Caesar Act runs roughshod over human rights, including the Syrian people's rights to housing, health, and an adequate standard of living and development. The U.S. government must not put obstacles in the way of rebuilding of hospitals because lack of medical care threatens the entire population's very right to life.”
A professor of International Law at the Belarusian State University, Douhan took up her responsibilities as one of several dozen UN special rapporteurs and independent experts earlier this year.
In an interview with Australian broadcasting, an influential Taiwanese politician has called for the country to forge new ties with major democratic countries in the region, including the Quadrilateral Dialogue:
“We need to cooperate with democratic countries,” the member of Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party told the ABC…
He argued an important step in deterring China would be to allow Taiwan to join security networks such as the Quad which comprises the United States, India, Japan and Australia.
In a recent interview, Russian academic Victoria Panova discussed her work trying to promote cultural cooperation between the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The grouping was founded in 2006 and began meeting at the head-of-state level in 2009. A few years later, the five countries founded a development bank, now known as the New Development Bank.
Briefly noted:
The European Union announced a major new purchase of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
The EU’s diplomatic arm, the External Action Service, has called for China to release the writer who reported on the spread of COVID-19 in Wuhan.
An argument that ASEAN will benefit from the Biden administration’s attention.
Ukraine renews its partnership with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Zhu Ying explores “multilateralism with Chinese characteristics.”
After nearby earthquake, Slovenia informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that its nuclear reactor is safe.