Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya walks briskly across the carpet on the second floor of the Conference Building at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. Two months after the start of the invasion of his country by Russia, he remains hopeful of finding the path to justice there.
The 52-year-old exchanges courtesies sometimes in English, sometimes in French, sometimes in Spanish, with diplomats and journalists he meets. “Is Putin responsible for war crimes? asks a journalist from the American network CBS. ” Do you have doubts ? he replies tit for tat, a few strides from the Security Council chamber, where he had been informed of the first Russian strikes against Ukraine – and of the outbreak of the most important crisis of the 19th century.and century in Europe — on February 23.
Failing to have stopped the war, the United Nations system will help bring to justice those responsible for the war crimes committed in his country over the past two months, is convinced Mr. Kyslytsya. “I have no doubts,” he said, before heading off with the Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Emine Dzhaparova, to the room of the Economic and Social Council. Albania and France convened the key players in the documentation of crimes committed in Ukraine, starting with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan.
The face of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, appears on a giant screen unrolled on the back wall. It announces that it has opened no fewer than 8,000 investigations into alleged violations of humanitarian law. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya grabs his phone and takes some pictures of his speech during the informal meeting of the Security Council.
“This council has heard so much talk with this now hollow chorus ‘never again’,” argues international law lawyer Amal Clooney later, repressing her impatience not without difficulty. “But here we are now faced with evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity and evidence that accumulates day after day of crimes of genocide,” she adds, while describing Ukraine as ” a slaughterhouse, right in the heart of Europe”.
What if the Ukrainian war marked the “long-awaited turning point” towards a world order where international law is respected? suggests Amal Clooney, pleading for the victims of the Russian aggression to obtain justice – and billions of dollars in compensation – which the victims of the Islamic State group that she accompanied are still waiting for. “Most of the evidence collected by the UN is in warehouses,” noted the star lawyer during her visit to New York.
It is the raison d’être of the UN that is once again put to the test in this affair. We are horrified by the alternative, with the UN becoming increasingly irrelevant and ultimately succumbing to the fate of its predecessor, the League of Nations, with the attendant loss of life and material destruction.
Between two fires, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan, who opened an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity on February 28, promises to “show that international law can be effective, agile and significant “. The jurist accustomed to national and international criminal tribunals—including those set up for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone—cannot refrain from tossing here and there shock formulas such as: “If the law is not above us, there is nothing below us except the abyss. However, they have no effect on the Russian emissary.
He listens patiently. He scribbles notes with his pen until his turn to speak. The Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, then leaves the room, leaving the Russian to denounce in his absence the “partiality”, the “hypocrisy” of the ICC, which according to him is “an essentially political tool”, before accusing the NGOs like Human Rights Watch from being “factories of fake news”. Up front, the representative of France raises her eyebrows. In the back, tourists from the West Coast descended on New York to fill up on musicals do not understand a thing.
The Russian representatives (and their allies) and the Ukrainian representatives (and their allies) may be seated a few meters from each other, but a world separates them.
The General Assembly adopted a resolution deploring the “aggression” committed by Russia against Ukraine (141 votes for, 5 against and 35 abstentions) on March 2, then another demanding an “immediate” cessation of hostilities by the Russia against Ukraine (140 votes for, 5 against and 38 abstentions) on March 24. But neither the General Assembly resolutions, nor the speeches, nor the vast tapestry reminiscent of the horrors of war in Picasso’s Guernica hanging outside the Security Council Chamber, nor Carl Fredrik’s knotted gun Reutersward posed in the outer court did not dampen the belligerent ardor of Russian diplomats: they rejected with veto the draft resolutions of the Security Council aimed at putting an end to hostilities in Ukraine.
UN credibility at stake
The United Nations Secretariat occupies a 38-story building surrounded by cherry blossoms on Manhattan’s eastern flank. If the building “dropped 10 floors, it wouldn’t change anything,” said the future US ambassador to the UN (2005-2006) John Bolton in 1994. Nearly 30 years later, the employees of the Secretariat, who recognizable by their blue access card adorned with an “S”, still remember them – at least those on which The duty fell in front of the fridge containing the boxes of water. “ “Boxed water is better“”, it seems.
The secretary general, António Guterres, is now the target of most fire, including friends. Indeed, some 200 former executives of the organization urge him to come out of his torpor and to skimp on no effort to restore peace in Ukraine. According to them, the Russian-Ukrainian war poses an “existential challenge” to the UN. “It is the raison d’être of the United Nations which is once again put to the test in this affair. We are horrified by the alternative, with the UN becoming increasingly irrelevant and ultimately succumbing to the fate of its predecessor, the League of Nations, with the attendant loss of life and material destruction,” they wrote. written in an open letter.
Coincidence or not: the Secretary General flew to Russia and Ukraine, where he met respectively with the Russian Presidents, Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday, and the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Thursday.
António Guterres “is not the man for the job,” says former Canadian diplomat Louise Blais bluntly. “He hasn’t really established himself as a mediator. Rather, he positioned himself as a great UN administrator. He succeeded in reforms, we will give him that, but he did not maintain a relationship of strength and credibility with the leaders, ”she maintains.
The former Deputy Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN (2017-2021) finds it hard to understand why António Guterres has not, over the past two months, multiplied public outings and shown greater firmness with regard to Russia. “One could have imagined a Secretary General who reflects the international feeling [à l’égard de la guerre en Ukraine], which could have put the UN back on the map in the United States and Canada,” argues Louise Blais. “Is it a lack of energy? Is he tired? asks the strategic advisor and diplomat in residence at the Graduate School of International Studies at Université Laval.
End of a “unipolar” world
The former deputy secretary general of the UN (1998-2006) Louise Fréchette finds for her part unfair the reproaches addressed to António Guterres who, according to her, “took an extremely firm position with regard to the Russians from the start”. “We expect him to make public gestures of mediation. However, you cannot be a mediator between parties who do not want you to mediate. Then, there is nothing that does not indicate anywhere in the United Nations mission that it must necessarily be the United Nations that mediates, ”she underlines on the other end of the line.
Louise Fréchette is convinced that António Guterres “spends his days on the telephone” as his predecessor, Kofi Annan (1997-2006), did “when there were rising crises”. “We always hope that the United Nations can, perhaps with a magic wand, stop fighting. It doesn’t work like that. […] Restoring peace is done through a series of gestures that will eventually bring the parties to the table, then to negotiate, we hope, a ceasefire. Then, well, if it starts with a humanitarian ceasefire, a truce of a few days, we try that, ”explains the former right arm of Kofi Annan.
We expect him [António Guterres] public acts of mediation. However, you cannot be a mediator between parties who do not want you to mediate.
Whether we like it or not, the “Kofi Annan era” (1997-2006), when the UN “was everywhere”, driven by a “vision of remaking complete societies with [ses] peace missions and all that”, is over, says Louise Fréchette. “It is over, this unipolar world there. The Russians have recovered. The Chinese are asserting themselves. »
In short, the circumstances in which the current Secretary General operates “are infinitely more difficult and much more like the Cold War”, during which the “Security Council was totally paralyzed”, mentions Louise Fréchette.
But, the last no » assailed by the Russian ambassador to the Security Council did not prevent the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF, the World Food Program (WFP) or the International Energy Agency (IAEA) to lend a hand to the Ukrainians on the ground.
That said, according to Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya, it was “very important” that António Guterres went to the Kremlin “to talk to Mr. Putin, to hear with his own ears and see with his own eyes how this person is incurable”. Perhaps he will return to the UN headquarters in New York changed?
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.