ISLAMABAD: The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is holding an emergency session after the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, which has drawn widespread backlash.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the heads of UN agencies have condemned Saturday’s joint Israeli and US attacks on Iran and the Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel and the Persian Gulf Regions, state-run APP reported on Saturday.
“I condemn today’s military escalation in the Middle East,” the UN chief said in a statement as French President Emmanuel Macron called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to address the strikes, which have targeted Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure. The meeting will take place at 4 PM (local time, 2 a.m. PST Sunday).
In his statement, Guterres, the UN chief, declared that the military escalation in the region undermines international peace and security, and recalled that all Member States must “respect their obligations under international law, including the Charter of the United Nations,” which prohibits “the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
He called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and de-escalation and warned that a failure to do so risks a wider regional conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.
Senior officials added their own responses on Saturday morning: Volker Turk, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that bombs and missiles are not the way to resolve differences but “only result in death, destruction and human misery.” Civilians, he noted, “end up paying the ultimate price.”
Turk called for all parties to return to negotiations to avoid a wider conflict that would mean further civilian deaths and “destruction on a potentially unimaginable scale, not just in Iran but across the Middle East region.”
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement that he was deeply troubled by the situation and urged leaders to “choose the challenging path of dialogue over the senseless route of destruction.”
