This paper examines poor households in the city of Mumbai and their exposure, vulnerability, and ability to respond to recurrent floods. The paper discusses policy implications for future adaptive capacity, resilience, and poverty alleviation. The study focuses particularly on the poor households, which tend to have greater exposure and vulnerability to floods and limited ability to respond given the constraints on physical and financial resources. The study seeks to understand the implications of the fact that poor households are more likely than non-poor households to be located in flood-prone areas. The study used the land use maps for the selected flood-prone areas to determine the extent and spread of poor and non-poor households and other types of assets and activities in areas with chronic and localized flooding. Primary data were obtained through detailed household surveys to understand the vulnerability and impacts of the extreme floods of July 2005, recurrent floods and the ability of households to respond and cope. The study examined the option of relocation to flood-free areas and identified factors that influence families' decisions regarding relocation. The study finds that a significantly large proportion of poor households are located near areas with chronic and localized flooding. These households are either below the poverty line or have low incomes and reside in informal settlements or old and dilapidated structures. Future climate risks are likely to put greater burden on the poor and push them further into poverty unless well directed efforts are made to protect them.
International audience ; Poor waste management facilities from Romanian rural areas lead to uncontrolled waste disposal on improper sites. These bad practices are frequently in the the proximity of built-up areas , therefore, the small rivers inside these areas are susceptible to waste dumping. The paper aims to develop a quantitative assessment method of waste disposed into such small rivers from extra-Carpathian region of Neamț county. The lack of organized waste collection services from 2003 lead to high values of waste disposed in such rivers frequently over 15 t/yr for each one. Despite some improvements compared to 2003 the small rivers inside built-up areas of villages are still highly exposed to waste dumping. The values vary depending on demographic and geographic features of each locality and on the other side, due to the presence of an organized waste collection system.The results and comparative analysis between 2003 and 2010 show some positive changes but the illegal dumping issue is far from being eliminated.
The authors use different data sets to investigate the dependence of transport costs on geography and infrastructure. Infrastructure is an important determinant of transport costs, especially for landlocked countries. Analysis of bilateral trade data confirms the importance of infrastructure and gives an estimate of the elasticity of trade flows with respect to the trade cost factor of around-3. A deterioration of infrastructure from the median to the 75th percentile raises transport costs by 12 percentage points and reduces trade volumes by 28 percent. Analysis of African trade flows indicates that their relatively low level is largely due to poor infrastructure.
The Baltic States; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Poland are situated along strategic trade corridors within Europe, constituting the EUs eastern border with Russia and other CIS countries. EU membership has triggered rapid economic growth for the Baltic States and Poland due to the removal of trade barriers and reduced transaction costs. A heavy influx of EU grants has targeted development and improvement of transport infrastructure, and this support will continue until 2015. The EU grants are largely used for development of international corridors, which play a key role in strengthening the competitiveness of these new member states. Since their accession to the EU in 2004, these countries enjoyed remarkable growth. While the countries underwent varying degrees of contractions in 2009, signs of recovery are showing albeit with considerable uncertainty in the future. Growth in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in recent years has been unsustainable and was driven by a disproportionate increase in the non-tradable sector (construction, financial intermediation, real estate). This has had negative implications for competitiveness. The global economic crisis in 2009 has ended Poland?s fast economic expansion over the recent years, but in contrast to its neighbors Poland has avoided a decline in economic activity. Over the medium term, growth in Poland is expected to accelerate steadily in line with an improving external environment. The Baltic States and Poland are relatively competitive in trade logistics and have initiated reforms to facilitate trade, compared to their eastern neighbors, particularly Russia. Despite the plunge in 2008, freight transport and logistics development in the region has potential to continue to grow in the medium-term as some signs of recovery have begun to appear. The current economic situation has triggered a significant overcapacity of transport and warehousing which is characterized by very low prices for these services. While Poland remains relatively stable, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are exhibiting higher vulnerability to external shocks. The most critical bottlenecks of transport logistics in the Baltic States and Poland are found in the deteriorating condition of their transport infrastructure, particularly that of road networks, lessdeveloped intermodal connections, and inefficiency of custom processing at border crossing points. Deteriorating road condition in these countries is largely due to inadequate maintenance and a comprehensive asset management system, albeit improving. Intermodal connections that are often inefficient are partly attributed to institutional arrangement that lacks inter-agency collaboration at the level of policy development and public investment. Custom procedures are particularly cumbersome and inefficient at the borders to non-EU member states. Nevertheless, the Baltic States and Poland have relative strengths in efficiency of domestic transport/logistics, cost-efficiency of trucking industry, and price-competitive port operation. The report various recommendations for strategic policy priorities for the Baltic States and Poland to leverage their own strengths to respond to various opportunities and challenges.
Dengan semakin berkembangnya kehidupan demokratisasi di sebuah negara akan mendorong pada semakin suburnya semangat desentralisasi, termasuk di Indonesia. Sejak era reformasi digulirkan pada rentang waktu tahun 1998 – 2000 tuntutan desentralisasi semakin menguat. Banyak daerah ingin "melepaskan diri" baik ditingkat provinsi maupun kabupaten/kota ingin berdiri sendiri mendirikan pemerintah daerah lepas dari kekuasaan pemerintah daerah induk. Berbagai upaya dan pergerakan banyak dilakukan oleh masyarakat maupun elit politik lokal untuk "melepaskan diri". Pergerakan tersebut dapat dibaca sebagai salah satu upaya reformasi dan modernisasi pemerintahan. Pelaksanaan desentralisasi di Indonesia secara resmi dimulai pada tanggal 1 Januari 1999 dengan diundangkannya UU Nomor 22/1999 tentang Pemerintahan Daerah (yang kemudian disempurnakan menjadi UU Nomor 32/2004). Melalui undang-undang tersebut, pemerintah berupaya untuk mendelegasikan kewenangan kepada pemerintah kabupaten/kota. Dari semangat desentralisasi inilah diharapkan lahir dan berkembang pemerintahan daerah yang otonom. Ada 3 hal utama yang secara eksplisit diamanatkan oleh UU Nomor 32/2004 yang menjadi tujuan dilaksanakannya Otonomi Daerah di Indonesia, yaitu : meningkatnya kesejahteraan masyarakat, meningkatnya pelayanan public, dan meningkatnya daya saing daerah. Era reformasi telah berlangsung sepuluh tahun lebih , banyak hal positif yang memperkuat eksistensi pemerintahan dan masyarakat lokal. Penguatan tersebut tercermin antara lain dalam upaya pemerintah pusat melakukan pelimpahan berbagai urusan yang semula menjadi kewenangannya kepada pemerintah daerah. Dengan semangat inilah, optimisme akan lahirnya daerah-daerah otonom yang mampu mensejahterakan masyarakat, menyelenggarakan pelayanan public dengan baik, serta berdaya saing tinggi mulai mencuat ke permukaan. Namun demikian, proses pelaksanaan desentralisasi di Indonesia juga diwarnai dengan euphoria. Hal ini bisa dilihat dari banyaknya daerah ingin melakukan pemekaran wilayah seperti pemekaran provinsi, pemekaran kabupaten/kota, pemekaran kecamatan, dan bahkan pemekaran kelurahan. Pemekaran daerah yang sejatinya ditujukan untuk makin memudahkan pencapaian tujuan desentralisasi, tidak jarang hanya menjadi ajang untuk mengakomodasi kepentingan elit politik lokal yang kalah dalam pemilihan. Salah satu akibat serius dari adanya euforia tersebut adalah terjadinya peningkatan jumlah daerah otonom baru sebagai hasil dari proses pemekaran daerah, tanpa diimbangi oleh kemampuan untuk meningkatkan kinerja daerah yang bersangkutan. Ada beberapa sumber yang bisa dijadikan rujukan terkait masalah pemekaran, baik yang dilakukan oleh Bappenas (2005), Lembaga Administrasi Negara (2005), Kementerian Dalam Negeri (2005) dan BRIDGE (2008); menunjukkan bahwa hasil-hasil yang dicapai oleh daerah pemekaran, baik dalam bidang ekonomi, keuangan daerah, pelayanan public maupun aparatur pemerintah daerah tidaklah seperti yang diharapkan ketika pemekaran dilakukan. Ada indikasi kuat, bahwa proses pemekaran dilakukan terutama untuk mengakomodasi kepentingan elit politik lokal semata, ketimbang didedikasikan bagi usaha pencapaian tujuan desentralisasi seperti yang diamanatkan dalam undang-undang yang mengatur masalah pemekaran. Studi BRIDGE (2008) secara spesifik menyimpulkan, bahwa selama lima tahun posisi daerah induk dan daerah control selalu lebih baik dari daerah otonomi baru dalam semua aspek yang diteliti. Kondisi tersebut diatas juga terjadi di Palangka Raya, sebagai ibukota Provinsi Kalimantan Tengah yang berpenduduk tidak lebih dari 200.000 jiwa, kota ini juga begitu antusias menyambut era desentralisasi. Semangat desentralisasi diwujudkan dalam berbagai kebijakan, diantaranya ialah pemekaran wilayah kelurahan. Ada beberapa wilayah kelurahan yang dimekarkan, salah satunya Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan, Kecamatan Pahandut. Kelurahan ini sebelumnya masuk wilayah Kelurahan Pahandut Seberang, Kecamatan Pahandut, Kota Palangka Raya. Secara geografis kelurahan ini masuk dalam wilayah perkotaan akan tetapi bila dilihat dari kondisi social dan ekonominya kelurahan seakan berada diwilayah yang jauh dari kemajuan dan hiruk pikuk masyarakat perkotaan. Jarak kelurahan Tumbangan Rungan dengan pusat kota hanya sekitar 10 km. Sungguh suatu jarak yang sangat mudah untuk ditempuh. Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan terletak dipesisir sungai Kahayan dimana sebagian besar masyarakatnya bermatapencaharian sebagai petani karet, penangkap ikan, buruh tani, dan serabutan. Semenjak kelurahan Tumbang Rungan dimekarkan lepas dari kelurahan induk kondisi kelurahan ini relative tidak berkembang. Kurang lebih lima tahun kelurahan ini mencoba untuk mandiri ; memiliki kantor lurah sendiri, puskesmas sendiri, dan Lembaga Keswadayaan Masyarakat. Berbagai program pemerintah dalam upaya peningkatan kesejahteraan masyarakat dan pengentasan kemiskinan telah masuk dan dilaksanakan di kelurahan ini. Menurut narasumber dalam hal ini Lurah Tumbang Rungan (Purwanto;2010) ; "program-program pemerintah tersebut memang betul telah sampai ke tangan masyarakat, akan tetapi tidak ada satupun program yang bisa dianggap berhasil dalam mengentaskan kemiskinan di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ". Menurut narasumber yang lain dalam hal ini tokoh masyarakat setempat (Uhing;2010) berpendapat bahwa; "kami merasa tidak ada manfatnya membentuk pemerintahan sendiri, ingin mandiri dan lebih sejahtera, kondisi kami tidak ada bedanya dengan sebelum kelurahan ini dimekarkan, kami masih tergolong miskin dan tertinggal, pembangunan fisik diwilayah kami masih sangat kurang". Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ialah satu contoh kecil dari sekian ratus wilayah kelurahan/desa pemekaran di Indonesia yang belum dapat merasakan dampak positif dari kebijakan pemekaran wilayah. Dalam kurun waktu kurang lebih lima tahun kelurahan Tumbang Rungan belum bisa mewujudkan impian daripada semangat desentralisasi yakni meningkatnya kesejahteraan masyarakat, meningkatnya pelayanan public, dan meningkatnya daya saing daerah. Hal ini bisa menjadi permasalahan yang sangat penting untuk segera dipecahkan mengingat bahwa untuk membentuk sebuah daerah pemekaran tentulah tidak mudah. Banyak prosedur dan persyaratan yang harus dipenuhi oleh pemerintah daerah agar sebuah bisa dimekarkan. Selain itu dalam proses pemekaran dibutuhkan biaya yang tidak sedikit, yang biaya tersebut juga menjadi beban dari pemerintah daerah dalam hal ini Kota Palangka Raya. Dampak Sosial dan Ekonomi Masalah keterbatasan kemudian terjadi pada sarana pelayanan kesehatan yang ada di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan. Hal ini dikarenakan hanya ada satu Puskesmas Pembantu saja di Tumbang Rungan yang secara kelayakan masih kurang, baik itu dalam segi fasilitas kesehatan yang masih minim, dana kesehatan yang terbatas dan tenaga medis yang masih kurang jumlahnya (baik itu jumlah perawat dan bidan). Hal ini menjadi masalah, karena mengingat ketika kita berbicara masalah pemekaran kelurahan, maka kita juga harus berbicara tentang bagaimana mendekatkan dan mengoptimalisasi pelayanan terhadap masyarakat di berbagai bidang, dan bidang kesehatan adalah salah satu hal yang paling krusial yang menyangkut salah satu pelayanan penting bagi masyarakat di Tumbang Rungan dalam rangka menaikan taraf kehidupan masyarakatnya. Selain itu, masalah lain adalah anak-anak mengalami rentan untuk mengalami keadaan kurang gizi terutama untuk balita akibat orang tua (ibu) tidak punya uang untuk membeli makanan yang sehat dan bergizi. Serta, yang tak ketinggalan adalah pencemaran Sungai Rungan akibat zat merkuri dengan konsentrasi yang boleh dibilang cukup tinggi sekitar 2966-4.687 mikro gram/liter oleh penambang emas liar mengakibatkan warga yang kesulitan mendapatkan air bersih yang sehat. Apalagi, warga Tumbang Rungan sehari-hari menkonsumsi dan menggunakan air sungai yang tercemar seperti untuk MCK, memasak dan lain-lain, sehingga rawan akan gangguan kesehatan yang diakibatkan oleh zat merkuri dalam jangka panjang seperti kanker kulit, kerusakan ginjal, hati hingga otak. Hal ini dikarenakan, masyarakat masih jarang menggunakan sumur bor karena tidak adanya dana untuk pembuatannya dan tidak adanya akses air bersih dan sehat seperti fasilitas PDAM. Tidak hanya itu, mengingat kelurahan Tumbang Rungan adalah daerah yang rawan banjir ketika musim hujan ekstrim terjadi, maka penyakit yang disebabkan akibat banjir seperti demam berdarah, malaria