YouSaid · the spoken record

Blinken/Mrs. Thomas-Greenfield/Mr. DeLaurentis

lines on the record: 39
first: 2022-05-19
most recent: 2023-08-03
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“There are still a number of speakers remaining on my list for this meeting. Given the lateness of the hour, I intend, with the concurrence of members of the Council, to suspend the meeting until 3 p.m. The meeting was suspended at 1.10 p.m.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“I wish to remind all speakers to limit their statements to no more than three minutes to carry out its work expeditiously. Flashing lights on the collars of the microphones will prompt speakers to bring their remarks to a close after three minutes. I now give the floor to the representative of Armenia.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“Those words of Scripture are not yet in reach, but we can at least commit to not using our swords to destroy others’ ploughs. We can deliver life-saving aid to those in urgent need. We can ensure that people around the globe are fed, now and for years to come. If we do that — if we build a healthier, more stable, more peaceful world for all — we will at least have begun to live up to the responsibility entrusted to us, to the Council and to this institution. I now resume my functions as President of the Security Council. I give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“We also very much appreciate the work that Türkiye and others are doing to try to reinstate the grain deal. Every member of the Council and every State Member of the United Nations should tell Moscow that enough is enough. Enough of using the Black Sea as blackmail, enough of treating the world’s most vulnerable people as leverage and enough of its unjustified, unconscionable war. Strengthening food security is essential to realizing the vision of the Charter of the United Nations for saving generations from the scourge of war and reaffirming the dignity and worth of every single human being. That hope is embodied in one of the statues outside this building, which is a figure fulfilling the biblical directive to beat swords into ploughshares.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“In reality, sanctions explicitly exclude food and fertilizer. In fact, at the time it abandoned the Initiative, Russia was exporting more grain at higher prices than ever before. What has Russia’s response been to the world’s distress and outrage? It has bombed Ukrainian granaries, mined port entrances and threatened to attack any vessel in the Black Sea whatever its flag or cargo. Those actions are consistent with Russia’s decision last month (see S/PV.9371) to block the reauthorization of critical cross-border humanitarian assistance to Syria — a country where after February’s devastating earthquake, 12 million people do not have enough to eat. The United States is prepared to renew the efforts to mandate that vital lifeline if the United Nations and Syria cannot find a way forward.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“But the Initiative produced concrete, demonstrable and powerful results, making sure that those food products could continue to reach world markets and those who needed them. Let us be very clear about who benefited from the Initiative. More than half of the food products exported through the effort, and two thirds of the wheat, went to developing countries. The shipments helped to lower global food prices for everyone by roughly a quarter after Russia’s full-scale invasion. Since 17 July, when Russia pulled out of the arrangement, ignoring the world’s appeals, grain prices have risen by more than 8 per cent around the globe. Kenya’s Foreign Ministry called Russia’s move “a stab in the back”. The Kremlin claims that it tore up the deal because international sanctions were restricting its agricultural exports.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“But while the United States will continue to do its part, this is by definition a global challenge that demands global resources. We will be looking to Governments, companies and philanthropies to help us continue to improve nutrition and invest in sustainable and resilient food systems. Finally, we must address Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the resulting assault on the global food system. During the past year, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, negotiated by the United Nations and Türkiye, delivered more than 32 million tons of Ukrainian foodstuffs to the world. The wheat exports alone were the equivalent of 18 billion loaves of bread. We should keep in mind that the Initiative never should have been necessary in the first place. That was only because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of Ukrainian ports.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“To build on that work, in February, alongside the African Union and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, we launched what we call our Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils. Through the programme, we are identifying the most nutritious indigenous African crops, assessing how climate change will likely affect them and investing in breeding the most climate-resilient varieties and improving the soil that they grow in. That focus on the quality of seeds and soil can have a powerful impact on sustainable agricultural productivity throughout Africa. Today I am also announcing another $362 million for tackling the drivers of food and security and enhancing resilience in Haiti and 11 African countries, including by getting nutritious food to pregnant women and helping farmers grow hardier and more diverse crops.