D’Escoto assails U.S. war crimes

Miguel D’Escoto, current president of the U.N. General Assembly, gave an unusually frank speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 4 in which he addressed many issues, like U.S. war crimes in Iraq, that no one in such a high position had dared raise before. Here are excerpts from that speech.

I see a profound relationship between access to safe-drinking water and sanitation and the enjoyment of the right to life or health. Indeed, access to water is indispensable for a life in dignity and a prerequisite for the enjoyment of other human rights. ...

Similarly, we must bolster the concept of the right to food, fundamental to the established rights to an adequate standard of living and to health. ...

Gender is another area where I believe the Council and the Assembly can join forces. ... Thanks to the General Assembly’s excellent progress on this score during its last two sessions, the world’s women are now within reach of a dedicated entity, and the beginning of the end of such criminal conditions as feminized poverty, rampant sexual violence and preventable maternal death. ...

Finally, I urge the Council to focus on the profound problems that have been created by the massive violations of human rights in Iraq. Even as the world absorbs the inhumanity of the recent invasion of Gaza, we see Iraq as a contemporary and ongoing example of how the illegal use of force leads inexorably to human suffering and disregard for human rights. It has set a number of precedents that we cannot allow to stand. The illegality of the use of force against Iraq cannot be doubted as its runs contrary to the prohibition of the use of force in article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter. All pretended justifications not withstanding, the aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan and their occupations constitute atrocities that must be condemned and repudiated by all who believe in the rule of law in international relations.

Reliable and independent experts estimate that over one million Iraqis have lost their lives as a direct result of the illegal invasion of their country. The various U.N. human rights monitors have prepared report after report documenting the unending litany of violations from crimes of war, rights of children and women, social rights, collective punishment and treatment of prisoners of war and illegal detention of civilians. These must be addressed to bring an end to the scandalous present impunity. ...

I want to call your attention to the plight of the five Cuban heroes who are still being held in preposterous conditions and serving unheard of jail sentences for having denounced and provided pertinent information concerning terrorist activities being planned in the U.S. by Cuban expatriates against their former Motherland with the support of U.S. authorities. We are very hopeful about meaningful and credible change being brought by the new U.S. administration. The immediate ex-incarceration of the five Cuban heroes would help strengthen our confidence that the promised change is for real.