By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 29 -- The UN Security Council quickly issued a press statement on December condemning the suicide bombing in the Russian city of Volgograd earlier in the day.
The Council is able to circulate and approve such statements quickly because, members say, there is a standardized statement including that "any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed."
But as Inner City Press reported in 2011 and remains the case now, the terrorism statements are NOT standard.
Earlier this week, the Council press statement on the bombing in Beirut that killed among others the former finance minister Mohammed Chatah cited the need for Lebanon's fight against terrorism to comply with human rights:
"The members of the Security Council reaffirmed the need to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and all obligations under international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts."
The invocation of human rights is in the statements the Security Council directs at Somalia and Kenya and Mali (December 14)e and Yemen (December 5), for example, but was not included in 2011 with respect to then-Council member India.
Some say the proponents of this phrase in the Council only direct it at less powerful countries. Countries like the US and Russia as recently of the October suicide bombing in Volgograd can simply say, we don't want a statement.
There is also the matter of which Council member does the initial draft of a statement. On that, Inner City Press has for days asked, with at least eight African MISCA peacekeepers killed in the Central African Republic in recent days, why has no Security Council press statement been drafted by France, which is both President of the Council for December and has the pen in its former colony CAR? Watch this site.