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“We have a planet that is heading in the coming decades towards a population of as many as 10 billion people, with demand going up accordingly. Yet supply is actually declining, not increasing. As challenging and as urgent as the situation is now, we can therefore also see what is coming if we do not take the necessary steps to address it. Mitigating climate impacts is central to the United States’ Feed the Future initiative, a public-private partnership for strengthening food systems, expanding social safety nets and enhancing nutrition in 40 countries around the world. We have devoted more than $1 billion every year to that effort. Last year we expanded the programme to eight more target countries in Africa.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“While we welcome smaller countries punching above their weight, the world’s largest economies should be the world’s largest donors. For Member States that consider themselves global leaders, this is a chance to prove it. All of us can dig deeper. But of course we know that while it is necessary, it is not sufficient to meet immediate needs. We must also increase agricultural productivity. We have got to invest in adaptation. We have to build greater resilience to future shocks, especially in regions that are affected by conflict. Around the world, farmers are confronting soaring temperatures, eroding soil and disappearing groundwater. That reduces yields and makes crops less nutritious. By 2050, climate change could cut output by as much as 30 per cent, even as global food demand increases by more than 50 per cent.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“Last year, Governments and private donors made record contributions, providing direct relief, equipping farmers with fertilizer and using satellite imagery to maximize yields. Donations to the World Food Programme jumped by 48 per cent. The United States alone provided more than $7.2 billion, funding roughly half of the World Food Programme’s budget. Those and other efforts helped the world to narrowly avoid famine last year. But this year, as we have heard, the World Food Programme estimates that it will have to spend $25 billion to deliver relief to 171 million people. To date, countries have funded only $4.5 billion — in other words, a mere 18 per cent of what is required. The cost of that shortfall will be measured in growth stunted and in lives lost.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“Let us now harness that momentum to further combat food insecurity and famine around the world and turn what we are talking about into concrete action. Five years ago (see S/PV.8267), as we have heard, the Council adopted resolution 2417 (2018), emphasizing that the intentional starvation of civilians may constitute a war crime. Today we can build on those efforts. Nearly 90 countries, including the United States, have already signed a new joint communiqué that we drafted and circulated, committing to ending the use of famine, starvation and food as weapons of war. Hunger must not be weaponized. I urge all Member States to sign the communiqué. We must also significantly increase aid to tackle extreme hunger and avert famine.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“We chaired last year’s ministerial meeting on food security, where we joined more than three dozen countries in issuing a global road map, committing to getting food to those in need and to building greater resilience in the future. To date, more than 100 countries have signed that pledge and begun to take concrete steps to actually implement it. Nevertheless, as this crisis ramps up, so must our efforts. The Council is charged with maintaining international peace and security, and we simply cannot preserve peace and security without strengthening food security. Each of us has a responsibility to act. This morning, for the first time in three years, the Council has unanimously put conflict, hunger and famine, as well as climate change, at the centre of its agenda. That is a noteworthy and welcome step.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“In Yemen, some families have reported resorting to boiling leaves to stay alive. They call it famine food. Unless the world acts, Burkina Faso, South Sudan and Somalia could all experience famine next year. Again, I ask all of us to pause for a moment and think about what that actually means, and to imagine, just for a minute, that these are their children, their sons, their daughters. We have heard the compelling descriptions of what that is actually all about, and I hope that if nothing else, having that image in our minds and tying it to our own life experiences will give us some added motivation to act. Since January 2021, the United States has provided more than $17.5 billion to address famine and food insecurity. In 2021 and 2022 (see S/PV.9036), we convened the Council to focus on the intersection between hunger and conflict.