Barbados’s Ambassador to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) David Comissiong issued a call Aug. 12 to all CARICOM leaders to undertake a “Gaza Mission” at the September session of the UN General Assembly. He highlighted a February 2024, CARICOM heads-of-state statement endorsing use of UN Resolution 377V, “Uniting for Peace,” to force action to stop the genocide in Gaza, in the face of obstruction in the UN Security Council.
Comissiong’s call begins with quotes from the July 5 study in the British medical journal The Lancet indicating that as many as 186,000 Palestinians have died in the Gaza strip since Oct. 7, 2023, applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths for every one direct one. After lamenting that “nothing of substance has materialized” in ceasefire efforts thus far, Comissiong continues:
“As the September 2024 United Nations General Assembly beckons, the CARICOM leadership may now need to revisit one of the fundamental positions that they had adopted in their very compelling and insightful February 2024 Statement on ‘The Ongoing Situation In Gaza'. This position was expressed as follows:
‘CARICOM also deplores the fact that Israel has flouted the Resolutions of both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire, as well as the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).… The Community therefore calls on the United Nations General Assembly to invoke its powers under UN General Assembly Resolution 377A “Uniting for Peace,” to hold an emergency session and to issue appropriate recommendations to UN Member States to collectively impose measures designed to motivate Israel to adhere to its obligations under the said UN Resolution and under the ICJ Order.’
