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    Trump's Blackwater pardons an affront to justice, say UN experts

    Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated US obligations under international law, United Nations human rights experts have said.Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder and Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter over an incident in which US contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.The four contractors, who worked for the private security firm Blackwater, owned by the brother of Trump’s education secretary, were included in a wave of pre-Christmas pardons announced by the White House.“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, the chair of the UN working group on the use of mercenaries.The group said the Geneva conventions obliged states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes, even when they are acting as private security contractors. “These pardons violate US obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level,” it said.By allowing private security contractors to “operate with impunity in armed conflicts”, states would be emboldened to circumvent their obligations under humanitarian law, the group said.The pardons have been strongly criticised by many in the US. Gen David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, respectively the commander of US forces and the US ambassador in Iraq at the time of the incident, called Trump’s pardons “hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity”.In a statement announcing the pardons, the White House said the move was “broadly supported by the public” and backed by a number of Republican lawmakers. More

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    Your Thursday Briefing

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYour Thursday BriefingCronyism and waste in Britain’s pandemic spending.Dec. 17, 2020Updated 1:08 a.m. ET(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)Good morning.We’re covering a new analysis of Britain’s slipshod pandemic spending, a move to the right for Emmanuel Macron and an upside to the climate crisis for Russia.[embedded content]Medical staff wearing personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., at a hospital in Cambridge, England, in May. Officials shelled out billions in contracts for Covid-19 tests, vaccines and P.P.E.Credit…Pool photo by Neil HallCronyism and waste in Britain’s pandemic spendingAs Britain scrambled for protective gear and other equipment, select companies — many of which had close connections to the governing Conservative Party or no previous experience — reaped billions, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 2,500 contracts.In some cases, more qualified companies lost out to those with better political connections, which were granted access to a secretive V.I.P. lane that made them about 10 times more likely to be approved for a contract.Conclusions: While there is no evidence of illegal conduct, there is ample evidence of cronyism, waste and poor due diligence, with officials ignoring or missing red flags, including histories of fraud, human rights abuses, tax evasion and other serious controversies.Christmas restrictions: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has stuck by a pledge to lift limits on gatherings from Dec. 23 to 27 despite growing calls to abandon the plan as coronavirus cases surge.Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.In other developments:The U.S. is negotiating a deal with Pfizer to produce tens of millions of additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine. Vaccinations began in the U.S. on Monday.The number of severe Covid-19 cases in the Gaza Strip sharply increased, raising concerns that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed.In the first week of Britain’s vaccination program, more than 137,000 people have received shots.An international team of 10 scientists working with the World Health Organization will travel next year to China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus.President Emmanuel Macron of France has moved to the right, alienating some former supporters and current members of his own party.Credit…Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMacron’s pre-election slide to the rightWith an eye on France’s next presidential election in 2022, President Emmanuel Macron has tacked to the right, alienating former liberal supporters and current members of his own party.After recent terrorist attacks, Mr. Macron pushed forward bills on security and Islamist extremism that raised alarms among some French, the United Nations and human rights groups, but won favor among right-leaning voters. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, is expected to be his main challenger.Analysis: Despite his center-left origins, Mr. Macron has always been known as a shape-shifter. His slide to the right is regarded by some as a clean break from the first three years of his presidency.Related: A French court found 14 people guilty of aiding the 2015 attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo, supplying the attackers with cash, weapons and vehicles.Gender equality: The mayor of Paris was fined nearly $110,000 for hiring too many women, under a 2012 law intended to address gender imbalance at senior levels of the country’s Civil Service.A landmark ruling on air pollutionA 9-year-old girl who died of an asthma attack in 2013 became the first person in Britain to officially have air pollution listed as a cause of death, after she was exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter beyond World Health Organization guidelines.The death of the girl, Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who was Black, shed a harsh light on how pollution disproportionately affects minorities and deprived families in Britain.Legal experts said it could open a new door to lawsuits by pollution victims or their families. The girl lived near a major road in southeast London. Her mother said that if she had been told air pollution was contributing to her daughter’s ill health, she would have moved.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Trump administration in 'staggering' isolation at UN on health issues

