“We want peace and freedom, and we are strong in unity!” These are the testimonies of our CBRN Ukrainian partners, a call for peace launched during the International Women’s Day 2022.
Countless innocent people are killed every day, millions are trying to survive the bomb-raids of the Russian aviation and the gunfights in the streets. Almost 3 million people have been forced to flee Ukraine and more than 2 million have been displaced within the country.
The horror of this war and of all wars in our world is reflected in the terrified looks of the children, in the despair of those who have found the bodies of their beloved ones under the ruins, in the empty stare of those who have lost everything. The atrocity of wars is expressed by human beings transformed into fighting machine, deprived of their sensitivity to death and human suffering because they are in survival mode and must obey senseless orders.
War is just the victory of barbarism over humaneness.
Kateryna Pavlova, Hanna Shepel, Natalia Klos and Alona Samsonenko are members of the Black Sea Women Network in Nuclear: their words resonate in unison with the calls for peace from millions of people facing the brutality of wars in too many countries of our planet. These words must be the mission of the humankind.
“Never again” can’t become "time and again"
Some years ago, to reiterate the principles of the UN Charter: 5 May 2015
Sixty-ninth General Assembly, 86th, 87th & 88th Meetings Lessons of Second World War Must Continue to Guide United Nations Work, General Assembly Told During Meeting Marking Seventieth Anniversary. Several Speakers Call for Security Council Reform to Address Present Challenges
"The lessons of World War II — on whose ashes the United Nations was founded — must continue to guide the Organization’s work, even as it adapted to meet the evolving challenges of the modern world, delegates commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war told the General Assembly today. “We must never forget the international community’s responsibility to stand up to tyrants, despots and all those that attempt to suppress the enduring nature of the human spirit,” said Sam Kutesa (Uganda), Assembly President. Having survived the catastrophe of the Second World War, humankind sought to embrace new means to prevent the recurrence of such tragic events. To that end, he said, the Organization was established to ensure unity and harmony among nations. As envisaged in the United Nations Charter, it was founded to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.
Over the last seven decades, the war had not only shaped the Organization’s mission, but its lessons continued to guide its work around the world. The representative of the Russian Federation, on whose initiative the Assembly met today, said that the long struggle of the Soviet people against Nazism had made a decisive contribution towards the common victory of the “anti-Hitlerite” countries of the Second World War. It was the duty of all to revere and preserve the gains won in that war, because too much was paid for them, and too much was at stake for succeeding generations."
On 2 March 2022: to reiterate the principles of the UN Charter.
“The message of the United Nations General Assembly is loud and clear: end hostilities in Ukraine - now.
Silence the guns - now.
Open the door to dialogue and diplomacy — now.
The territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine must be respected in line with the UN Charter.
We don’t have a moment to lose.
The brutal effects of the conflict are plain to see. But as bad as the situation is for the people in Ukraine right now, it threatens to get much, much worse.
The ticking clock is a time bomb.”
António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations.
Photo cover: @manhhai
