WASHINGTON: The UN human rights expert for Myanmar on Wednesday called on the United States to further tighten sanctions on the country’s military rulers to include their main revenue source, the state oil and gas enterprise.
UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews, a former member of the US Congress, also said it was vital for Washington to at least maintain levels of humanitarian support for victims of the junta inside and outside Myanmar.
Andrews told a hearing of the US Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission he was “alarmed” by reports that some donors, including the US, might reduce support for Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar and said a Joint Response Plan that includes food rations for Rohingya children in Bangladesh was only 32 percent funded so far this year.
Andrews praised Washington for imposing sanctions on the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and Myanma Investment and Commercial Bank in June, but said more needed to be done.
“We need to have more sanctions imposed... I urge the US to join the European Union and immediately impose sanctions on the junta’s single largest source of revenue, the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise,” Andrews said.
“If you can stop the money, you can cut their ability to continue these atrocities,” he said referring to civilian deaths at the hands of the military.
Andrews also urged Washington to work with other countries to block the junta’s access to weapons.
Last month, Washington expanded its sanctions against Myanmar to include foreign companies or individuals helping the junta to procure jet fuel it uses to launch air strikes, while estimating that the military had killed more than 3,900 civilians since taking power in a 2021 coup.
In January, the United States targeted the managing director and deputy managing director of the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise with sanctions, but has yet to go further against the firm, despite the urgings of rights groups and dissidents.
Myanmar military officials have played down the impact of sanctions and say their air strikes target insurgents.
Andrews said in a May report that Myanmar’s military had imported at least $1 billion in arms and other material since the coup and called out Russia and China for aiding its campaign to crush its opposition.
UN rights expert urges US to go further with sanctions against Myanmar junta
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UN rights expert urges US to go further with sanctions against Myanmar junta
- Myanmar military officials have played down the impact of sanctions and say their air strikes target insurgents
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