    The outgoing Trump administration’s final days at the United Nations have resulted in a deepening of US isolation on social and health issues, with only a handful of allies including Russia, Belarus and Syria.
    In one vote this week, the US was entirely alone in backing its own amendment to a seemingly uncontroversial resolution about efforts to treat medical complications from childbirth. It called for the removal of references to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Population Fund.
    No other nation agreed, with 153 voting against the amendment and 11 abstaining.
    A UN diplomat said the spectacle of a western ally and a superpower so totally isolated was “staggering”.
    “It’s amazing that they decided they want to put their isolation on record, on full display, like that,” the diplomat said.
    Debates at the UN general assembly this week have been on social and humanitarian affairs and human rights issues, on which the US mission stepped up its largely unsuccessful campaign to remove mention of reproductive health from UN documents. The Trump administration sees the phrase as synonymous with abortion.
    The US backed eight amendments to resolutions on issues such as violence against women and girls, trafficking of women and girls, female genital mutilation, and early, child and forced marriages.
    Apart from the move to delete a reference to the WHO, which Donald Trump has blamed for the coronavirus pandemic, the proposed amendment involved removing references to providing reproductive health services to female victims of violence and oppression.
    Each time the amendments were decisively voted down in the general assembly, with the US drawing only a very small group of between four and 14 supporters. Its only consistent allies were Russia, Belarus, Syria, Qatar and the Pacific island states of Nauru and Palau.
    In one resolution about providing healthcare to women and girls during the pandemic, the US wanted to change the phrase “designating protection and healthcare services as essential services for all women and girls, especially those who are most vulnerable to violence and stigma”. The US mission demanded the deletion of the words “services as essential services”.
    “We’ve seen the US approach harden on these issues over the past four years, but I think this year was uniquely challenging as they clearly decided they were going to put their foot down on sexual reproductive health services language, across every single kind of relevant human rights resolution,” a UN diplomat said.
    After failing to change the wording of resolutions in negotiations before a vote was taken, the US took the added step of tabling amendments from the floor of the assembly, even though they were doomed to fail.
    “It is kind of an aggressive move normally used by Russia, but this year US decided to do it too,” the diplomat said.
    The US permanent representative, Kelly Craft, said the US objected to wording in the UN resolutions designed to “promote the global abortion industry”.
    “The US could not be clearer,” Craft said in a tweet. “There is no international right to abortion. Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is not safe in any circumstance.”
    Explaining a vote on a French-Dutch resolution on sexual violence that mentioned reproductive health, the US delegate Jennifer Barber said: “It is particularly hypocritical that a resolution on violence against women promotes access to something that results in the loss of millions of baby girls every year.”
    Craft and Barber are from Kentucky and were backed for their position by the powerful Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, despite having minimal or no international experience. Barber is a specialist in Kentucky tax law. More

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    Church leaders urge UK government to sign UN anti-nuclear treaty

    The leadership of the Church of England is calling on the UK government to stand with 50 other nations in signing a historic international treaty banning nuclear weapons.
    Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, have put their names alongside those of 29 bishops to a letter published in the Observer and reproduced below saying that the UK’s support for the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would give hope to people seeking a peaceful future.
    The treaty will come into force on 22 January 2021, having reached the required 50-signatory threshold after Honduras ratified it three weeks ago. None of the world’s nuclear powers, however, have signed up, and the US has called support for the move a “strategic error”.
    But António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said the treaty’s ratification was “the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said it was “a victory for humanity, and a promise of a safer future”. More

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    Trump First now drives US foreign policy. Even if it leads to war… | Simon Tisdall