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“Hunger and conflict are inextricably linked, with scarce resources and heightened tensions affecting communities and nations. Warring parties weaponize food to subjugate local populations. Indeed, conflict is the largest single driver of food insecurity, with violence and unrest pushing 117 million people into extreme deprivation last year. In the Sudan, fighting has disrupted the summer planting season and driven up the cost of food. In Myanmar, where one in five people — one in five — are severely undernourished, the military regime is making the problem worse in order to tighten its grip, including by blocking aid convoys. The deteriorating conditions have prevented the safe return of the nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees who have fled their homeland and now live in Bangladesh on rations that are down to about 27 cents per day.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“I therefore thank them for that focus and for their focus on practical solutions to the problems before us. All three of them have powerfully illustrated the challenge before us, but even more important, they have given us very good ideas for how to actually address that challenge. Last September, President Biden told the General Assembly, “In every country in the world ... if parents cannot feed their children, nothing else matters” (A/77/PV.6, p.22). In some ways, it is as simple and as stark as that. Too many families are experiencing the overwhelming urgency, the consequence of an unprecedented global food crisis that, as we have heard, has been fuelled by climate and the coronavirus disease, as well as by conflict, as we have discussed today.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“I thank Ms. Salem for her briefing. Indeed, I thank all three of our briefers for their compelling and important contributions to our discussion this morning. I would like to draw the attention of speakers to paragraph 22 of note S/2017/507, which encourages all participants in Council meetings to deliver their statements in five minutes or less, in line with the Security Council’s commitment to making more effective use of open meetings. I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the representative of the United States of America. Once again, I thank our briefers for keeping our focus on what is really at stake here, that is, the human element in our discussions. It is easy to get caught up in numbers, statistics and big concepts, but ultimately it comes down to people and it comes down to children.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“I thank the Council members for their valuable contributions to this statement. In accordance with the understanding reached among the members of the Council, I shall take it that the members of the Security Council agree to the statement, which will be issued as a document of the Security Council under the symbol S/PRST/2023/4. I now give the floor to Ms. Ghelani.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“I propose that the Council invite the Permanent Observer of the Observer State of the Holy See to the United Nations to participate in this meeting, in accordance with the provisional rules of procedure and the previous practice in this regard. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. I wish to draw the attention of Council members to document S/2023/560, which contains the text of a letter dated 26 July 2023 from the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council, transmitting a concept note on the item under consideration. The Council has before it the text of a statement by the President on behalf of the Council on the subject of today’s meeting.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“In accordance with rule 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the following briefers to participate in this meeting: Ms. Reena Ghelani, United Nations Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator; Mr. David Miliband, President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Rescue Committee; and Ms. Navyn Salem, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Edesia. In accordance with rule 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I also invite the following to participate in this meeting: His Excellency Mr. Thibault Camelli, Chargé d’affaires ad interim of the Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations; and His Excellency Mr. Paul Beresford-Hill, Permanent Observer of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the United Nations.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“I wish to warmly welcome the Ministers and other high-level representatives. Their presence today underscores the importance of the subject matter under discussion. In accordance with rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representatives of Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Chile, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia, Türki̇ ye, Ukraine, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Viet Nam and Yemen to participate in this meeting.”