selalu mengincar warganya. Seharusnya, dalam hal ini Pemerintah harus meningkatkan perhatiannya terhadap bidang kesehatan yang ada di daerah pinggiran. Untuk masalah keamanan, Kelurahan Tumban Rungan cukup dikatakan sebagai daerah yang tergolong aman dan sangat jarang terjadi peristiwa criminal, konflik sosial dan sejenisnya. Jumlah Penduduk yang ada di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ialah 602 jiwa. Sedangkan , jumlah penduduk berdasarkan KK ialah 156 KK, dengan penduduk miskin berdasarkan jiwa 413 jiwa dan penduduk miskin berdasarkan KK ialah 112 KK. Jika dilihat dari tabel diatas, maka dapat disimpulkan rata-rata tingkat pendidikan warga yang ada di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan masih rendah berkisar antara lulusan Sekolah Dasar (SD) dan Sekolah Lanjutan Tingkat Pertama dan bahkan tidak tamat sekolah/putus sekolah sama sekali. Hal ini mungkin karena fasilitas pendidikannya masih terbatas disebabkan seperti SDN 1 Tumbang Rungan dan SMPN 8 Palangkaraya dalam penggunaan gedungnya bergantian atau istilahnya "Sekolah Satu Atap". Namun faktor kemiskinan lebih terlihat dominan disini. Bagi anak-anak yang berasal dari keluarga yang kurang mampu lebih memilih bekerja membantu orang tua, merantau keluar desa untuk menjadi buruh bangunan/pekerja tidak tetap di Kota Palangkaraya atau bagi yang perempuan menikah di usia yang masih muda. Tenaga kerja yang ada di wilayah Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini, rata-rata terbanyaknya adalah yang masih berusia produktif. Namun, karena hampir sebagian tingkat pendidikan masyarakat masih rendah, tidak memungkinkan mereka untuk mencari pekerjaan yang memenuhi kualifikasi cukup tinggi saat ini. Masalah yang paling tinggi frekuensinya adalah rendahnya tingkat pendapatan yang kemudian menyebabkan kerentanan kemiskinan. Hal ini dikarenakan karena warganya mayoritas memiliki profesi yang tidak tetap atau serabutan dengan hasil pendapatan yang tidak menentu juga. Hal ini tentu berdampak secara sosial dimana merembet ke masalah- masalah lain seperti pendidikan yang rendah karena tidak sanggupnya membiayai pendidikan yang kian mahal sementara pendapatan mereka tidak mengalami peningkatan hal ini kemudian berimbas lagi kepada kualitas SDM yang rendah, tingkat kesehatan yang kurang yang mempengaruhi kualitas hidupnya dan lain-lain, sehingga membentuk sebuah lingkaran setan. Pola pemukiman warga di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan umumnya mengelompok di tengah wilayah kelurahan. Dan umumnya didirikan di tepi-tepi jalan dibuat sejajar atau ada pula yang mengikuti pola aliran sungai. Rumah warga Tumbang Rungan pada umumnya terbuat dari kayu atau papan, dengan ada yang menggunakan atap yang terbuat dari genteng, seng dan daun kelapa atau rumbia. Potensi rekreasi di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan sebenarnya cukup banyak jika jeli dalam hal melihat peluang dan dikelola dengan optimal baik itu jika dengan bantuan masyarakat setempat dengan bekerja sama dengan Pemerintah. Beberapa potensi wisata yang dapat dikembangkan, misalnya kegiatan wisata alam. Mengenai karakteristik penduduk yang ada di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan adalah bersifat heterogen dimana komposisi penduduknya berasal dari beragam suku bangsa dan agama., baik itu yang tergolong sebagai penduduk lokal asli (Dayak dan Banjar) maupun penduduk pendatang seperti Jawa, Madura dan Sunda. Masalah kependudukan yang ada di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan lain adalah penyebaran penduduk yang masih tidak merata dan kualitas penduduk masih rendah tidak sebanding dengan pertumbuhan penduduk yang cukup tinggi, hal ini lebih dikarenakan banyak yang melakukan pernikahan di usia muda. Biasanya hal ini dikarenakan selain faktor ekonomi, juga dikarenakan minimnya kesadaran untuk mengikuti Program Keluarga Berencana untuk membentuk keluarga kecil, sederhana yang berkualitas. Selain itu minimnya kuantitas dan kualitas sarana, prasarana dan SDM yang mengakibatkan rendahnya kuantitas dan kualitas pelayanan peristiwa kependudukan di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan. Pemerintahan di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan umumnya berjalan dengan baik, peran lurah disini cukup dominan dalam hal menjalankan pemerintahan di wilayah ini. Hal ini dikarenakan posisi lurah di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan cukup disegani oleh masyarakat yang ada di wilayah ini. Dalam hal nilai politik di wilayah ini, pada dasarnya masyarakat Tumbang Rungan boleh dikatakan cukup memiliki atensi atas berbagai kebijakan yang dikeluarkan oleh Pemerintah Kota Palangka Raya, walaupun tak dapat di pungkiri masih ada sikap yang cenderung apatis dan terbiasa menunggu. Tapi, hal ini bukanlah masalah yang cukup berarti jika pemerintah lebih menstimulasi untuk mendorong kepedulian masyarakat setempat. Warga Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan cenderung memiliki kohesivitas yang tinggi mau berbaur dan ramah sekalipun dengan warga pendatang. Warga Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan yang memilki komposisi yang beragam baik itu suku bangsa dan agama mampu menciptakan harmonisasi dan toleransi antar sesama. Namun, warga Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan sangat rentan mengalami tekanan eksternal akibat kemiskinan. Mobilitas sosial yang ada di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ialah cenderung mengalami mobilitas sosial horizontal dan vertical ke bawah. Penyebab mobilitas sosial horizontal, contohnya adalah seperti penduduk pendatang dari Pulau Jawa mengganti statusnya sebagai bagian dari penduduk di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan. Sementara penyebab mobilitas vertical ke bawah, misalnya petani karet yang memiliki lahan kebun karet namun ketika faktor cuaca tidak mendukung untuk menjalankan usaha karetnya mereka kemudian beralih profesi misalnya menjadi petani keramba sebagai sambilan agar tidak menganggur dan untuk menambah pendapatan. Namun, ketika usaha karet sudah bisa dijalankan kembali maka mereka kembali menjadi petani karet. Dapat dikatakan alih profesi sementara ini sebagai "proses belajar" petani karet merambah menjadi petani keramba sebagai mobilitas vertical. Dampak mobilitas sosial yang lain adalah dengan adanya heterogenitas (multietnik) yang ada di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan adalah adanya kohesivitas (semangat kebersamaan) yang tinggi dapat menjadi sebuah potensi tapi sekaligus dapat pula menjadi sumber konflik sosial bahkan fisik terutama antara penduduk asli dan penduduk pendatang yang datang dari luar, namun hal ini dapat diantisipasi. Kelurahan Tumbang Ringan sangat rentan akan faktor alam (iklim) terutama di kala musim hujan yang mengakibatkan banjir sehingga menghambat laju perekonomian. Kemurahan alam di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan mengakibatkan daerah ini memiliki potensi perikanan (usaha keramba), pertanian dan perkebunan karet yang cukup baik. Namun, hal ini masih belum bisa dioptimalkan dalam pengelolaannya, misalnya dalam hal pengelolaan lahan tidur yang luas. Jalan-jalan disana cukup licin dan terjal kala hujan dan berdebu dikala musim kemarau. Namun, geliat perhatian Pemerintah Kota Palangkaraya yang sebelumnya terhambat akibat terbatasnya anggaran mulai terlihat dengan adanya program pembuatan dan pelebaran jalan aspal permanen di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan serta pembangunan konstruksi jembatan yang sebelumnya amblas dan system sanitasi dan drainase di tahun 2011 yang kondisi sebelumnya cukup memprihatinkan. Menurut, Walikota H. Riban Satia hal ini selain mempercepat pembangunan, membuka keterisolasian juga untuk menangani masalah banjir yang terjadi pada musim hujan. Dapat disimpulkan jika warga masyarakat masyarakat memiilki harapan akan mengecap manisnya pembangunan. Sekalipun daerah mereka termasuk daerah pinggiran, mereka juga tak mau nasibnya juga ikut terpinggirkan. Pengembangan sains dan teknologi yang ada di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan masih terbatas karena penguasaan dan pengetahuan sains serta teknologi yang masih kurang. Masyarakatnya hanya menguasai teknologi yang bersifat tradisional dan manual misalnya dalam pengembangan tanaman karet, perikanan dan peternakan, hal ini mungkin dipengaruhi oleh kurangnya tingkat pendidikan warga, informasi dan sosialisasi daripada Pemerintah Kota Palangkaraya untuk daerah pinggiran seperti Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan yang masih dirasa masih belum optimal. Padahal saat ini sains dan teknologi saat ini juga memiliki peran penting dalam percepatan pembangunan di suatu wilayah. Pendapatan perkapita di wilayah kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini adalah sekitar kurang dari Rp.10.000,-/hari. Sehingga boleh dikatakan pendapatan perkapita di wilayah ini masih rendah. Penduduk di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan dapat dikatakan sebagai masyarakat menengah ke bawah. Rata-rata warga di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan berprofesi sebagai petani dan buruh karet, petani keramba, nelayan tradisional yang dijadikan sebagai sandaran ekonomi keluarga. Umumnya warga yang bermukim di bantaran Sungai Rungan hidup dari usaha menangkap ikan (nelayan tradisonal). Hanya sedikit dari mereka yang memiliki dana dan membuka usaha menjadi petani keramba. Selebihnya menjalani keseharian dengan memancing, malunta dan marengge di anak-anak Sungai Rungan. Sedangkan, mereka yang tinggal agak jauh dari sungai membuka usaha karet. Bagi yang tak punya tanaman, lahan dan modal terpaksa menjadi buruh penyadap. Bagi petani dan buruh penyadap karet, jika cuaca ekstrim terjadi di Januari hingga Desember atau di saat musim hujan yang mengakibatkan banjir akibat luberan Sungai Rungan yang tak mampu lagi menampung tingginya curah hujan, maka warga disana tidak bisa menyadap karet serta terpaksa menganggur dalam waktu yang cukup lama. Oleh karena itu, warga kelurahan Tumbang Rungan bertahan hidup dengan cara melakukan usaha alternative lain, misalnya dengan memanfaatkan keberadaan sungai dan rawa dengan cara mencari ikan dengan peralatan nelayan tradisional seperti pancing, rengge, tampirai, lukah dan lain sebagainya. Namun, sangat disayangkan hasil usaha seperti ini tidak dapat diandalkan. Hal ini lebih dikarenakan hasil tangkapan masih belum cukup untuk memenuhi kehidupan sehari-hari, selain itu jumlah tangkapan yang makin hari kian berkurang akibat banyaknya orang yang datang dari kota Palangkaraya yang ikut melakukan penangkapan ikan namun tak pernah dilarang oleh warga setempat. Selain itu, kalaupun hasil tangkapan mereka banyak, mereka kemudian akan dipusingkan dengan begitu murahnya harga jual ikan yang tak sebanding dengan lelah atau modal dan sulitnya rantai distribusi akibat minimnya aksesibilitas masyarakat dalam rangka melakukan aktivitas sosial ekonomi masih menjadi kendala, sementara penghasilan rumah tangga mereka masih rendah. Beberapa warga mengaku sempat melakukan usaha alternative lainya yaitu dengan membuka usaha keramba dengan modal nekad dan pinjaman uang dari keluarga, salah satunya ialah Bapak Abdul Shani. Namun, usaha itu kemudian bangkrut karena mengalami kerugian, seiring dengan naiknya harga pakan untuk ikan dan harga ikan usaha keramba mengalami penurunan lantaran berlimpahnya suplai ikan yang ada di pasaran kota Palangkaraya . Dapat disimpulkan, bahwa faktor alam (cuaca) dan faktor kendala yang bersifat ekonomi (permintaan, penawaran, distribusi dalam aksesibilitas berupa transportasi) selama ini turut memiliki andil dalam mempengaruhi perekonomian warga di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan terutama bagi petani karet. Namun, ketika faktor cuaca mendukung, maka keadaan ekonomi mereka pun mulai membaik, paling-paling hal yang menjadi kendala adalah harga karet yang jatuh. Oleh karena itu, kaum petani karet di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan berharap agar Pemerintah memiliki mekanisme yang mengatur harga karet standar, hal ini cukup menjadi sebuah pembuktian bagi mereka bahwa Pemerintah mempunyai kepedulian terhadap petani-petani karet terutama di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan. Di wilayah Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini masih tingkat pengangguran masih cukup tinggi, ada sekitar ±167 jiwa yang menjadi pengangguran di wilayah ini. Sehingga dirasa perlu adanya sebuah terobosan kebijakan dari Pemerintah Kota Palangkaraya dalam rangka mengurangi tingkat pengangguran Tingkat kemiskinan masih cukup tinggi, dimana berdasarkan jumlah KK ada sekitar ±156 KK dan yang tercatat sebagai keluarga miskin di Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini menurut Kep WKP Nomor 57 tahun 2009 Tentang Penetapan Keluarga Miskin di Kota Palangkaraya tahun 2009 adalah ada sekitar 112 KK yang termasuk sebagai bagian dari Keluarga Miskin. Sedangkan, berdasarkan jumlah jiwa dari 602 jiwa, ada sekitar 413 jiwa yang termasuk sebagai kategori miskin. Hal ini dikarenakan usaha masyarakat dirasa masih belum optimal karena banyaknya kendala. Padahal, Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan memiliki potensi di bidang perikanan. Berbagai program penanggulangan kemiskinan seperti BLT, Raskin, PNPM, PM2L, dan Askeskin diluncurkan untuk menurunkan angka kemiskinan, seharusnya hal yang paling difokuskan adalah program yang bersifat pemberdayaan masyarakat. Karena itu, dirasa perlu ada semacam rehabilitasi ekonomi untuk mendorong warga Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan dalam sector perekonomian misalnya dengan cara memberikan bantuan permodalan bagi masyarakat miskin agar usahanya dapat berkembang dan lebih kompetitif, membuka lapangan kerja baru berupa industry lanjutan pengelolaan hasil alam, pemerataan pembangunan, aksesibilitas masyarakat berupa jalan, transportasi ke kecamatan/kota untuk mendukung aktivitas sosial ekonomi masyarakat menjadi poin penting. Kelurahan Tumbang Rungan sebagai kelurahan pemekaran yang masih relative baru, tentu ada begitu banyak hal yang harus dibenahi. Jika dikaji lebih lanjut mengenai dampak sosial yang dipahami ketika kebijakan pemekaran kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini, ada beberapa hal penting yang disoroti. Dengan memainkan peran pemantauan dalam analisis kebijakan, tentulah kita dapat langsung melihat bahwa kebijakan pemekaran kelurahan untuk kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini pada dasarnya tidak dapat dinyatakan secara layak untuk dijadikan sebagai kelurahan. Hal ini harus menjadi dasar pemikiran ulang bagi Pemerintah Kota Palangkaraya apabila hendak mengambil sebuah kebijakan. Agar kelak tidak diambil secara serampangan, tanpa memperhatikan aspek sosial, ekonomi, lingkungan fisik dan lain-lain. Karena jika tidak, yang terjadi bukan sebuah kemajuan seperti yang diharapkan melainkan sebaliknya. Aspek sosial memainkan peran penting dalam hal proses pengambilan kebijakan. Pemerintah Kota Palangka Raya boleh saja memiliki rancangan