    It’s clear Donald Trump will do almost anything to cling to office. Lie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish? Go for it. Label Joe Biden a radical socialist? Silly, but worth a punt. Start a war with China or Iran? Pause right there. This is not beyond the realms of possibility, given his pathological need to win.As November’s poll nears, Trump is weaponising foreign policy – not to defend US security and national interests, but to help him grab a second term. It’s not about putting “America First”. It’s all about putting “Trump First” – by any dangerous means, and at any cost.Trump has no big international successes to his name. On the contrary, he has trashed America’s global reputation and alienated its friends. His North Korea jamboree was all hot air. His Afghan policy is retreat without honour. Israel’s shabby deals with Gulf dictatorships, stitched up by the White House, undermine the quest for Middle East peace.Scornful of traditional diplomacy and lacking significant achievements, Trump chooses confrontation. He exploits visceral fears, just like he does when campaigning at home: fear of nefarious foreign foes, fear of the other, fear of difference.His China-baiting at the UN last week was typical scaremongering. He characterised the pandemic as a global war triggered by Beijing. Covid-19 was the “invisible enemy”, a “plague” and the “China virus” – terms intended to frighten and divide. Just in case Xi Jinping and the other watching Johnny Foreigners did not get the message, the US, he said, had spent $2.5tn on defence since 2016. “We have the most powerful military anywhere in the world.”Was this a threat? Maybe the entire planet should put its hands up and surrender. More

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    UK to become WHO's largest state donor with 30% funding increase

    Boris Johnson will announce a 30% increase in the UK’s funding of the World Health Organization, making the UK the single largest national donor after the US leaves.In an announcement at the UN General Assembly, he will urge it to heal “the ugly rifts” that are damaging the international fight against coronavirus.While Trump has denounced the WHO as corrupt and under China’s influence, Johnson will announce £340m in UK funding over the next four years, a 30% increase. He will also suggest the body be given greater powers to demand reports on how countries are handling a pandemic.The proposals will form part of a British vision, drawn up in conjunction with the Gates Foundation, of how future health pandemics could be better controlled, including “zoonotic labs” capable of identifying potentially dangerous pathogens in animals before they transmit to humans.Johnson’s pre-recorded video, on the final main day of the UN General Assembly and four days after most world leaders have spoken, comes at the end of a week in which China and the US have argued over responsibility for the virus. Both have refused to join the WHO effort to find a global coronavirus vaccine, preferring a national approach.Johnson will say: “After nine months of fighting Covid, the very notion of the international community looks tattered. We know that we cannot continue in this way. Unless we unite and turn our fire against our common foe, we know that everyone will lose.“Now is the time therefore – here at what I devoutly hope will be the first and last ever Zoom UNGA – for humanity to reach across borders and repair these ugly rifts. Here in the UK, the birthplace of Edward Jenner who pioneered the world’s first vaccine, we are determined to do everything in our power to work with our friends across the UN to heal those divisions and to heal the world.”Earlier at the UN this week, he said that the coronavirus “came out of left field, humanity was caught napping, let’s face it, we were woefully underprepared”.The extra UK cash comes ahead of WHO board meeting next week at which a joint Franco-German paper is to be discussed calling for more reliable, larger and less conditional funding of the WHO.The UK contribution will be set at £340m over the next four years, making it the most generous nation state contributor, Downing Street said. While the US is currently the largest funder, if Trump is re-elected president, it will pull out by next summer, taking with it as much as $900m in voluntary and compulsory contributions over two years.Apart from funding increases designed to help multilateral bodies and ensure equitable distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, once it is discovered, Johnson will also call for new pandemic early-warning systems, new global protocols for health crises and the removal of trade barriers.The WHO has set up an internal inquiry into its handling of the pandemic, including China’s role in informing the WHO that the virus was on the loose in the country.Johnson will also use his address to announce significant new investment in Covax, the international coronavirus vaccines procurement pool announced in April. The UK will contribute an initial £71m to secure purchase rights for up to 27m vaccine doses for the UK. He will also announce £500m in aid funding for the Covax advance market commitment, a facility to help 92 of the world’s poorest countries access any coronavirus vaccine at the earliest opportunity. The commitment is also designed to guarantee to private manufacturers that they will have a market for their vaccines, ensuring the necessary research and development takes place. Neither China nor the US have agreed to join Covax, preferring to keep their vaccine research under their own control.Johnson will use his UN speech to call for “a vast expansion of our ability to collect and analyse samples and distribute the findings, using health data-sharing agreements covering every country”.His speech contains no direct criticism of China’s sharing of data at the beginning of the crisis, Downing Street said. More

