By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 11 – The year of 2013 is the year of many things, but according to the UN General Assembly it is the International Year of Water Cooperation, credited to a request by Tajikistan in 2010. Inner City Press covered that 2010 hoopla, here.
At the UN on Monday Inner City Press asked at the inevitable UN press conference about the Tajik - Uzbekistan water and dam dispute, and if the press conference panel's singling out of Tajikistan for praise didn't constitute taking sides in this dispute. Video here, from Minute 22:13.
The World Meteorological Organization's Paul Egerton replied that WMO and UNESCO, whose Ana Persic was also on the panel, are both scientific organizations. “The starting point is to focus on scientific and environmental issues,” he said. “There may be discussions at the high political level, in the UN Security Council or other venues, of the political issues.”
But water cooperation is, of course, a “political” issue.
Witness the Nile Basin and an agreement signed by seven countries but not by Egypt or Sudan. Can UNESCO solve this? The Security Council seems unlikely to get involved on the Nile, much less the Uzbek - Tajik conflict.
Inner City Press began by thanking the panelists on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access. Also on the panel was Hungary's Permanent Representative Csaba Korosi, who told Inner City Press that “we as member states cannot decide on behalf of other member states to sort out their bilateral problems.”
But that is precisely what the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter purports to do. Sudan, North Korea, Eritrea and others would like what Csaba Korosi said to be true. But it is not.
Csaba Korosi went on to say that the International Year of Water Cooperation is also “to raise awareness of solutions” and is about the “SDGs and the post 2015 development agenda.”
But isn't everything?
Still, his answer at least acknowledged that these are political problems, and not only scientific. Now who will solve them? Watch this site.