yang baik diatas kertas, tapi rancangan tanpa relevansi di lapangan adalah hal yang mustahil. Pekerjaan berat bagi Pemerintah Kota Palangka Raya dalam rangka untuk menyelesaikan hal ini. Kembali mempersoalkan mengenai dampak sosial akibat pemekaran kelurahan ini berdasarkan pemantauan sebagai analisis kebijakan. Tujuan dari suatu pemekaran wilayah kelurahan ini sendiri adalah dalam rangka peningkatan efektivitas pelayanan pemerintah kepada public, agar masyarakat merasa dekat dan memiliki pemerintah. Namun jika, kebijakan ini tidak dibarengi dengan persiapan seperti penyediaan sarana dan prasarana yang baik serta tidak dibarengi dengan anggaran yang memadai. Alhasil, pemekaran wilayah kelurahan ini menjadi sia-sia. Alih-alih untuk mendapat sebuah kemajuan seperti yang ditargetkan, justru malah terjadi kelalaian. Beberapa hal yang direncanakan menjadi meleset, daerah terpinggir seperti kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini memiliki kesamaan dengan daerah pinggiran pada umumnya. Dimana sarana prasana yang buruk baik itu kantor, jalan dan lain-lain, masyarakat miskin, taraf pendidikan yang masih rendah, semua itu jelas tergambar di wilayah ini. Perencanaan yang tidak matang hanya akan menimbulkan masalah baru. Artinya kebijakan pemekaran kelurahan ini masih dikatakan premature dan tujuan yang ditargetkan serta manfaat yang seharusnya dirasakan masyarakat masih belum diterima oleh masyarakat kelurahan Tumbang Rungan itu sendiri. Hal ini dapat dilihat dari beberapa hasil penelitian diatas seperti bagaimana tingkat pendidikan masyarakat disana yang masih rendah, putus sekolah karena alasan kemiskinan. Tingkat kesehatan mereka pun masih rendah, tidak adanya perhatian terhadap anak-anak dan wanita sebagai kelompok yang palin rawan kemiskinan, namun begitu tidak atensi yang berarti dari Pemerintah Kota Palangkaraya terkait dengan beberapa hal diatas. Bukan mustahil, masalah sosial seperti kemiskinan, pengangguran yang cukup tinggi di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan jika tidak segera diatasi hanya akan menimbulkan masalah sosial baru yang lainya, yang hanya tinggal menunggu waktu saja. Dari sisi ekonomi berdasarkan fungsi pemantauan, dapat dilihat tidak ada pertumbuhan ekonomi yang begitu berarti atau kearah implikasi yang positif di wilayah kelurahan Tumbang Rungan ini. Persentase kemiskinan dan pengangguran masih cukup tinggi, pendapatan perkapita yang rendah. Hal ini dikarenakan, ketika kebijakan pemekaran wilayah kelurahan ini diambil tanpa mempertimbangkan kebijakan strategis apa yang akan diambil untuk mempercepat pertumbuhan ekonomi di wilayah pinggiran ini. Dari hasil penelitian diatas banyak hal yang mempengaruhi mengapa pertumbuhan ekonomi di wilayah ini sangat lamban. Kebijakan pemekaran kelurahan ini tidak dibarengi dengan langkah-langkah konkrit di bidang ekonomi, misalnya pemberian modal dan pengadaan teknologi tepat guna bagi pengembangan usaha di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan. Keluhan masyarakat di kelurahan Tumbang Rungan mengenai perekonomian, taraf kehidupan dan kesejahteraan yang masih rendah yang terjadi hamper sebagian mereka menjadi tantangan tersendiri bagi Pemerintah Kota Palangka Raya untuk lebih memikirkan kelurahan yang tertinggal ini. Dirasa sangat perlu untuk bagi Pemerintah Kota Palangka Raya untuk melakukan rehabilitasi ekonomi di wilayah ini, dengan mendayagunakan segenap potensi yang dimiliki kelurahan Tumbang Rungan dengan memberdayakan masyarakat setempat dan di stimulasi oleh Pemerintah Kota Palangka Raya.
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Eyal Weizman on the Architectural-Image Complex, Forensic Archeology and Policing across the Desertification Line
Incidents in global politics are usually apprehended as the patterned interaction of macro-actors such as states. Eyal Weizman takes a different tack—an architect by training, Weizman tackles incidents through detailed readings of heterogeneous materials—digital images, debris, reforestation, blast patterns in ruins—to piece together concrete positions of engagement in specific legal, political, or activist controversies in global politics. In this Talk, Weizman—among others—elaborates on methods across scales and material territories, discusses the interactions of environment and politics, and traces his trajectory in forensic architecture.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is—or should be—according to you, the biggest challenge, central focus or principal debate in critical social sciences?
We live in an age in which there is both a great storm of information and a progressive form of activism seeking to generate transparency in relation to government institutions, corporations or secret services. These forms of exposure exponentially increase the number of primary sources on corporations and state and provide also rare media from war zones, but this by itself does not add more clarity. It could increase confusion and increasingly be used disseminate false information and propaganda. The challenge is to start another process to carefully piece together and compose this information.
I'm concerned with research about armed conflict. Contemporary conflict tends to take place in urban environments saturated with media of varicose sorts, whenever violence is brought into a city, it provokes an enormous production of images, clips, sounds, text, etc.
As conflict in Iraq, Syria, Missouri and the Ukraine demonstrate, one of the most important potential sources for conflict investigations is produced by the very people living in the war zones and made available in social networks almost instantly. The citizens recording events in conflict zones are conscious of producing testimonies and evidence, and importantly so, they do so on their own terms. The emergence of citizen journalists/witness has already restructured the fields of journalism with most footage composing Al Jazeera broadcasts, for example, being produced by non-professional media. The addition of a huge multiplicity of primary sources, live testimonies and filmed records of events, challenge research methods and evidentiary practices. There is much locational and spatial information that can be harvested from within these blurry, shaky and unedited images/clips and architectural methodologies are essential in reconstructing incidents in space. Architecture is a good framework to understand the world, alongside others.
Whereas debates around the 'politics of the image' in the field of photography and visual cultures tended to concentrate on the decoding of single images and photojournalistic trophy shots we now need to study the creation of extensive 'image-complexes' and inhabit this field reconstruct events from images taken at different perspective and at different times. The relation between images is architectural, best composed and represented within 3D models. Architectural analysis is useful in locating other bits of evidence—recorded testimonies, films and photos—from multiple perspectives in relation to one other bits of evidence and cross referring these in space.
But 'image complexes' are about interrogating the field of visibility it is also about absence, failures of representation, blockages or destruction of images.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about global politics?
I'm an architect, and my intellectual upbringing is in architectural theory and spatial theory. I tend to hold on to this particular approach when I'm entering a geopolitical context or areas that would otherwise be the domain of journalists and human rights people, traditional jurists, etc. Architecture taught me to pay attention to details, to materiality, to media, and to make very close observations about the way built structures might embody political relations.
When I study political situations, I study them as an architect: I look at the way politics turns into a material—spatial practice—the materialization, and at the spatialization, of political forces. Architectural form—as I explained many times—is slowed-down force. My thinking is structured around a relation between force and form. And form, for an architect, is an entry point from which to read politics. So when I look at matter and material reality—like a building, a destroyed building, a piece of infrastructure, a road or bridge, a settlement or suburb or city—I look at it as a product of a political force field. But it is never static. A city always grows, expands or contracts recording the multiple political relations that shaped it.
Buildings continuously record their environment. So one can read political force on buildings. In taking this approach, I am influenced by building surveyors, and insurance people going into a building to look at a scratch in a wall to piece together what might have happened, and what might still happen. So I feel like a kind of property surveyor on the scale of a city at times of war. But in practicing this forensic architecture I also work like an archaeologist: archaeology is about looking at material remains and trying to piece together the cultural, political, military, or social spheres. But I'm an archaeologist of very recent past or of the present. While some of my investigations will always retain a haptic dimension based on material examination, much of it is an analysis of material captured and registered by various medias. Verify, locate, compose and cross-reference a spatial reality from images of architecture.
What would a student need to become a specialist in your field or understand the world in a global way?
The institutes I run do not recruit only architects. We need to open up the disciplinary bounds of education. We work with filmmakers and architects and with artists.
It embodies a desire to understand architecture as a field of inquiry, with which you can interrogate reality as it is effectively registering material transformation. I see architecture as a way of augmenting our way of seeing things in the world, but it's not for me a kind of sacred field that should not be touched or changed.
But I'm also using architecture across the entire spectrum of its relation to politics, from the very dystopian—with forensic architecture, a kind of architectural pathology—to the utopian. I have a studio in Palestine with Palestinian partners of mine, and internationals. Alessandro Petty and Sandi Hilal are in this group, which is called Decolonizing Architure. It's this group that is engaged in very utopian projects for the West Bank and Palestine and the return of refugees and so on. So I use architecture across the entire spectrum, from the very dystopian to the very utopian. Architecture is simply a way of engaging the world and its politics. Space is the way of establishing relations between things. And actually space is not static, it is both a means of establishing relations between people and objects and things. Just as material itself is always an event, always under transformation. So that is something I have taken from architecture and try to bring into politics, but not only in analyzing crimes, but in producing the reality yet to come.
So what we need from people is the desire to understand aesthetics as a field of inquiry, not simply as a pleasurable play of beauty and pleasing kind of effect, but as a kind of very sensorial field, sensorium, in which you can interrogate reality as it is effectively registering material transformation. So I would look simply for that kind of sensorial intensity and high critical approach and understanding and speculating of how it is we know what we think we know. Of course, you cannot see, or you do not know what you see, you do not have the language to interpret or question what it is you 'see' without abstract constructs. This means I don't necessarily look for theoretical capacities in people: I see theory as a way of augmenting our way of seeing things in the world, of registering them, of decoding them, but it's not for me a kind of sacred field to which I submit in any way.
So what is it you work on now?
I'm mostly trying to establish forensic architecture as a critical field of practice and as an agency that produce and disseminate evidence about war crimes in urban context. Recent forensic investigations in Guatemala and in the Israeli Negev involved the intersection of violence and environmental transformations, even climate change. For trials and truth commissions, we analyze the extent to which environmental transformation intersect with conflict.
The imaging of this previously invisible types of violence—'environmental violence' such as land degradation, the destruction of fields and forests (in the tropics), pollution and water diversion, and also long term processes of desertification—we use as new type of evidence of processes dispersed across time and space. There are other conflicts that unfold in relation to climatic and environmental transformations and in particular in relation to environmental scarcity.
Conflict has reciprocal interaction with environment transformation: environmental change could aggravate conflict, while conflict tends to generate further environmental damage. This has been apparent in Darfur, Sudan where the conflict was aggravated by increased competition over arable due to local land erosion and desertification. War and insurgency have occurred along Sahel—Arabic for 'shoreline'—on the southern threshold of the Sahara Desert, which is only ebbing as million of hectares of former arable land turn to desert. In past decades, conflicts have broken out in most countries from East to West Africa, along this shoreline: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal. In 2011 in the city of Daraa, farmers' protests, borne out of an extended cycle of droughts, marked the beginning of the Syrian civil war. Similar processes took place in the eastern outskirts of Damascus, Homs, al-Raqqah and along the threshold of the great Syrian and Northern Iraqi Deserts. These transformations impact upon cities, themselves a set of entangled natural/man-made environments. The conflict and hardships along desertification bands compel dispossessed farmers to embark upon increasingly perilous paths of migrations, leading to fast urbanization at the growing outskirts of the cities and slams.
I'm trying to understand these processes across desert thresholds. There has been a very long colonial debate about what is the line beyond which the desert begins. Most commonly it was defined as 200 mm rain per annum. Cartographers were trying to draw it, as it represented, to a certain extent, the limit of imperial control. From this line on, most policing was done through bombing of tribal areas from the air. Since the beginning, the emergence of the use of air power in policing in the post World War I period—aerial control, aerial government—took form in places that were perceived, at the time, as lying beyond the thresholds or edges of the law. The British policing of Iraq, the French in Syria, and Algeria, the Italians in Libya are examples where control would hover in air.
