Ukraine on Security Council agenda as Malta chairs debate

Malta has taken charge of the United Nations’ Security Council this month, being the first time in 39 years that the island is back in the chamber as an elected member.

In the coming week, foreign minister Ian Borg will preside over the commemoration of the one-year Russian invasion and assault on Ukraine, a debate that has yet to reveal which of the Security Council’s 15 members will speak at the meeting, as well as how permanent members Russia and China will interact on the debate.

Malta’s permanent representative to the United Nations is Vanessa Frazier, the country’s first woman in the role – and in her free time, a disciplined judoka with 40 years’ practice behind her – who was formerly the defence attaché to prime minister Lawrence Gonzi up to 2013.

As any small nation-state subsumed beneath the global forces of power, Malta is a price-taker in international relations. And the choice of its particular agenda at the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, reflects that of a small European member state seeking to grow its soft power.

To do this, it is presenting itself as an honest broker on items that earns it friendship from small developed nations affected by the climate crisis, or on subjects such as the plight of child soldiers in war-torn African nations. Underlining Malta’s intention to conduct the UNSC’s business in an open, transparent manner and to engage safely with civil society, briefings by civil society members are expected at many of the Council’s February meetings. A civil society speaker joined the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, and other senior officials at the 13 February briefing.

Earlier this week Malta hosted a high-level open debate on sea-level rise, with Ian Borg chairing what it is termed a ‘significant event’. It was Malta that brought to life the UN’s Law of the Sea in 1982, a heritage that partly belongs to its UN ambassador from the late 1960s, Arvid Pardo, who played an important role in the conception of what ultimately became UNCLOS.

Malta’s concept note for the debate was to highlight “the risks to international peace and security posed by sea-level rise” and explore how the Security Council can “address these risks in the global security architecture and invest in preventive mechanisms”. UNCLOS does not yet provide for loss of territory due to climate issues, a threat faced by the inhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean that are beginning to vanish, with Kiribati, a complex of 32 atolls, fearing it will be the first country to be fully absorbed by the sea. What happens to a country’s maritime zone, its economic and fishing rights, or its flight information region, and its population? are among the questions posed by Malta in its concept note; and how can the Security Council “respond to the triple nexus of gender inequality, state fragility, and climate vulnerability and what actions can be identified to strength women’s leadership and inclusion in decision-making?”

Mlata’s concept note emphasiwses the risks posed to low-lying coastal communities and island states, noting that continued and accelerating sea-level rise can subject them to submergence and territorial loss. It adds that sea-level rise can exacerbate instability by increasing tensions over resources such as food and water, among other things.

Such debates allow Malta to create what Frazier said is an “elevated platform” to discuss an important phenomenon as security and climate change. But there has been no intention from Malta to table any resolution on climate change, such as one proposed by Ireland that ended up being vetoed.

“The impact of rising seas is already creating new sources of instability and conflict,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who opened the meeting last week. Noting that some nations’ coastlines have already seen triple the average rate of sea level rise, he warned that, in the coming decades, low-lying communities – and entire countries – could disappear forever. “We would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale, and we would see ever-fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources,” he warned.

Addressing the Security Council was Coral Pasisi, Director of Climate Change of the Pacific Community and President of the non-governmental organization, Tofia Niue. She warned that, by 2050 – “within the lifetime of our children and grandchildren” – sea level rise will have exceeded at least one metre for most small island developing States, a shift that will last for thousands of years.

Listing severe impacts already facing communities today, from coral reef bleaching to salt water intrusion, she decried the international community’s continued flouting of responsibility and impunity in failing to act to stop climate change.

“This is a security issue of paramount importance to the Pacific Region,” she said, emphasizing that the security fallout of unaddressed sea level rise will fall directly under the Council’s remit.

Malta also chaired an open debate on children and armed conflict, a theme that regularly appears on the Council’s schedule in coordination with UNICEF. Over 21,000 child soldiers are reportedly recruited by fighters in West and Central Africa, while 230 million children live within 30 miles of a conflict – mostly in the Mideast.

Ukraine debate

The highlight this week will be a UNSC procedural meeting on cooperation within the EU and the UN, with Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs minister, followed by a debate that will commemorate one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The debate will coincide with naval drills being held off the coast of South Africa by Russia and China, two of the Council’s permanent members. The event is seen as a high-level ministerial debate where Ukraine will participate under Rule 37 of the Council’s rules of procedure, but it remains unclear at what level. Frazier has already commented about what she called “significant misinformation” circulating about that event and noted that no resolution or other outcome is expected.

The Security Council – whose permanent members, the victors of the Second World War, are the USA, the UK, France, Russia and China – remains divided on the situation in Ukraine. Russia justifies its invasion as a “special military operation”; France, the UK, and the US condemn Russia for the unprovoked war. Malta is one of four UNSC members in the current two-year rotating term that has explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, describing it as a violation of international law and the UN Charter.

“We stressed the fact that the war is a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and international law,” Frazier told the Council in the last discussion on the war in January.

“We deplore the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation by religious leaders to justify its war against Ukraine, and we condemn the destruction of Ukrainian historical and spiritual heritage sites in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and Kharkiv...

“We call upon the Russian Federation to stop the war, withdraw its military forces from the entire territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and turn to dialogue and diplomacy as the tools that can really bring stability to the region.”