Daily Multilateralism
Monday, October 12, 2020
With Germany in the lead, the European Union has reportedly decided to levy new sanctions on Belarus’s leadership, including President Alexander Lukashenko himself. Last week, the EU imposed restrictions on several dozen individuals deemed responsible for the crackdown on those protesting the government, but that round of sanctions did not include Lukashenko.
The advocacy group Oxfam is blasting the International Monetary Fund for imposing austerity conditions through its coronavirus lending packages:
The IMF has sounded the alarm about a massive spike in inequality in the wake of the pandemic. Yet it is steering countries to pay for pandemic spending by making austerity cuts that will fuel poverty and inequality. These measures could leave millions of people without access to healthcare or income support while they search for work, and could thwart any hope of sustainable recovery. In taking this approach, the IMF is doing an injustice to its own research.
To the dismay of human rights groups, the UN’s Human Rights Council is set to welcome China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia as new members. The Guardian reports:
The UN has 15 three-year term vacancies on the 47-strong council, with the seats grouped into five regions. Due to secretive backroom deals, the only regional group in which seats are being contested is in Asiaand the Pacific, where five candidates are vying for four available seats. A candidate can only be defeated if fewer than 97 countries positively vote for them in the secret ballot at the UN general assembly in New York.
NATO defence ministers have chosen a Dutch admiral as the next chair of the alliance’s military committee. The committee is the “primary source of consensus-based advice to the North Atlantic Council and the Nuclear Planning Group on military policy and strategy…” The last time a Dutch officer held the post was from 1983-86.
In comments to an Austrian newspaper, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said that Iran does not yet have adequate enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Last month, the nuclear watchdog agency inspected a site in Iran to which it had long sought access.
The Secretary-General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization last week urged a “speedy stabilization” of the situation in Kyrgyzstan. The country’s new president today ordered a week-long state of emergency.
Briefly noted:
A multinational scientific expedition has returned from more than a year in the Arctic ice.
Social media is jumping the gun on the appointment of a new World Trade Organization head.
Chinese president Xi Xinping and his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall tout China-Africa cooperation as an “example of multilateralism.”
Poland pledges to defend Ukraine during its upcoming leadership of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Libya’s decision to reopen major oil field creates complications for OPEC.