Up to now I was writing about borders that were physical and manmade: walls in the West Bank or Gaza and the siege around it—most notably in Hollow Land (2007, read the introduction here). Now I started to write about borders that are made by the interaction of people and the environment—like the desert line—which is not less violent and brutal. The colonial history of Palestine has been an attempt to push the line of the desert south, trying to make it green or bloom—this is in Ben Gurion's terms—but the origins of this statement are earlier and making the desert green and pushing the line of the desert was also Mussolini's stated aim. On the other hand, climate change is now pushing that line north.
Following not geopolitical but meteorological borders, helps me cut across a big epistemological problem that confines the writing in international relations or geopolitics within the borders organize your writing. Braudel is an inspiration but, for him, the environment of the Mediterranean is basically cyclically fixed. The problem with geographical determinism is that it takes nature as a given, cyclical, milieu which then affects politics—but I think we are now in a period where politics affects nature in the same way in which nature affects politics. The climate is changing in the same speed as human history.
What does your background in architecture add to understanding the global political controversies you engage in?
We are a forensic agency that provides services to prosecution teams around the world. With our amazing members we ran 20-odd cases around the world from the Amazon to Atacama, for the UN, for Amnesty, for Palestinian NGOs, in Gaza of course, West Bank, issues of killings, individual killings in the West Bank that we do now, and much more drastic destructions.
Forensic Architecture is unique in using architectural research methodologies to analyze violations of human rights and international humanitarian law as they bear upon the built environment—on buildings, cities and territories, and this is why we get many commissions. We produced architectural evidence for numerous investigations and presented them in a number of cases in national and international courts and tribunals. We were commissioned by the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights to study single destroyed buildings, as well as patterns of destruction, resulting from drone warfare in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza. This study was presented at the UN General Assembly in New York. We developed techniques to locate the remains of buildings and villages overgrown by thick rain forests and presented this material as evidence in the genocide trial of former president Efraín Ríos Montt in the National Court of Guatemala and the Inter-American Court. We quantified and analyzed levels of architectural destruction in Gaza after the 2014 conflict for Amnesty International. We provided architectural models and animations to support a petition against the wall in Battir submitted to the Israeli High Court, helping to win the case.
Recently, we use and deal with the reconstruction of human testimony. Witnesses to war give account of the worst moment of their lives; times when their dear ones have died or hurt. Their memory is disturbed, and tends to be blurred. We have developed a way of very carefully interviewing and discussing with witnesses. Together with them, we build digital models of their own homes. So we can see a very slow process of reconstruction of the relation between memory space and architecture. And events start coming back, through the process of building.
In order to develop this, we needed to explore the historical use of memory and architecture, such as Frances Yates' The Art of Memory (read it here), as well as different accounts on the use of trauma, and bring them into the digital age, bring an understanding of the relation of testimony and evidence into contemporary thinking. Single incidents tend to be argued away as aberrations of 'standard operating procedures'. To bring charges against government and military leaderships, it is necessary to demonstrate 'gross and systematic' violations. This means finding consistent and repeated patterns of violations. Architectural analysis, undertaken on the level of the city is able to demonstrate repetition and transformations in patterns of violation/destruction in space and time—within the battle zone along the duration of the conflict. Architectural analysis is useful not only in dealing with architectural evidence—i.e with destroyed buildings—but also helpful in locating other bits of evidence—testimony films or photos—in relation to one other bits of evidence, and cross referring these in space.
Urban violence unfolds at different intensities, speeds and spatial scales: it is made of patterns of multiple instantaneous events as well as slower incremental processes of 'environmental violence' that affects the transformation of larger territories. We aims to analyze and present the relation between forms of violence that occur at different space and time scales. From eruptive kinetic violence of the instantaneous/human incident through patterns of destruction mapped across and along the duration of urban conflict, to what Rob Nixon calls the 'slow violence' of environmental transformation (read the introduction of the eponymous book here, pdf).
Last question. How does your approach to research relate to, or differ from, approaches to international politics?
To study conflict as a reality that unfolds across multiple scales, we use the microphysical approach—dealing with details, fragments and ruins—as an entry-point from which we will unpack the larger dynamics of a conflict. We reconstruct singular incidents, locate them in space and time to look for and identify patterns, then study these patterns in relation to long terms and wide-scale environmental transformations. This approach seeks to make connections between, what Marc Bloch of the Annales School called 'micro- and macro-history, between close-ups and extreme long shots' in his thesis on historical method. This topological approach is distinct from a traditional scalar one: the macro (political/strategic/territorial) situation will not be seen a root cause for a myriad set of local human right violations (incidents/tactics). In the complex reality of conflict, singularities are equally the result of 'framing conditions' and also contributing factors to phase transitions that might affect, or 'de-frame' as Latour has put it, changes occurring in wider areas. Instead of nesting smaller scales within larger ones, our analysis will seek to fluidly shift from macro to micro, from political conditions to individual cases, from buildings to environments and this along multiple threads, connection and feedback loops.
While in relation to the single incident it might still be possible to establish a direct, liner connection between the two limit figures of the perpetrator and the victim along the model of (international) criminal law, evidence for environmental violence is more scattered and diffused. Instead, it requires the examination of what we call 'field causalities'—causal ecologies that are non-linear, diffused, simultaneous, and that involve multiple agencies and feedback loops, challenging the immediacy of 'evidence'.
Establishing field causalities requires the examination of force fields and causal ecologies, that are non-linear, diffused, simultaneous and involve multiple agencies and feedback loops. Whereas linear causality entails a focus on sequences of causal events on the model of criminal law that seeks to trace a direct line between the two limit figures of victim and perpetrator field causality involves the spatial arrangement of simultaneous sites, actions and causes. It is inherently relational and thus a spatial concept. By treating space as the medium of relation between separate elements of evidence brought together, we aim to expand the analytical scope of forensic architecture. It is inherently relational and thus a spatial concept. By treating space as the medium of relation between separate elements of evidence brought together, field causalities expands the analytical scope of forensic architecture.
Let me illustrate this a bit. Forms of violence are crucially convertible one to another. Drying fields along the Sahel or the Great Syrian Desert, for example, reach a point in which they can no longer support their farmers, contributing to impoverishment, migration to cities, slumnization and waves of protest that might contribute to the eruption of armed conflict. These layers call for a form of architectural analysis able to shift and synthesize information at different scales—from single incidents as they are registered in the immediate spatial setting, through patterns of violations across the entire urban terrain to 'environmental violence' articulated in the transformation of large territories.
Eyal Weizman is an architect, Professor of Visual Cultures and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2011 he also directs the European Research Council funded project, Forensic Architecture - on the place of architecture in international humanitarian law. Since 2007 he is a founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. Weizman has been a professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and has also taught at the Bartlett (UCL) in London at the Stadel School in Frankfurt and is a Professeur invité at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He lectured, curated and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include Mengele's Skull (with Thomas Keenan at Sterenberg Press 2012), ForensicArchitecture (dOCUMENTA13 notebook, 2012), The Least of all Possible Evils (Nottetempo 2009, Verso 2011), Hollow Land (Verso, 2007), A Civilian Occupation (Verso, 2003), the series Territories 1,2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and edited books.
Related links
Facultyprofile at Goldsmith Forensic Architecture homepage Read Weizman's introduction to Forensis (2014) here (pdf) Read Weizman's Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums (dOCUMENTA 2012) here (pdf) Read Weizman's Lethal Theory (2009) here (pdf) Read the introduction to Weizman's Hollow Land (2007) here (pdf)
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
0 0 1 3506 19988 School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg 166 46 23448 14.0
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 9, Heft 2, S. 204-210
ISSN: 1545-8504
Debarun Bhattacharjya (" Formulating Asymmetric Decision Problems as Decision Circuits " and " From Reliability Block Diagrams to Fault Tree Circuits ") is a research staff member in the Risk Analytics team within the broader Business Analytics and Math Sciences division at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He received his Ph.D. in management science and engineering at Stanford University. His primary research interests lie in decision and risk analysis, and probabilistic models and decision theory in artificial intelligence. Specifically, he has pursued research in probabilistic graphical models (influence diagrams and Bayesian networks), value of information, sensitivity analysis, and utility theory. His applied work has been in domains such as sales, energy, business services, and public policy. He has coauthored more than 10 publications in highly refereed journals and conference proceedings, as well as two patents. He was nominated by IBM management for the Young Researcher Connection at the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Practice Conference in 2010. Email: debarunb@us.ibm.com . May Cheung (" Regulation Games Between Government and Competing Companies: Oil Spills and Other Disasters ") is an undergraduate senior in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo. Her research interests are in decision analysis, optimization, and simulation with respect to complex, high-impact decisions. Email: mgcheung@buffalo.edu . Léa A. Deleris (" From Reliability Block Diagrams to Fault Tree Circuits ") is a research staff member and manager at IBM Dublin Research Laboratory, where she oversees the Risk Collaboratory, a three-year research project funded in part by the Irish Industrial Development Agency around risk management, from stochastic optimization to the communication of risk information to decision makers. Prior to joining the Dublin lab, she was a research staff member with the Risk Analytics Group, Business Application and Mathematical Science Department, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. Her primary interests have been in the fields of decision theory and risk analysis. Her work is currently focused on leveraging natural language processing techniques to facilitate the construction of risk models, distributed elicitation of expert opinions, and value of information problems. She holds a Ph.D. in management science and engineering from Stanford University. Email: lea.deleris@ie.ibm.com . Philippe Delquié (" Risk Measures from Risk-Reducing Experiments ") is an associate professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University, and holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Delquié's teaching and research are in decision, risk, and multicriteria analysis. His research is at the nexus of behavioral and normative theories of decision, addressing issues in preference elicitation, value of information, nonexpected utility models of choice, and risk measures. Prior to joining the George Washington University, he held academic appointments at INSEAD, the University of Texas at Austin, and École Normale Supérieure, France, and visiting appointments at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis and has completed a term as an associate editor. Email: delquie@gwu.edu . Lorraine Dodd (" Regulating Autonomous Agents Facing Conflicting Objectives: A Command and Control Example ") is a highly respected international contributor to command and leadership studies within military and UK governmental command, control, intelligence and information analysis, and research. She has an honours degree in pure mathematics and an M.Sc. in operational research and management science from the University of Warwick majoring in catastrophe theory and nonlinearity. Her main interest is in sense-making, decision making, and risk taking under conditions of uncertainty, confusion, volatility, ambiguity, and contention, as applied to the study of institutions, organizations, society, people, and governance. She uses analogy with brain functions and coherent cellular functions to develop mathematical models of complex decision behavior. Her most recent studies include an application of a multiagency, multiperspective approaches to collaborative decision making and planning, and development of an "open-eyes/open-mind" framework to provide support to leaders when dealing with complex crises and "black swans." She has developed an understanding of the nonlinear, slow and fast dynamics of behavior, in particular, of means of organizing for agility in complex and uncertain environments. Email: l.dodd@cranfield.ac.uk . Rachele Foschi (" Interactions Between Ageing and Risk Properties in the Analysis of Burn-in Problems ") has an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she also worked as a tutor for the courses of calculus and probability. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Economics and Institutional Change Research Area at IMT (Institutions, Markets, Technologies) Advanced Studies, in Lucca, Italy. Her research interests include stochastic dependence, reliability, stochastic orders, point processes, and mathematical models in economics. Random sets and graphs, linguistics, and behavioral models are of broader interest to her. Email: rachele.foschi@imtlucca.it . Simon French (" Expert Judgment, Meta-analysis, and Participatory Risk Analysis ") recently joined the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick to become the director of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit. Prior to joining the University of Warwick, he was a professor of information and decision sciences at Manchester Business School. Simon's research career began in Bayesian statistics, and he was one of the first to apply hierarchical modeling, particularly in the domain of protein crystallography. Nowadays he is better known for his work on decision making, which began with his early work on decision theory. Over the years, his work has generally become more applied: looking at ways of supporting real decision makers facing major strategic and risk issues. In collaboration with psychologists, he has sought to support real decision makers and stakeholders in complex decisions in ways that are mindful of their human characteristics. He has a particular interest in societal decision making, particularly with respect to major risks. He has worked on public risk communication and engagement and the wider areas of stakeholder involvement and deliberative democracy. Simon has worked across the public and private sectors, often in contexts that relate to the environment, energy, food safety, and the nuclear industry. In all of his work, the emphasis is on multidisciplinary and participatory approaches to solving real problems. Email: simon.french@warwick.ac.uk . