UN secretary-general invokes Article 99 on Gaza | Israel-Palestine battle News | USAEMALL.com

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, urging the UN Security Council to behave on the struggle in Gaza.

The uncommon transfer by the secretary-general comes because the Security Council is but to undertake a decision calling for a ceasefire between Israel, Hamas and their allies.

Considered the UN’s strongest physique, the 15-member Security Council is tasked with sustaining worldwide peace and safety.

In his letter to the council’s president, Guterres invoked this duty, saying he believed the scenario in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, “may aggravate existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security”.

Guterres – who has been calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” since October 18 – additionally described “appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories”.

In response to Guterres’s letter, Security Council member the United Arab Emirates posted on X to say it had submitted a brand new draft decision to the council, and “called for a humanitarian ceasefire resolution to be adopted urgently”.

If the council does select to behave on Guterres’s recommendation and undertake a ceasefire decision, it does have extra powers at its disposal to make sure the decision is applied, together with the facility to impose sanctions or authorise the deployment of a global power.

But the council’s 5 everlasting members – China, Russia, the US, the UK and France – maintain veto energy.

The US used that veto on October 18 towards a decision that may have condemned Hamas’s assault on Israel whereas calling for a pause within the preventing to permit humanitarian help into Gaza. Twelve different council members voted in favour, whereas Russia and the UK abstained.

Catastrophe looms

Guterres mentioned the Security Council’s continued lack of motion and the sharp deterioration of the scenario in Gaza had compelled him to invoke Article 99 for the primary time since he took on the highest job on the UN in 2017.

He warned public order in Gaza might quickly break down amid the entire collapse of the humanitarian system.

“The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” he wrote.

“Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs.”

But Guterres’s invocation of Article 99 was not welcomed by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan.

In a publish on X, Erdan described the letter as “more proof” of Guterres’s “moral distortion and his bias against Israel”.

“The secretary-general’s call for a ceasefire is actually a call to keep Hamas’s reign of terror in Gaza,” mentioned Erdan, who additionally repeated his name for Guterres to resign.

The UN Charter solely gives restricted powers to the UN secretary-general, who serves because the UN’s Chief Administrative Officer and is elected by member states.

Article 99 of the UN Charter offers the secretary-general the facility to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

“The fact that this tool has not been used since 1989 does resonate diplomatically and symbolically here in New York,” Daniel Forti, a senior analyst on UN advocacy and analysis on the International Crisis Group, informed Al Jazeera.

But Forti added that it’s going to not “fundamentally change the political calculation of the Security Council’s most powerful members”.