2023-08-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9392 (2023) · source
“There are still a number of speakers remaining on my list for this meeting. Given the lateness of the hour, with the concurrence of the members of the Security Council, I intend to suspend the meeting until 3.15 p.m. The meeting was suspended at 2.15 p.m.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“I wish to remind all speakers to limit their statements to no more than four minutes in order to enable the Council to carry out its work expeditiously. Flashing lights on the collars of the microphones will prompt speakers to bring their remarks to a close after four minutes. I now give the floor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“It is on us to prevent this history from repeating itself, to make sure that the past is not prologue. It is simple. The lives of millions of people depend upon it. I now resume my functions as President of the Council. I now call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ghana.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“The Council must consistently call out governments and armed groups when they use similar tactics, such as attacking the means of food production and distribution, blocking humanitarian aid from reaching those in need and besieging civilian populations. The United Nations was created with the aim of advancing human rights and preventing atrocities, including the atrocity of using starvation as a weapon against civilians, such as during the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis, during which an estimated 1 million Russians lost their lives, including many who starved to death — among the victims was the one-year-old brother of President Putin — or during the Holodomor, during which millions of Ukrainians died of hunger owing to a Soviet campaign of forced collectivization and terror.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“All of this is essential to save lives in Ukraine and to save lives around the world. The Russian Federation is not the only government or organization to exploit food insecurity for its own cynical ends. South Sudan, armed groups and warring parties have for years blocked humanitarian assistance to civilians. Experts estimate that up to 7 million people will face crisis-levels of food insecurity in their countries this year. In Syria, with the Kremlin’s ongoing support, the Al-Assad regime has besieged such communities as eastern Ghouta and caused the widespread starvation of its own people. It also routinely obstructs the cross-border delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid, robbing and even attacking United Nations convoys, as we have discussed repeatedly in the Security Council.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“That starts by strongly and unequivocally calling the Kremlin out for its atrocities in Ukraine and for worsening the global food crisis through an unprovoked war of aggression. More concretely, members of the Council and, for that matter, every State Member of the United Nations should press Russia to stop actions that are making the food crisis in Ukraine and around the globe worse than it already was. Stop blockading the ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Allow for the free flow of ships, trains and trucks carrying food out of Ukraine. Stop preventing food and other life-saving supplies from reaching civilians in besieged Ukrainian towns and cities. Stop threatening to withhold foods and fertilizer exports from countries that criticize Russia’s war of aggression.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“The sanctions imposed by the United States and many other countries deliberately include carve-outs for food, fertilizer and seeds from Russia, and we are working with countries every day to ensure that they understand that sanctions do not prevent the flow of those items. No, the decision to weaponize food is Moscow’s and Moscow’s alone. Do not take my word for it. Even Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former Russian President, recently said that Russia’s agricultural products were its “quiet weapon”. He then added, “Quiet, but ominous”. The Council has a unique responsibility to address the current crisis, which constitutes a serious threat to international peace and security.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“The Secretary-General alluded to a number of them, including Lebanon, which usually gets 80 per cent of its wheat imports from Ukraine, and Somalia, already on the brink of famine even before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, and which must now deal with rising wheat and flour costs. The Russian Federation claims falsely that the international community’s sanctions are to blame for worsening the global food crisis. Sanctions are not blocking Black Sea ports, trapping ships filled with food and destroying Ukrainian roads and railways. Russia is. Sanctions are not emptying Ukrainian grain silos and stealing Ukrainian farm equipment; Russia is. Sanctions are not preventing Russia from exporting food and fertilizer.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“The Russian Government seems to believe that using food as a weapon will help accomplish what its invasion has not: to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people. Still, Ukrainians are going to great lengths to feed their own people and to feed the world. Farmers in Ukraine continue to risk their lives to produce wheat and other crops. Many have returned to fields that are filled with mines. They wear bulletproof vests and helmets as they harvest. And, as we have heard already powerfully this morning, it is not only Ukrainians who are suffering as a result of the Russian Government’s actions; some 20 million tons of grain sit unused in Ukrainian silos as global food supplies dwindle and prices skyrocket, causing more around the world to experience food insecurity. That includes countries already under enormous duress.