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is currently the editor-in-chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. Email: lrkeller@uci.edu . Miguel A. Lejeune (" Game Theoretical Approach for Reliable Enhanced Indexation ") is an assistant professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University (GWU) and holds a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University. Prior to joining GWU, he was a visiting assistant professor in operations research at Carnegie Mellon University. His areas of expertise/research interests include stochastic programming, financial risk, and large-scale optimization. He is the recipient of a Young Investigator/CAREER Research Grant (2009) from the Army Research Office. He also received the IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Award (December 2011) and the Royal Belgian Sciences Academy Award for his master's thesis. Email: mlejeune@gwu.edu . Jason R. W. Merrick (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is a professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a D.Sc. in operations research from the George Washington University. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and simulation. His research is primarily in the area of decision analysis and Bayesian statistics. He has worked on projects ranging from assessing maritime oil transportation and ferry system safety, the environmental health of watersheds, and optimal replacement policies for rail tracks and machine tools, and he has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the United States Coast Guard, the American Bureau of Shipping, British Petroleum, and Booz Allen Hamilton, among others. He has also performed training for Infineon Technologies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Capital One Services. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research. He is the information officer for the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. Email: jrmerric@vcu.edu . Gilberto Montibeller (" Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents ") is a tenured lecturer in decision sciences in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics (LSE). With a first degree in electrical engineering (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, 1993), he started his career as an executive at British and American Tobacco. Moving back to academia, he was awarded a master's degree (UFSC, 1996) and a Ph.D. in production engineering (UFSC/University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom, 2000). He then continued his studies as a postdoctoral research fellow in management science at the University of Strathclyde (2002–2003). He is an area editor of the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, and he is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis and the EURO Journal on Decision Processes. His main research interest is on supporting strategic-level decision making, both in terms of decision analytic methodologies and of decision processes. He has been funded by the AXA Research Fund, United Kingdom's EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), and Brazil's CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). His research has been published in journals such as the European Journal of Operational Research, Decision Support Systems, and OMEGA—The International Journal of Management Science. One of his papers, on the evaluation of strategic options and scenario planning, was awarded the Wiley Prize in Applied Decision Analysis by the International Society of Multi-Criteria Decision Making. He has had visiting positions at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Austria) and the University of Warwick (United Kingdom), and is a visiting associate professor of production engineering at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). He also has extensive experience in applying decision analysis in practice; over the past 17 years he has provided consulting to both private and public organizations in Europe and South America. He is a regular speaker at the LSE Executive Education courses. Email: g.montibeller@lse.ac.uk . M. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell (" Games, Risks, and Analytics: Several Illustrative Cases Involving National Security and Management Situations ") specializes in engineering risk analysis with application to complex systems (space, medical, etc.). Her research has focused on explicit inclusion of human and organizational factors in the analysis of systems' failure risks. Her recent work is on the use of game theory in risk analysis with applications that have included counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation problems. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the French Académie des Technologies, and of several boards, including Aerospace, Draper Laboratory, and In-Q-Tel. Dr. Paté-Cornell was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from December 2001 to 2008. She holds an engineering degree (applied mathematics and computer science) from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble (France), an M.S. in operations research and a Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems, both from Stanford University. Email: mep@stanford.edu . Jesus Rios (" Adversarial Risk Analysis: The Somali Pirates Case ") is a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He has a Ph.D. in computer sciences and mathematical modeling from the University Rey Juan Carlos. Before joining IBM, he worked in several universities as a researcher, including the University of Manchester, the University of Luxembourg, Aalborg University, and Concordia University. He participated in the 2007 SAMSI program on Risk Analysis, Extreme Events, and Decision Theory, and led work in the area of adversarial risk analysis. He has also worked as a consultant for clients in the transportation, distribution, energy, defense, and telecommunication sectors. His main research interests are in the areas of risk and decision analysis and its applications. Email: jriosal@us.ibm.com . David Rios Insua (" Adversarial Risk Analysis: The Somali Pirates Case ") is a professor of statistics and operations research at Rey Juan Carlos University and a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. He has written 15 monographs and more than 90 refereed papers in his areas of interest, which include decision analysis, negotiation analysis, risk analysis, and Bayesian statistics, and their applications. He is scientific advisor of AISoy Robotics. He is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis. Email: david.rios@urjc.es . Fabrizio Ruggeri (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is the director of research at IMATI CNR (Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technology at the Italian National Research Council) in Milano, Italy. He received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Milano, an M.Sc. in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D. in statistics from Duke University. After a start as a researcher at Alfa Romeo and then a computer consultant, he has been working at CNR since 1987. His interests are mostly in Bayesian and industrial statistics, especially in robustness, decision analysis, reliability, and stochastic processes; recently, he got involved in biostatistics and biology as well. Dr. Ruggeri is an adjunct faculty member at the Polytechnic Institute (New York University), a faculty member in the Ph.D. program in mathematics and statistics at the University of Pavia, a foreign faculty member in the Ph.D. program in statistics at the University of Valparaiso, and a member of the advisory board of the Ph.D. program in mathematical engineering at Polytechnic of Milano. An ASA Fellow and an ISI elected member, Dr. Ruggeri is the current ISBA (International Society for Bayesian Analysis) president and former ENBIS (European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics) president. He is the editor-in-chief of Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry and the Encyclopedia of Statistics in Quality and Reliability, and he is also the Chair of the Bayesian Inference in Stochastic Processes workshops and codirector of the Applied Bayesian Statistics summer school. Email: fabrizio@mi.imati.cnr.it . Juan Carlos Sevillano (" Adversarial Risk Analysis: The Somali Pirates Case ") is a part-time lecturer at the Department of Statistics and Operations Research II (Decision Methods) at the School of Economics of Complutense University. He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics from Complutense University and an M.Sc. in decision systems engineering from Rey Juan Carlos University. Email: sevimjc@ccee.ucm.es . Ross D. Shachter (" Formulating Asymmetric Decision Problems as Decision Circuits ") is an associate professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, where his teaching includes probability, decision analysis, and influence diagrams. He has been at Stanford since earning his Ph.D. in operations research from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982, except for two years visiting the Duke University Center for Health Policy Research and Education. His main research focus has been on the communication and analysis of the relationships among uncertain quantities in the graphical representations called Bayesian belief networks and influence diagrams, and in the 1980s he developed the DAVID influence diagram processing system for the Macintosh. His research in medical decision analysis has included the analysis of vaccination strategies and cancer screening and follow-up. At Duke he helped to develop an influence diagram-based approach for medical technology assessment. He has served on the Decision Analysis Society (DAS) of INFORMS Council, chaired its student paper competition, organized the DAS cluster in Nashville, and was honored with its Best Publication Award. For INFORMS, he organized the 1992 Doctoral Colloquium and has been an associate editor in decision analysis for Management Science and Operations Research. He has also served as Program Chair and General Chair for the Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence Conference. At Stanford he served from 1990 until 2011 as a resident fellow in an undergraduate dormitory, and he was active in planning the university's new student orientation activities and alcohol policy. Email: shachter@stanford.edu . Jim Q. Smith (" Regulating Autonomous Agents Facing Conflicting Objectives: A Command and Control Example ") has been a full professor of statistics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom for 18 years, receiving a Ph.D. from Warwick University in 1977, and has more than 100 refereed publications in the area of Bayesian decision theory and related fields. He has particular interests in customizing probabilistic models in dynamic, high-dimensional problems to the practical needs of a decision maker, often using novel graphical approaches. As well as teaching decision analysis to more than 3,000 top math students in the United Kingdom and supervising 23 Ph.D. students in his areas of expertise, he has been chairman of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit at Warwick for 10 years, engaging vigorously in the university's interaction with industry and commerce. His book Bayesian Decision Analysis: Principles and Practice was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Email: j.q.smith@warwick.ac.uk . Refik Soyer (" From the Editors: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk ") is a professor of decision sciences and of statistics and the chair of the Department of Decision Sciences at the George Washington University (GWU). He also serves as the director of the Institute for Integrating Statistics in Decision Sciences at GWU. He received his D.Sc. in University of Sussex, England, and B.A. in Economics from Boğaziçi University, Turkey. His areas of interest are Bayesian statistics and decision analysis, stochastic modeling, statistical aspects of reliability analysis, and time-series analysis. He has published more than 90 articles. His work has appeared in journals such as Journal of the American Statistical Association; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Ser. B.; Technometrics; Biometrics; Journal of Econometrics; Statistical Science; International Statistical Review; and Management Science. He has also coedited a volume titled Mathematical Reliability: An Expository Perspective. Soyer is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a fellow of the Turkish Statistical Association, and a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He was vice president of the International Association for Statistical Computing. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and is currently an associate editor of the Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry. Email: soyer@gwu.edu . Fabio Spizzichino (" Interactions Between Ageing and Risk Properties in the Analysis of Burn-in Problems ") is a full professor of probability theory at the Department of Mathematics, the Sapienza University of Rome. He teaches courses on introductory probability, advanced probability, and stochastic processes. In the past, he has also taught courses on basic mathematical statistics, Bayesian statistics, decision theory, and reliability theory. His primary research interests are related to probability theory and its applications. A partial list of scientific activities includes dependence models, stochastic ageing for lifetimes, and (semi-)copulas; first-passage times and optimal stopping times for Markov chains and discrete state-space processes; order statistics property for counting processes in continuous or discrete time, in one or more dimensions; sufficiency concepts in Bayesian statistics and stochastic filtering; and reliability of coherent systems and networks. He also has a strong interest in the connections among the above-mentioned topics and in their applications in different fields. At the present time, he is particularly interested in the relations among dependence, ageing, and utility functions. Email: fabio.spizzichino@uniroma1.it . Sumitra Sri Bhashyam (" Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents ") is a Ph.D. candidate in the Management Science Group at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her Ph.D. thesis is supervised by Dr. Gilberto Montibeller and cosupervised by Dr. David Lane. Her research interests include decision analysis, multicriteria decision analysis, preference modeling, and preference change. Before coming to study in the United Kingdom, Sri Bhashyam studied mathematics, physics, and computer sciences in France for two years, after which she moved to the United Kingdom to complete a B.A.Hons in marketing communications and then an M.Sc. in operational research from the LSE. She worked as a project manager at Xerox and, subsequently, as a consultant for an SME (small and medium enterprise) to help them set up their quality management system. Alongside the Ph.D., and participating in other research and consultancy projects, she has been a graduate teaching assistant for undergraduate, master, and executive students at the LSE. The courses she teaches include topics such as normative and descriptive decision theory, prescriptive decision analysis, simulation modeling and analysis. Email: s.sribhashyam@lse.ac.uk . Jun Zhuang (" Regulation Games Between Government and Competing Companies: Oil Spills and Other Disasters ") has been an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (SUNY-Buffalo), since he obtained his Ph.D. in industrial engineering in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Zhuang's long-term research goal is to integrate operations research and game theory to better mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from both natural and man-made hazards. Other areas of interest include healthcare, sports, transportation, supply chain management, and sustainability. Dr. Zhuang's research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) and National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) through the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Dr. Zhuang is a fellow of the 2011 U.S. Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (AF SFFP), sponsored by the AFOSR. Dr. Zhuang is also a fellow of the 2009–2010 Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Program, sponsored by the NSF. Dr. Zhuang is on the editorial board of Decision Analysis and is the coeditor of Decision Analysis Today. Email: jzhuang@buffalo.edu .