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    Trump attacks China over Covid 'plague' as Xi urges collaboration in virus fight

    United Nations

    US president uses speech to denounce China, UN and WHO
    Beijing has ‘no intention to fight a cold war’ – Chinese leader

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    China rejects Donald Trump’s ‘baseless’ coronavirus accusations – video

    Donald Trump and Xi Jinping offered starkly contrasting responses to the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, with the US president blaming Beijing for unleashing a “plague” on the world – and his Chinese counterpart casting the fight against the virus as an opportunity for international cooperation.
    In his recorded video address to the annual UN general assembly, Trump unleashed a rhetorical assault on China which seemed pitched at a domestic audience.
    Speaking as the US death toll from Covid-19 passed 200,000, Trump promised a “bright future” but said the world “must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague on to the world: China.”
    Trump also took the opportunity to attack the World Health Organization – falsely describing it as “virtually controlled by China” – and again incorrectly claiming that the international body had said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
    The UN general assembly has itself been remade by the pandemic, reduced to a virtual event for the first time in its 75-year history, but sharp differences over the international response to coronavirus – and the contrasting world orders being offered by China and the US – were on clear display.
    Trump promised to distribute a vaccine and said, “We will defeat the virus, and we will end the pandemic” and enter a new era of prosperity, cooperation and peace.
    The US president also reprised his criticism of the UN, arguing that it should focus on what he described as “the real problems of the world” such as “terrorism, the oppression of women, forced labor, drug trafficking, human and sex trafficking, religious persecution, and the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities”.
    China’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun immediately hit back, saying: “The world is at a crossroads. At this moment, the world needs more solidarity and cooperation, but not confrontation.”
    That message of co-operation was repeated throughout tXi’s speech, in which the Chinese leader posed as the UN’s friend and offered extra cash to find a Covid vaccine, vowing Beijing has “no intention to fight either a cold war or a hot one with any country”.
    Xi said: “We will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation. We will not seek to develop only ourselves or engage in zero sum game. Unilateralism is dead.”
    Echoing the sentiments of the UN secretary general António Guterres, Xi called for a global response to the epidemic, co-ordinated by the WHO – from which Trump has withdrawn and his presidential rival Joe Biden has promised to rejoin.
    In another implicit rebuke to the US, Xi sought to portray China as the country embracing modernity.
    He said: “Burying one’s head in the sand like an ostrich in the face of economic globalization, or trying to fight it with Don Quixote’s lance, goes against the trend of history. Let this be clear: the world will never return to isolation.”
    Trump tried to broaden his attack on China’s handling beyond Covid by condemning China’s carbon emissions record as well as its dumping of plastic. More

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    Why the UN’s 75th general assembly could be worse than the world’s worst Zoom meeting

