The UN Security Council (UNSC) met in emergency session on Jan. 5 for three hours, to address “threats to international peace and security” reflected in the Trump administration’s violent Jan. 3 assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on drug trafficking and narcoterrorism charges. To date, 80 people are known to have been killed in that assault, 32 of whom were Cubans.
The meeting was convened by Colombia, backed by Russia, China, and South Africa, and heard harsh condemnation of the U.S. attack by several of the member states, as well as a hard-hitting presentation by invited guest, American economist Jeffrey Sachs, who presented a detailed history of U.S. regime-change operations in Ibero-America and elsewhere internationally over several decades. While individual member states addressed the meeting representing their countries, the representative from Uganda, who is the current chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, spoke on behalf of that group’s 120 members, and Ethiopia’s representative spoke for the Group of Friends of the UN Charter.
An initial presentation by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, read by Under Secretary General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary de Carlo, stressed the primacy of international law and expressed shock at U.S. President Donald Trump’s Jan. 3 press conference in which he cast doubt on Venezuela’s future. This, he said, is the time to “stick to principles, stick to the Charter.” International law, he said, provides all necessary tools needed to deal with drug-trafficking problems without violating nations’ sovereignty and legal norms.