Threats To International Peace And Security. The Situation In The Middle East ; United Nations S/PV.8233 Security Council Seventy-third year 8233rd meeting Saturday, 14 April 2018, 11 a.m. New York Provisional President: Mr. Meza-Cuadra . (Peru) Members: Bolivia (Plurinational State of). . Mr. Llorentty Solíz China. . Mr. Ma Zhaoxu Côte d'Ivoire. . Mr. Tanoh-Boutchoue Equatorial Guinea. . Mr. Ndong Mba Ethiopia. . Mr. Alemu France. . Mr. Delattre Kazakhstan. . Mr. Umarov Kuwait. . Mr. Alotaibi Netherlands. . Mrs. Gregoire Van Haaren Poland. . Mr. Radomski Russian Federation. . Mr. Nebenzia Sweden . Mr. Skoog United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . Ms. Pierce United States of America. . Mrs. Haley Agenda Threats to international peace and security The situation in the Middle East This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the translation of speeches delivered in other languages. The final text will be printed in the Official Records of the Security Council. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room U-0506 (verbatimrecords@un.org). Corrected records will be reissued electronically on the Official Document System of the United Nations (http://documents.un.org). 18-10891 (E) *1810891* S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 2/26 18-10891 The meeting was called to order at 11.10 a.m. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted. Threats to international peace and security The situation in the Middle East The President (spoke in Spanish): In accordance with rule 37 of the Council's provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to participate in this meeting. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. I wish to warmly welcome His Excellency Secretary-General António Guterres, to whom I now give the floor. The Secretary-General: I have been following closely the reports of air strikes in Syria conducted by the United States, France and United Kingdom. Last night at 10 p.m. New York time, the United States President announced the beginning of air strikes with the participation of France and the United Kingdom, indicating they were targeting the chemical-weapons capabilities of the Syrian Government to deter their future use. The statement was followed by announcements from Prime Minister May and President Macron. The air strikes were reportedly limited to three military locations inside Syria. The first targets included the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre at Al-Mazzah airport in Damascus, the second an alleged chemical-weapons storage facility west of Homs and the third an alleged chemical-weapons equipment storage site and command post, also near Homs. The Syrian Government announced surface-to-air missile responsive activity. Both United States and Russian sources indicated there were no civilian casualties. However, the United Nations is unable to independently verify the details of all those reports. As Secretary-General of the United Nations, it is my duty to remind Member States that there is an obligation, particularly when dealing with matters of peace and security, to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations, and with international law in general. The Charter is very clear on these issues. The Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. I call on the members of the Security Council to unite and exercise that responsibility, and I urge all members to show restraint in these dangerous circumstances and to avoid any act that could escalate matters and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people. As I did yesterday (see S/PV.8231), I stress the importance of preventing the situation from spiralling out of control. Any use of chemical weapons is abhorrent, and the suffering it causes is horrendous. I have repeatedly expressed my deep disappointment that the Security Council has failed to agree on a dedicated mechanism for ensuring effective accountability for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. I urge the Security Council to assume its responsibilities and fill that gap, and I will continue to engage with Member States to help to achieve that objective. A lack of accountability emboldens those who use such weapons by providing them with the reassurance of impunity, and that in turn further weakens the norm proscribing the use of chemical weapons, as well as undermining the international disarmament and non-proliferation architecture as a whole. The seriousness of the recent allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Douma requires a thorough investigation using impartial, independent and professional expertise. I reaffirm my full support for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and its Fact-finding Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic in undertaking the required investigation. The team is already in Syria. I am informed that its operations plan for visiting the site is complete and that the Mission is ready to go. I am confident it will have full access, without any restrictions or impediments to its performance of its activities. To repeat what I said yesterday, Syria represents the most serious threat to international peace and security in the world today. In Syria we see confrontations and proxy wars involving several national armies, a number of armed opposition groups, many national and international militias, foreign fighters from all over the world and various terrorist organizations. From the beginning, we have witnessed systematic violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international law in general, in utter disregard of the letter and spirit of the Charter of the United Nations. For eight long years, the people of Syria have endured suffering upon suffering. They have lived 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 3/26 through a litany of horrors, atrocity crimes, sieges, starvation, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, the use of chemical weapons, forced displacement, sexual violence, torture, detention and enforced disappearances. The list goes on. At this critical juncture, I call on all States Members to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations and international law, including the norms against chemical weapons. If the law is ignored, it is undermined. There can be no military solution to the crisis. The solution must be political, and we must find ways to make real progress towards a genuine and credible political solution that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people to dignity and freedom, in accordance with resolution 2254 (2015) and the Geneva communiqué (S/2012/522, annex). I have asked my Special Envoy to come to New York as soon as possible to consult with me on the most effective way to accelerate the political process. The President (spoke in Spanish): I thank the Secretary-General for his valuable briefing. I shall now give the floor to those Council members who wish to make statements. Mr. Nebenzia (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): Russia has called this emergency meeting of the Security Council to discuss the aggressive actions of the United States and its allies against Syria. This is now our fifth meeting on the subject in a week. President Putin of the Russian Federation made a special statement today. "On 14 April, the United States, with the support of its allies, launched an air strike on military and civilian infrastructure targets in the Syrian Arab Republic. An act of aggression against a sovereign State on the front lines in the fight against terrorism was committed without permission from the Security Council and in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms and principles of international law. Just as it did a year ago, when it attacked Syria's Al-Shayrat airbase in Syria, the United States took a staged use of toxic substances against civilians as a pretext, this time in Douma, outside Damascus. Having visited the site of the alleged incident, Russian military experts found no traces of chlorine or any other toxic agent. Not a single local resident could confirm that such an attack had occurred. "The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has sent experts to Syria to investigate all the circumstances. However, a group of Western countries cynically ignored this and took military action without waiting for the results of the investigation. "Russia vehemently condemns this attack on Syria, where Russian military personnel are helping the legitimate Government to combat terrorism. "The actions of the United States are making the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Syria even worse, inflicting suffering on civilians, for all intents and purposes enabling the terrorists who have been tormenting the Syrian people for seven years, and producing yet another wave of refugees fleeing the country and the region in general. The current escalation of the Syrian situation is having a destructive effect on the entire system of international relations. History will have the last word, and it has already revealed the heavy responsibility that Washington bears for the carnage in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya." Russia has done everything it could to persuade the United States and its allies to abandon their militaristic plans threatening a new round of violence in Syria and destabilization in the Middle East. Today, and at the Council meeting we called yesterday (see S/PV.8231), the Secretary-General expressed his concern about how events are developing. Washington, London and Paris, however, preferred to let the calls for sanity go unheard. The United States and its allies continue to demonstrate a flagrant disregard for international law, although as permanent members of the Security Council they have a special duty to uphold the provisions of the Charter. It was a disgrace to hear an article of the United States Constitution cited as justification of this aggression. We respect the right of every State to honour its own fundamental law. But it is high time that Washington learned that it is the Charter of the United Nations that governs the international code of conduct on the use of force. It will be interesting to see how the peoples of Great Britain and France react to the fact that their leaders are participating in unlawful military ventures that invoke the United States Constitution. These three countries constantly lean towards neocolonialism. They scorn the Charter and the Security Council, which they attempt, shamelessly, to use for their own unscrupulous purposes. They do no serious S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 4/26 18-10891 work in the Council. They refuse to consult with us, while falsely assuring everyone of the opposite. They are undermining the Council's authority. The alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Douma has been cited as the excuse for this aggression. After an inspection by our specialists, Russia's representatives stated unequivocally that no such incident took place. Moreover, people were found to have taken part in staging the incident, which was inspired and organized by foreign intelligence services. After the matter emerged, the Syrian authorities immediately invited experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to try to establish all the circumstances through a field mission to Douma. The visa formalities were dealt with quickly and security guarantees given. As the air strikes began, the specialists were already in Syria and preparing to begin their work. I would like to remind Council members and everyone else that on 10 April (see S/PV.8228), when our draft resolution (S/2018/322) on ensuring the security of the work of the OPCW's special mission was blocked, we were assured that there was no need for such a document. They said that no additional effort on the part of the Security Council was necessary to ensure that the mission could reach Douma and conduct an investigation of the chemical incident. Now, however, we can see that we were absolutely right. Yesterday, some of our colleagues — some out of naivety and others out of cynicism — told us that this situation had allegedly arisen owing to the lack of an independent investigative mechanism. The aggression today has shown, as we said, that this had nothing whatever to do with it. The OPCW-United Nations Joint Investigative Mission (JIM) was in place during last year's attack on the Al-Shayrat airbase, but that did not stop the United States from launching a missile attack. After that, the JIM spent six months tailoring its conclusions to justify the strike. We have said over and over again that they do not need any investigations. They did not need them then and they do not need them now. The organizers of the aggression did not even wait for the international organization that is authorized to establish the basic facts to do so. Apparently they had established and instantly identified the perpetrators, after disseminating rumours about them through social networks with the help of the militias they sponsor and the non-governmental organizations that are their clients. This was backed up by mythical secret intelligence. Their masks — or rather the White Helmets — have come off once again. We have become accustomed to the fact that their efforts to achieve their dubious geopolitical aims, the aggressor countries deliberately blame the so-called Assad regime for every evil. There has been a trend recently to shift the blame onto Russia, which, as they tell it, has been unable to restrain Syria's so-called dictator. All of this goes according to a tried-and- true formula, whereby a provocation results in a false accusation, which results in a false verdict, which results in punishment. Is that how these people want to conduct international affairs? This is hooliganism in international relations, and not on a petty scale, given that we are talking about the actions of key nuclear Powers. Several missiles were aimed at the research centre facilities in Barzeh and Jamraya. There have been two recent OPCW inspections there with unrestricted access to their entire premises. The specialists found no trace of activities that would contravene the Chemical Weapons Convention. Syria's scientific research institutions are used for strictly peaceful activities aimed at improving the efficiency of the national economy. Do they want Syria to have no national economy left at all? Do they want to kick this country — only a few years ago one of the most developed in the Middle East — back into the Stone Age? Do they want to finish whatever their sanctions have not yet accomplished? And yet they still contrive false breast-beating about the sufferings of ordinary Syrians. But they have no interest in ordinary Syrians, who are sick of war and glad about the restoration of the legitimate authorities in the liberated territories. Their aggressive actions merely worsen the humanitarian situation that they claim to care about so deeply. They could end the conflict in Syria in the space of 24 hours. All that is needed is for Washington, London and Paris to give the order to their tame terrorists to stop fighting the legitimate authorities and their own people. The attacks were aimed at Syrian military airfields that are used for operations against terrorist organizations, a highly original contribution to the fight against international terrorism, which, as Washington never tires of saying, is the sole reason for its military presence in Syria, something that we are extremely doubtful about. Rather, it is becoming increasingly clear that those in the West who hide 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 5/26 behind humanitarian rhetoric and try to justify their military presence in Syria based on the need to defeat the jihadists are in fact acting in concert with them to dismember the country, a design confirmed by the categorical refusal of the United States and its allies to assist in the restoration of the areas of Syria that have been liberated by Government forces. Their aggression is a powerful blow and a threat to the prospects for continuing the political process under the auspices of the United Nations, which, despite the real difficulties, is moving forward, albeit at varying speed. Why do they bother endlessly pinning all their hopes on the Geneva process when they themselves are driving it straight towards yet another crisis? We urge the United States and its allies to immediately halt their acts of aggression against Syria and refrain from them going forward. We have proposed a brief draft resolution for the Council's attention on which we request that a vote be held at the end of this meeting. We appeal to the members of the Security Council. Now is not the time to evade responsibility. The world is watching. Stand up for our principles. Mrs. Haley (United States of America): I thank the Secretary-General for his briefing today. This is the fifth Security Council meeting in the past week in which we have addressed the situation in Syria. A week has gone by in which we have talked. We have talked about the victims in Douma. We have talked about the Al-Assad regime and its patrons, Russia and Iran. We have spent a week talking about the unique horror of chemical weapons. The time for talk ended last night. We are here today because three permanent members of the Security Council acted. The United Kingdom, France, and the United States acted not in revenge, not in punishment and not in a symbolic show of force. We acted to deter the future use of chemical weapons by holding the Syrian regime responsible for its crimes against humanity. We can all see that a Russian disinformation campaign is in full force this morning, but Russia's desperate attempts at deflection cannot change the facts. A large body of information indicates that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons in Douma on 7 April. There is clear information demonstrating Al-Assad's culpability. The pictures of dead children were not fake news; they were the result of the Syrian regime's barbaric inhumanity. And they were the result of the regime's and Russia's failure to live up to their international commitments to remove all chemical weapons from Syria. The United States, France and the United Kingdom acted after careful evaluation of those facts. The targets we selected were at the heart of the Syrian regime's illegal chemical-weapon programme. The strikes were carefully planned to minimize civilian casualties. The responses were justified, legitimate and proportionate. The United States and its allies did everything they could to use the tools of diplomacy to get rid of Al-Assad's arsenal of chemical weapons. We did not give diplomacy just one chance. We gave it chance after chance. Six times. That is how many times Russia vetoed Security Council resolutions to address chemical weapons in Syria. Our efforts go back even further. In 2013, the Security Council adopted resolution 2118 (2013), requiring the Al-Assad regime to destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons. Syria committed to abiding by the Chemical Weapons Convention, meaning that it could no longer have chemical weapons on its soil. President Putin said that Russia would guarantee that Syria complied. We hoped that this diplomacy would succeed in putting an end to the horror of chemical attacks in Syria, but as we have seen from the past year, that did not happen. While Russia was busy protecting the regime, Al-Assad took notice. The regime knew that it could act with impunity, and it did. In November, Russia used its veto to kill the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, the main tool we had to figure out who used chemical weapons in Syria. Just as Russia was using its veto (see S/PV.8107), the Al-Assad regime used sarin, leading to dozens of injuries and deaths. Russia's veto was the green light for the Al-Assad regime to use these most barbaric weapons against the Syrian people, in complete violation of international law. The United States and our allies were not going to let that stand. Chemical weapons are a threat to us all. They are a unique threat — a type of weapon so evil that the international community agreed that they must be banned. We cannot stand by and let Russia trash every international norm that we stand for, and allow the use of chemical weapons to go unanswered. Just as the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons last weekend was not an isolated incident, our response is part of a new course charted last year to deter future use of chemical weapons. Our Syrian strategy has not changed. S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 6/26 18-10891 However, the Syrian regime has forced us to take action based on its repeated use of chemical weapons. Since the April 2017 chemical attack at Khan Shaykhoun, the United States has imposed hundreds of sanctions on individuals and entities involved in chemical-weapons use in Syria and North Korea. We have designated entities in Asia, the Middle East and Africa that have facilitated chemical-weapons proliferation. We have revoked the visas of Russian intelligence officers in response to the chemical attack in Salisbury. We will continue to seek out and call out anyone who uses and anyone who aids in the use of chemical weapons. With yesterday's military action, our message was crystal clear. The United States of America will not allow the Al-Assad regime to continue to use chemical weapons. Last night, we obliterated the major research facility that it used to assemble weapons of mass murder. I spoke to the President this morning, and he said that if the Syrian regime should use this poison gas again, the United States is locked and loaded. When our President draws a red line, our President enforces the red line. The United States is deeply grateful to the United Kingdom and France for their part in the coalition to defend the prohibition of chemical weapons. We worked in lock step; we were in complete agreement. Last night, our great friends and indispensable allies shouldered a burden that benefits all of us. The