    It has been billed as the world’s worst Zoom meeting, but the United Nation’s 75th general assembly could be even worse than that.It is called the “general debate” but, unlike a Zoom meeting, there will be no discussion – just a week-long procession of pre-recorded video messages from the world’s leaders, stating their positions, very much with their domestic audience in mind. They were supposed to have sent their videos at the end of last week. As of Monday, only half had been turned in.The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, is hoping to use the organisation’s 75th anniversary as an opportunity for member states to recommit to its founding principles, but the UN and multilateralism itself has never seemed so beleaguered.“The problem is that much of the world is questioning whether the UN is still relevant at 75,” said Sherine Tadros, the head of the UN office of Amnesty International. “To use a Covid analogy, it’s a matter of whether it’s got too many underlying pre-existing conditions to make it through this next period.”On Tuesday morning, Jair Bolsonaro’s presentation will be followed by Donald Trump, then Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Xi Jinping. Vladimir Putin’s turn comes about half an hour later. The “high-level week” will begin with a parade of the world’s self-styled strongmen.According to the latest running order, 50 men will address the assembly before the first woman gets a chance to speak, Slovakia’s Zuzana Čaputová.The speeches will be introduced by each country’s representative from their seat in the vast general assembly chamber and then the leader’s lecture will be displayed on giant screens set up behind the famous green marble podium where the speeches were delivered on the previous 74 general assemblies, in pre-Covid times. The speakers are allowed to use video graphics and some have availed themselves of the opportunity, according to UN diplomats.Quick GuideCrunch points at the UN general assemblyShowMultilateralismDonald Trump told the UN general assembly last year that the future did not belong to the globalists, and since then the US has moved further and faster to detach itself from the multilateral institutions, notably the World Health Organisation. The UN secretariat insists that the organization’s founding values endure across the world. Yet as the UN’s secretary general, Antonio Guterres, admits, the UN remains paralysed and polarised. No one yet has found a way to reform the UN security council to make it effective: there is no shortage of ideas, just no consensus and for two decades new proposals have lost out to the entrenched interests of the five veto-wielding permanent members of security council. The impasse has prompted growing calls for the democratic countries  to find a way to work around the UN. A Biden Presidency might start with a summit of the democracies. In the meantime the void is being filled by China at the UN.CovidThe UN is trying to rescue its reputation and relevance by being the chief campaigner for a global Covid vaccine available not just to the wealthy west but also to poor countries. Partly with the help of the Gates Foundation, funding has been raised for the “Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A)”, a way of raising the funds necessary to speed up the equitable distribution of an affordable diagnostics vaccine and treatments across the globe.But, the UN’s World Health Organization remains heavily criticised. Trump says the body is beholden to China. Others, including France and Germany, say the problem is that the WHO is toothless, and needs stronger inspection powers in nation states. A WHO internal inquiry will present proposals later this year.FundingThe threatened famine in Yemen, caused in part by a collapse in external humanitarian funding, is a microcosm of the UN’s current hand to mouth existence. Big donors, with Covid-shaped budget deficits, have been less generous, and more demanding about the conditions for their donations. In June a UN Yemen pledging event raised only $1.35bn out of the $3.38bn required. After adverse international publicity, Saudi Arabia’s relief agency on 18 September provided $200m. But the UN financial tracking service has the UN Yemen appeal only 37% funded. Climate changeCarbon emissions are quickly returning to pre-Covid levels, and greenhouse gas concentrations have reached new record highs, according to the latest United in Science report, released on 9 September.  Yet attention on climate change has been overshadowed by Covid. The UN’s big climate change conference due to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow this November – the most important since the Paris conference five years ago – had to be postponed, until next year. But this may give time for the US under Biden to join the treaty and for China to raise its carbon reduction targets for 2050. “Build back better” is a phrase adopted by left and right. The test will come in 2021.Sustainable development goalsThe 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is designed to address the very fragilities and shortcomings that the pandemic has exposed. At its heart is a simple promise: to end poverty and leave no one behind. But as 2030 draws near, the goals are drawing further away.  Covid has led to a 7% increase in extreme poverty, with an additional 37 million people living below $1.90 a day, according to a Gates Foundation report last week. Covid’s impact had not been through deaths directly so much as disruption to health services and hence to malaria bed nets, HIV drugs, TB drugs and routine immunization or measles campaigns. The Gates team said progress on vaccines has been set back 25 years of progress in 25 weeks. The issue is whether this is a development blip or a long term recession.Because the summit does not involve the hassle of traveling to New York, there will be more heads of state and government speaking than usual (Putin and Xi normally gives it a miss) but there will be no opportunity for them to rub shoulders.All the worst parts of UN events will be on display, the endless speechifying first among them, but none of what normally makes the general assembly indispensable – the opportunities from face-to-face meetings and impromptu conversations.“I think part of what will be lost is that when people are speaking inside the general assembly hall, they’re speaking to other world leaders. But with these recorded speeches, they will be targeting their domestic audience,” said Ashish Pradhan, the senior UN analyst at the International Crisis Group. More