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“The food supply for millions of Ukrainians and millions more around the world has quite literally been held hostage by the Russian military. the World Food Programme recently estimated that a third of all Ukrainians are facing food insecurity, with children, pregnant women and the elderly at heightened risk of malnutrition. In besieged cities such as Mariupol, Russian forces have repeatedly blocked the delivery of food and other life-saving aid to tens of thousands of trapped civilians. A mother who recently escaped from the city talked about the agony of watching her 6-year- old daughter suffer the daily pangs of hunger and being powerless to do anything about it. “I just sobbed”, she said, “screaming into a pillow when no one could see”. She and her children eventually escaped; countless thousands of others are still trapped.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“Since then, the Russian military has repeatedly blocked safe passage to and from Ukraine by closing the Kerch Strait, tightening its control over the sea of Azov and stationing warships off Ukrainian ports. Russia has struck Ukrainian ports multiple times. Those and other actions have effectively cut off all commercial naval traffic in and around the port of Odesa. The Russian Federation has mirrored these attacks on land, repeatedly attacking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure that is critical to the production and transport of food, such as water, power and rail lines, destroying Ukrainian grain-storing facilities and stealing stocks of food in the parts of Ukraine that it illegally occupies. The consequences of those actions have been devastating.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression has halted maritime trade in large swaths of the Black Sea; it has made the region unsafe for navigation, trapping Ukrainian agricultural exports, as we have heard, and jeopardizing global food supplies. Since 24 February, Russian naval operations have demonstrated the intent to control access to the north-western Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, to block Ukrainian ports. Our assessment is that this is a deliberate effort evidenced through a series of actions taken by the Russian Government. On the first day of the invasion, Russia issued an official warning to all members that significant areas of the Black Sea were closed to commercial traffic, essentially shutting them down to shipping.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“It is also another example of how Russia is violating the rules-based international order that is integral to the shared security and prosperity of all States Member of the United Nations, an order that the Council and in particular its permanent members have a responsibility to uphold, defend and strengthen. In the Council, a few members have repeatedly used language lamenting the suffering caused by this war and calling on all sides to bring it to a stop. Let us not use diplomatic-speak to obfuscate what are simple facts. The decision to wage this war is the Kremlin’s and the Kremlin’s alone. If Russia stopped fighting tomorrow, the war would end. If Ukraine stopped fighting, there would be no more Ukraine.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“For our part, the United States announced another $215 million in emergency food assistance to add to our $2.3 billion in humanitarian food aid since February. I want to thank all the countries that stepped up, and I want to encourage others to join us. In 2018 the Council adopted resolution 2417 (2018), which condemned the use of starvation of civilians as a tool of war and noted that such a use may constitute a war crime. Yet in the years since the adoption of that resolution, the problem has only grown worse. The Russian Federation’s flagrant disregard of that resolution is just the latest example of a Government using the hunger of civilians to try to advance its objectives.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Programme, the number of people affected by food insecurity due to conflict rose from about 100 million people in 2020, to 139 million or so in 2021, to an estimated 161 million in 2022. The World Bank believes that Russia’s war in Ukraine could add another 40 million people to that total. Yesterday ministers from more than 30 countries came together here at the United Nations to address the drivers of and advance solutions to global food insecurity, including by meeting the urgent need for food, for fertilizer and humanitarian financing, investing more in the resilience of agriculture and vulnerable populations.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“I thank Ms. Menker for her briefing. I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the Secretary of State of the United States of America. I thank the Secretary-General, Executive Director David Beasley, Director-General Qu Dongyu and Gro Intelligence Chief Executive Officer Sara Menker. I thank them for their superb briefings to the Council today, which bring powerfully before us the facts and the challenges that we have to meet. I thank them for their work every day on an issue that is truly critical to humankind. We are meeting at a moment of unprecedented global hunger, fuelled, as we have heard, by climate change and the coronavirus disease, and made even worse by conflict. Indeed, conflicts across the world are increasingly driving this crisis.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme; and Ms. Sara Menker, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gro Intelligence. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. I wish to draw the attention of Council members to document S/2022/391, which contains the text of a letter dated 12 May 2022 from the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, transmitting a concept note on the item under consideration. I now give the floor to His Excellency Secretary- General António Guterres.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source
“Let me start by very warmly welcoming the Secretary-General and the distinguished ministers and other high-level representatives here with us today. Their presence underscores the importance of the subject matter that is under consideration. Before each participant is a list of speakers who have requested to participate in today’s open debate in accordance with rules 37 and 39 of the Security Council’s provisional rules of procedure, as well as the previous practice of the Council in that regard. We propose that they be invited to participate in this meeting In accordance with rule 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the following briefers to participate in this meeting: Mr. Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; Mr.”
2022-05-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9036 (2022) · source