civilized world owes them its thanks. In the weeks and months to come, the Security Council should take time to reflect on its role in defending the international rule of law. The Security Council has failed in its duty to hold those who use chemical weapons to account. That failure is largely due to Russian obstruction. We call on Russia to take a hard look at the company it keeps, live up to its responsibilities as a permanent member of the Council, and defend the actual principles the United Nations was meant to promote. Last night, we successfully hit the heart of Syria's chemical weapons enterprise, and because of these actions we are confident that we have crippled Syria's chemical weapons programme. We are prepared to sustain this pressure if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will. Ms. Pierce (United Kingdom): These are uncertain times and today we deal with exceptional circumstance. Acting with our American and French allies, in the early hours of this morning the United Kingdom conducted coordinated, targeted and precise strikes to degrade Al-Assad's chemical weapons capability and deter their future use. The British Royal Air Force launched Storm Shadow missiles at a military facility some 15 miles west of Homs, where the regime is assessed to keep chemical weapons in breach of Syria's obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. A full assessment has not yet been completed, but we believe that the strikes to have been successful. Furthermore, none of the British, United States or French aircraft or missiles involved in this operation were successfully engaged by Syrian air defences, and there is also no indication that Russian air defence systems were employed. Our action was a limited, targeted and effective strike. There were clear boundaries that expressly sought to avoid escalation, and we did everything possible, including rigorous planning, before any action was undertaken to ensure that we mitigated and minimized the impact on civilians. Together, our action will significantly degrade the Syrian regime's ability to research, develop and deploy chemical weapons and deter their future use. The United Kingdom Prime Minister has said that we are clear about who is responsible for the atrocity of the use of chemical weapons. A significant body of information, including intelligence, indicates that the Syrian regime is responsible for the attack we saw last Saturday. Some of the evidence that leads us to this conclusion is as follows. There are open source accounts alleging that a barrel bomb was used to deliver the chemicals. Multiple open source reports claim that a regime helicopter was observed above the city of Douma on the evening of 7 April. The opposition does not operate helicopters or use barrel bombs. And reliable intelligence indicates that Syrian military officials coordinated what appears to be the use of chlorine in Douma on 7 April. No other group could have carried out this attack. Indeed, Da'esh, for example, does not even have a presence in Douma. The Syrian regime has been killing its own people for seven years. Its use of chemical weapons, which has exacerbated the human suffering, is a serious crime of international concern as a breach of the customary international law prohibition on the use of chemical weapons, and that amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity. Any State is permitted under international law, on an exceptional basis, to 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 7/26 take measures in order to alleviate overwhelming humanitarian suffering. The legal basis for the use of force for the United Kingdom is humanitarian intervention, which requires that three conditions to be met. First, there must be convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief. I think that the debates in the Council and the briefings we have had from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and others have proved that. Secondly, it must be objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved. I think that the vetoes have shown us that. Thirdly, the proposed use of force must be necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian suffering. It must be strictly limited in time and in scope to this aim. I think we have heard both in my intervention in Ambassador Haley's how that has also been met. The history of the Syrian conflict is a litany of threats to peace and violations of international law. The Security Council has met 113 times since the Syrian war started. It was therefore not for want of international diplomatic effort that we find ourselves in this position today. After a pattern of chemical-weapons use since the outbreak of the conflict, Al-Assad defied the international community in 2013 by launching a sarin gas attack on eastern Ghouta, which left more than 800 people dead. Despite the adoption of resolution 2118 (2013) and despite four years of patient engagement, Syria continues to use chemical weapons against its people and has failed to answer a long list of serious questions. The only conclusion we can reach is that Syria has not declared or destroyed all of its chemical weapons, despite its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. This is not assertion on our part but a matter of record, and I draw the Russian Ambassador's attention to his points about Barazan and Jimrya. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) still has unanswered questions and discrepancies. He knows this. We all know this. The Council was briefed by the OPCW Director-General. Resolution 2118 (2013) decides in the event of non-compliance to impose measures under Chapter VII of the Charter. Yet on 28 February 2017, when the United Kingdom together with France, proposed a draft resolution (S/2017/172) taking measures under Chapter VII short of the use of force, Russia vetoed (see S/PV.7893). The very least the Security Council should have been able to do was to follow up on the findings of the report of the Joint Investigative Mechanism by extending its mandate. Yet four times Russia vetoed different proposals from different Council Members to do just that. The Syrian regime and it supporters are responsible for the gravest violations of international humanitarian law in modern history. They have used indiscriminate weapons, notably barrel bombs and cluster munitions, against civilians, and they have deliberately targeted medical facilities and schools, as well as humanitarian personnel and civilian objects. They have used sieges and starvation as methods of warfare, accompanied by attacks on opposition-held civilian areas. The regime has persistently obstructed humanitarian aid and medical evacuations. Tens of thousands of people have been illegally detained, tortured and executed by the regime. This is one of the most serious challenges to the international non-proliferation regime we have ever faced. A State party has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention, it has defied the Security Council, and it has broken international law. Repeated attempts over several years to hold them to account have been met with Russian obstruction and resistance. In the Security Council, we have repeatedly attempted to overcome this obstruction without success. We are faced with a litany of violations, no sense of guilt, no sense of regret, no sense of responsibility, a shameful record, wrapped in a mix of denial, deceit and disinformation. I would invite those like the Russian Ambassador who speak about the Charter to consider the following. It is hard to believe that it is in line with the principles and purposes of the Charter to use or condone the use of chemical weapons, and in the United Kingdom's view it cannot be illegal to use force to prevent the killing of such numbers of innocent people. I will take no lessons in international law from Russia. Despite all the foregoing, we would like to look forward. The United Kingdom, together with France and the United States, will continue to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian crisis. My French colleague will say more about our work in a few moments. We believe that it must comprise four elements. S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 8/26 18-10891 First, Syria's chemical weapons programme must be ended and the chemical weapons stockpiles destroyed once and for all. Secondly, there must be an immediate cessation of hostilities and compliance with all Security Council resolutions, including those that mandate humanitarian access. Thirdly, the regime must return to the Geneva talks and agree to engage on the substantial agenda put forward by the United Nations Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura. Fourthly and finally, there must be accountability for the use of chemical weapons and other war crimes in Syria. The Secretary-General rightly highlighted the political process. We propose that, as we members of the Security Council will all be together next weekend in the retreat with the Secretary-General very kindly hosted by Sweden, we use that opportunity to reflect on next steps and the way back to the political process. And with our allies, we stand ready to work with all members of the Security Council towards this end. Mr. Delattre (France) (spoke in French): A week after the chemical massacre in Douma and a day after last night's strikes, I want to say again straight away to those who pretend to wonder that France has no doubt whatsoever about the responsibility of the Al-Assad regime in this attack. This morning we made public a notice comprising information collected by our intelligence services. We dismiss those who try once again to challenge what is obvious and to disguise the facts before the world. For years now, Bashar Al-Assad, with the active support of his allies, has been devising a strategy of destruction designed to crush any opposition with contempt for the most basic principles of humanity and at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Syria. We saw it in Aleppo, in Homs, in eastern Ghouta. For years, the Syrian regime has used the most terrifying weapons of destruction — chemical weapons — to massacre and terrorize its civilian population. We had another demonstration of this in Douma, as we had seen before in Khan Shaykhun, Sarmin, Telemens and Qaminas, where its responsibility was clearly established by the Joint Investigative Mechanism of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). No one can say he or she did not know. For years, the Syrian regime has systematically and repeatedly violated all its international obligations. The list of such violations is long; it is overwhelming. We all know them: violations of all international chemical-weapons obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria has been a party since 2013, and the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use of such weapons against civilians; violations of the very foundations of international humanitarian law, namely, the principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality; violations of successive Security Council resolutions 2118 (2013), 2209 (2015) and 2235 (2015) and, by the same token, of its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations; finally, the use of chemical weapons against civilian populations constitutes a war crime within the meaning of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. In August 2013, the Secretary-General even described the use of chemical weapons as a crime against humanity. In view of the repeated and proven violations by the Damascus regime of all the rules on which our security is based, France has consistently called for strong action by the international community. We have made every effort to ensure that these horrors do not remain without consequences at the United Nations and the OPCW and that they are stopped. The Security Council had undertaken by successive resolutions 2118 (2013), 2209 (2015) and 2235 (2015) to impose coercive measures within the meaning of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations in the event of new violations. It has been prevented from acting in conformity with its commitments because of the vetoes systematically used by Russia. By making such systematic use of its veto in the Security Council, Russia has betrayed the commitment it made to the Council in 2013 to ensure the destruction of the Syrian chemical arsenal. The Security Council's blockade of the mass atrocities committed in Syria is a deadly and dangerous trap from which we must escape. When it ordered the 7 April chemical attack, the Syrian regime knew exactly to what it was exposing itself. It wanted to once again test the international community's threshold of tolerance and it found it. In the face of this attack on the principles, values and rights that are the basis of United Nations action, silence is no longer a solution. We cannot tolerate the downplaying of the use of chemical weapons, which is an immediate danger to the Syrian people and to our collective security. We cannot let the deadly genie of proliferation out of its bottle. We had clearly warned Al-Assad's regime and its supporters that such a transgression would not remain without reaction. We have acted in 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 9/26 accordance with our role and responsibility. We have done so in a controlled, transparent framework, taking care to avoid any escalation with the actors present on the ground. The President of the Republic and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France have spoken on this subject. Some who for years have flouted the most elementary rules of international law now assert that our action is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations. I would remind them that the Charter was not designed to protect criminals. Our action is fully in line with the objectives and values proclaimed from the outset by the Charter of the United Nations. The Organization's mission is "to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained". This action was indeed necessary in order to address the repeated violations by the Syrian regime of its obligations — obligations stemming from the law, treaties and its own commitments. Finally, our response was conceived within an proportionate framework, with precise objectives. The main research centre of the chemical weapons programme and two major production sites were hit. Through those objectives, Syria's capacity to develop, perfect and produce chemical weapons has been put out of commission. That was the only objective, and it has been achieved. My country, which knew at first hand the devastating effects of chemical weapons during the First World War, will never again allow impunity for their use. We will never stop identifying those responsible, who must be brought to justice. That is the purpose of the International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, which we launched last January. Allow me to stress this point: last night's strikes are a necessary response to the chemical massacres in Syria. They are a response in the service of law and our political strategy to put an end to the Syrian tragedy. To be more specific, we have four imperatives on the Syrian issue that are in the immediate interest of Syrians, but also in the interest of the entire international community, as the Secretary-General reminded us, and I want to thank him for his briefing. Let me recall those four imperatives. First, the Syrian chemical-weapons programme must be dismantled in a verifiable and irreversible way. We must spare no effort to establish an international mechanism for establishing responsibility, to prevent impunity and to prevent any repeat attempts to the Syrian regime to use chemical. Secondly, terrorism must be eradicated by permanently defeating Da'esh. That is a long-standing commitment that still requires genuine effort to ensure a definitive victory. Thirdly, there must be a ceasefire throughout the Syrian territory and humanitarian access to the civilian populations, as required by Security Council resolutions. We need full and unhindered humanitarian access in order to help people in need, in accordance with resolution 2401 (2018). In particular, it is essential and urgent that humanitarian convoys safely reach eastern Ghouta on a daily basis. Fourthly, we need a crisis-exit strategy, with a lasting political solution. We can sustainably resolve the Syrian crisis only through an inclusive political solution on the basis of the full implementation of resolution 2254 (2015). We have been calling for that for seven years. It has never been so urgent to implement it and to relaunch genuine negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations with a view to achieving a political transition in Syria. Only that road map will allow us to finally emerge from the Syrian impasse. France is ready to tackle it, as of today, with all those who are ready to put all their efforts to that end. In that spirit, at the initiative of France and in line with President Emmanuel Macron's statement tonight, we will submit as soon as possible a draft resolution on those different aspects with our British and American partners. Today I ask Russia, first and foremost, to call on the Damascus regime to enter into a plan for a negotiated solution so that the long-lasting suffering of Syrian civilians can finally be brought to an end. Mr. Ma Zhaoxu (China) (spoke in Chinese): I would like to thank the Secretary-General for his briefing. Just yesterday we were gathered in this Chamber for a meeting on the situation in Syria, during which China made clear its position on the issue of Syria, expressed profound concern about the further escalation of the tensions in Syria and made a clarion call for a political solution to the issue of Syria (see S/PV.8231). I would like to restate the following. S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 10/26 18-10891 China has consistently stood for the peaceful settlement of disputes and against the use of force in international relations. We advocate respect for the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of all countries. Any unilateral military actions that circumvent the Security Council contravene the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, violate the basic norms enshrined in international law and those governing international relations, and would hamper the settlement of the Syrian issue with new compounding factors. We urge all the parties concerned to refrain from any actions that may lead to a further escalation of the situation, to return to the framework of international law and to resolve the issue through dialogue and consultation. China believes a comprehensive, impartial and objective investigation of the suspected chemical-weapons attack in Syria is necessary in order to arrive at a reliable conclusion that can withstand the test of history. Until that happens, no party must prejudge the outcome. There is no alternative to a political settlement in resolving the Syrian issue. The parties concerned in the international community should continue to support the role of the United Nations as the main mediator and should work together unremittingly towards a political settlement of the Syrian issue. I would like to restate that China stands ready to continue its positive and constructive role in the efforts to achieve a political settlement of the Syrian issue in the interests of peace and stability in the Middle East and in the world at large. Mr. Umarov (Kazakhstan): Kazakhstan expresses its serious concern about the sharp escalation of the situation in Syria. We call on all parties to prevent further military escalation and take effective steps aimed at restoring confidence and establishing peace and ensuring security in the long-suffering land of Syria on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations and the relevant resolutions of the Security Council. We called yesterday and the day before yesterday, and every time when we have observed increasing tensions, in this Chamber for responsible action in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law. Who else, if not Council members, should show the world an example of compliance with the principles and provisions of the Charter? We are telling others to strictly follow international law and order, but sadly, yesterday we witnessed a different example. Whatever action taken under whatever good pretext cannot and will not justify the military use of force. Violence carried out against violence will never bring about peace and stability. Kazakhstan's position has always been, and continues to be, that military action is the last resort, to be used only in cases approved by the Security Council. There was no approval by the Council of the military strikes that took place yesterday. "Humanity hoped that the twenty-first century would herald a new era of global cooperation. This, however, may turn out to be a mirage. Our world is once again in danger and the risks cannot be underestimated. The threat is a deadly war on a global scale. Our planet is now on the edge of a new cold war that could have devastating consequences for all humankind." (S/2016/317, annex, p.2) That is an exact quote from the manifesto of my President, entitled "The World. The Twenty-First Century", of 31 March 2016. Just yesterday Secretary- General António Guterres confirmed, to our regret, that the Cold War is back with a vengeance (see S/PV.8231). Kazakhstan appeals to the parties to adhere to both the Charter of the United Nations and international law. We think that the time has come for serious talks encouraging the United States and the Russian Federation, given their standing as the co-Chairs of the International Syria Support Group and their respective influence on the parties, to move actively in the direction of finding middle ground and a political settlement to the conflict in Syria. The United Nations has a vital role to play in convening those negotiations and helping the parties resolve their disputes. My delegation is also extremely concerned about recent developments and the lack of unity among Security Council members with regard to the chemical attack in Syria. From its early days of independence, through a series of practical steps, Kazakhstan has consistently promoted peace initiatives in the international arena to achieve disarmament, non-proliferation and the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, and strongly condemns their development, testing and use. I repeat: Kazakhstan strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons. 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 11/26 It is important to conduct a thorough, objective and impartial investigation into all aspects of the alleged chemical attack in Douma so as to enable the international community to render a fair verdict against the perpetrators, in full compliance with international law. The Government and other parties must thoroughly execute their obligations to comply with the relevant recommendations made by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations by accepting designated personnel, while providing for and ensuring the security of the activities undertaken by such personnel. We would like to remind the members of the Council that Kazakhstan's principled position is not only to condemn in the strongest terms the use of weapons of mass destruction by anyone, in particular against the civilian population, but also to resolve conflicts exclusively by peaceful means. President Nazarbayev stressed in his manifesto that the main tools for resolving disputes among States should be peaceful dialogue and constructive negotiations on the basis of equal responsibility for peace and security, mutual respect and non-inference in the domestic affairs of other States. Preventing the escalation of conflict and ending wars are the most challenging tasks; there are no other reasonable options. World leaders must treat such tasks as the highest priority on the global agenda. We must also respect the sovereignty of States Members of the United Nations and the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter. We urgently need a political solution. Only a political, diplomatic approach, dialogue and confidence-building measures in the spirit of the Charter and Security Council documents on preventive diplomacy and sustaining peace can bring about proper results. We therefore call upon the international community to show political will to overcome differences and resume negotiations, in the belief that only a United Nations-led political transition in accordance with resolution 2254 (2015) can end the Syrian conflict, which, in turn, can advance only if the Council is united. There is great need to continue to support the aims of the Astana talks and further the Geneva negotiations in order to see positive results. All parties at the international, regional and Syrian levels should support an immediate ceasefire and seriously and objectively move forward without any preconditions within the framework of the International Syria Support Group, under the auspices of the United Nations Office in Geneva. We believe that the Syrian people are capable of determining their own future. However, achieving their aspirations for democracy, reconstruction and stability is impossible without genuine international support to contain the negative impact of spoilers and to help Syrians combat terrorism and build their State on a firm and stable foundation. Kazakhstan has always stood for dialogue and the resolution of international conflicts. All parties must ensure that the situation does not further deteriorate. Military means will not work; only political solutions will succeed. My President warned that there will be no winners in any modern war, as everyone will be on the losing side. He proposed to work towards the total elimination of war and a world without conflict. Finally, we again call upon all relevant parties to persist in diplomatic efforts, seek political solutions, engage in dialogue and support the United Nations as the main mediation channel. Kazakhstan is ready to work with all colleagues to preserve peace and security on the basis of mutual understanding, goodwill and determination to make the world a safer place. Mr. Radomski (Poland): I would like to thank the Secretary-General for his briefing. Poland views the recent events in the context of repeated chemical-weapons attacks against Syria's civilian population as a consequence of the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators so far. The lack of an appropriate response encourages a greater number of attacks with the use of weapons that are both banned under international law and blatantly inhumane. In such circumstances the international community cannot remain passive. It should take all the necessary measures to prevent such attacks from being repeated in the future, in particular against a defenceless civilian population. At the same time, the competent international bodies should take decisions that will enable the perpetrators to be identified and brought to justice. We fully understand the reasons behind the action taken last night by the United States, the United Kingdom and France against Syrian chemical-weapons capabilities. We support that action, as it is intended to deter chemical-weapons attacks against the people of Syria. Let me underline that it is the primary responsibility of the Security Council to set up an S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 12/26 18-10891 investigative mechanism to examine the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In that context, we reiterate our disappointment with the politically motivated Russian veto on the proposal for establishing an independent, impartial investigative mechanism on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Poland will continue its international efforts aimed at the complete elimination of chemical weapons. The use of such weapons is unacceptable and should be prosecuted vigorously in every instance and location in which they are used. Poland calls for refraining from actions that could escalate the situation. Mr. Skoog (Sweden): I thank you, Sir, for convening today's important meeting. I also thank the Secretary- General for his briefing. The conflict in Syria is now in its eighth year. That is longer than the Second World War. President Al-Assad is responsible for one of the worst and most enduring humanitarian disasters of our time. From the beginning of the crisis, we have witnessed terrible violations and violence and a flagrant lack of respect for international law, in particular by Syrian Government forces. We must also never forget the atrocities committed by Da'esh. As the Secretary-General stated yesterday, we have witnessed "systematic violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international law tout court — in utter disregard for the letter and the spirit of the United Nations Charter". Indeed, there are numerous and flagrant violations of Security Council resolutions, international protocols and conventions Chemical weapons have been used repeatedly in Syria. The Joint Investigative Mechanism concluded that the Syrian authorities were responsible for four chemical-weapons attacks, and Da'esh for two. The use of such weapons is abhorrent, intolerable, a war crime and a crime against humanity. That is why, as has been noted here before, the international community banned their use in the international armed conflict more than a century ago. Subsequent developments have confirmed the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons as a norm of customary international law. We will spare no effort to end the use and proliferation of chemical weapons by State or non-State actors anywhere in the world. Those responsible for such crimes must be held accountable; there can be no further impunity. The Security Council has the primary responsibility to act in response to threats to international peace and security. It is our joint responsibility to uphold the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons in armed conflict. It is our common legal and moral duty to defend the non-proliferation regimes that we have established and confirmed. That is best done through true multilateralism and broad international consensus. In that regard, we welcome the deployment of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon's Fact-finding Mission to Syria and we look forward to its findings. It is regrettable that the Council was unable to come together and agree on a timely, clear and unified response to the repeated use of chemical weapons in Syria. We regret that Russia, again this week, blocked the Council from setting up a truly impartial and independent attribution mechanism. That has contributed to the situation in which we find ourselves now. The use of chemical weapons is a serious violation of international law and it constitutes a threat to international peace and security. Deterrence and prevention of their use is the concern of the entire international community. We therefore share the rage and anger and are appalled by the repeated use of such weapons in Syria. It is necessary to rid Syria of chemical weapons once and for all, and hold those responsible accountable. At the same time, as the Secretary-General said in his statement yesterday, there is an obligation, particularly when dealing with matters of peace and security, to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations, and international law in general. We are at a dangerous moment. We call for restraint and for avoiding any acts that could escalate, or further fuel, tensions. We need to avoid the situation spiralling out of control. Over the past few days, we have tried to ensure that all peaceful means to respond are exhausted. We worked tirelessly so that no stone was left unturned in efforts to find a way for the Council to shoulder its responsibility in accordance with the Charter. We have shared a proposal with Council members to achieve that objective by inviting the Secretary-General to come back to the Council with a proposal. In order to be successful, diplomacy needs to be backed by clear demands. The Secretary-General called on the Council to take action, but regrettably the Council could not unite. It was indeed a missed opportunity, but we stand ready to continue those efforts. 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 13/26 In the light of all that has now happened, it is more critical than ever to avoid an escalation and revert to the track of diplomacy for a political solution in line with resolution 2254 (2015). We reiterate our total support for the United Nations-led political process, which urgently needs to be reinvigorated, as well as the efforts of Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and the full implementation of resolution 2401 (2018) for the cessation of hostilities. Humanitarian access can wait no longer. A sustainable political solution is the only way to end the suffering of the Syrian people. Let us all then rally around that objective. Let us redouble our efforts and put an end to the long, brutal and meaningless conflict once and for all. Mrs. Gregoire Van Haaren (Netherlands): I would like to begin by thanking the Secretary-General for his briefing today. Both yesterday and today, he spoke of the litany horrors that the Syrian population has experienced in the past seven years, of which the chemical-weapons attacks are among the most gruesome. The world hardly needs reminding of the unspeakable suffering that countless Syrian men, women and children have endured. It is a suffering that comes at the hands of Al-Assad and his allies. The Syrian regime has left the world no doubt as to its willingness to unleash terror on its own population. The repeated use of chemical weapons counts as the most cynical expression of that campaign. Just a week ago, the world was yet again confronted with reports of chemical-weapons use — that time in Douma. All the while, the Russian Federation has made clear to the world its readiness to stand by Al-Assad every step of the way. It has blocked draft resolutions in the Council that could have stopped the violence. I call upon all members of the Security Council to support a collective, meaningful response to the use of chemical weapons. But even if the Council fails to act, it should be clear to the world that the use of chemical weapons is never permissible. Against the background of past horrors and the unabated risk of recurrence, the response by France, the United Kingdom and the United States is understandable. The response was measured in targeting a limited number of military facilities that were used by the Syrian regime in the context of its illegal chemical-weapons arsenal. The action taken by those three countries made clear that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable. Last night's response was aimed at reducing the capabilities to execute future chemical attacks. But do not let the Syrian regime and the Russian Federation think for a moment that we will waver in our pursuit of full accountability for the perpetrators of past chemical attacks. We will not settle for anything less than an independent, impartial attribution mechanism, so that the culprits of those heinous attacks can be identified and held accountable. We call on the Russian Federation to stop opposing that. The use of chemical weapons is a serious violation of international law and may constitute a war crime or crime against humanity. The Kingdom of the Netherlands strongly believes that the international community must fully uphold the standard that the use of chemical weapons is never permissible. Impunity cannot, and will not, prevail. However, should the Council continue to suffer from the paralysis inflicted by a single permanent member, we must not forget that the United Nations is bigger than the Council alone. We have strong leadership at the top of the United Nations Organization, and we have a powerful General Assembly. Both have to consider all instruments to advance accountability for the use of chemical weapons. The Kingdom of the Netherlands welcomes every option to establish an independent and impartial mechanism, whether within the framework of the United Nations framework or of other relevant international organizations, as long as it results in a mechanism that can establish who is responsible, so that the perpetrators can subsequently be held to account. Any new mechanism should build upon the important work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism and the ongoing Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact-finding Mission. It is therefore crucial that the Mission have complete and unhindered access to all information and sites it deems necessary to conduct its investigations with regard to the attack with chemical weapons in Douma last weekend. The international norms against the use of chemical weapons must be respected, and the Syrian people must be relieved from the violence, hardship and injustice that has haunted them for so long. To that end, we call for a political solution and an immediate cessation of violence, as agreed upon earlier by the Council, as well as full, unhindered and immediate humanitarian access. We reiterate our determination to achieve justice for the victims. The need to collectively stand up for the fate of the Syrian people is now more apparent than ever. Mr. Llorentty Solíz (Plurinational State of Bolivia) (spoke in Spanish): My delegation would like to thank the Secretary-General for his presence and participation S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 14/26 18-10891 in this meeting. Bolivia would also like to thank the Russian Federation for its initiative in convening this emergency meeting of the Security Council. Today is a dark day in the history of the Council. Three permanent members have made the decision, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, to take unilateral action against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another State Member of the Organization. Bolivia would like to clearly and categorically express its condemnation of the use of chemical weapons or the use of chemical substances as weapons, as it is unjustifiable and criminal wherever and whenever it happens, by whomever, given it constitutes a serious crime against international law and international peace and security. Those responsible for committing such terrible and criminal acts must be identified, investigated, prosecuted and punished with the utmost rigour. Bolivia continues to demand a transparent and impartial investigation to determine who the culprits are. Aside from that topic, the purpose of this meeting is linked to the fact that, as I stated, three permanent members of the Council have used force in breach of the Charter. It is impossible to combat the alleged violation of international law by violating international law. Bolivia is surprised by the fact that, given that, they have a greater a greater responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, the permanent Council members bypass the United Nations when it suits them. They advocate for multilateralism as long as it serves their purposes and then simply discard it. When multilateralism is no longer in their interest, it no longer concerns them. This is not the only case in which, sadly, unilateral action has been used. We recall, and will not tire in recalling, such use in Iraq in 2003 and in Libya in 2011. Any such action must be authorized by the Security Council under the Charter of the United Nations. All unilateral actions run counter to international law, as well as to the values and principles of the Charter. Bolivia rejects the use and the threat of the use of force. Unilateral actions not only respond to the specific interests of those who carry them out, but are also measures that are — allow me to use the word — imperialist. It so happens that the empires that we mentioned earlier consider themselves morally superior to the rest of the world. They consider themselves exceptional and indispensable, and therefore believe that they are above the law and international law, but in reality the interest of those who unilaterally use force and violate the Charter is not to advance democracy or freedom or to combat the use of chemical weapons. Their goal is to expand their power and domination. What we have witnessed over the past few hours is an attack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, which has not begun the work that was scheduled to begin today. A unilateral attack is an attack on multilateral organizations, such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. It is an attack on the Council and its primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. It is an attack on the Charter, and it is an attack on the entire international community. I wonder, with regard to the permanent members that used force just a few hours ago, how much money have they invested in arming and training the armed groups in Syria? What natural resources are they after? With what moral authority will they be able invoke the Charter in the future? Sadly, the history of violating the purposes and principles of the Charter is a long one. We mentioned Libya and Iraq, which were recent cases. The unilateral decision concerning Jerusalem also sent another absolutely clear signal of the lack of respect for international law. Who are the ones selling weapons to those who are bombing civilians in Yemen? Who are the ones who rejected the Paris Agreement on climate change? Who are the ones who stepped away from the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration? Who are the ones who build walls? We nevertheless believe that it is also important to talk about history over the long term. Above all, we have been experiencing the consequences of the havoc wreaked by some of the colonialist Powers and of their disdain for international law in the Middle East that dates back over 100 years. We are currently reliving the same scenario in Syria, characterized by total disregard for international law. To a certain extent, we relived it, for example, when the United Kingdom refused to return the sovereignty of the Malvinas islands to Argentina or when the Chagos Archipelago issue was not resolved. I hope that the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice concerning that matter will be respected. In other words, we are talking about a whole range of policies that are detrimental to international peace and security. 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 15/26 The Permanent Representative of the United States said that the United States, her country, has its finger on the trigger — "locked and loaded". Of course, we clearly heard her words with a great deal of concern and sadness. We know that the United States has aircraft carriers, satellites, smart bombs and an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and we also know that it has nothing but scorn for international law. But we have this — we have the purposes and principles of the Charter, and ultimately, as history has shown time and again, those principles will prevail. Mr. Alotaibi (Kuwait) (spoke in Arabic): At the outset, we thank Secretary-General António Guterres for his briefing at the beginning of this meeting. The State of Kuwait believes in and is committed to the Charter and principles of the United Nations, respect for the sovereignty of States, non-interference in the internal affairs of other States, and the peaceful settlement of disputes. Article 24 of the Charter of the United Nations confers upon the Security Council the responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, whereby it can act on behalf of Member States to carry out that mandate. Article 25 stipulates that the Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. What we have witnessed in the Syrian crisis is an impasse concerning the international community's efforts and the flagrant violation of its resolutions. We have followed very closely and with great concern the dangerous developments in Syria relating to recent military operations in response to the use by the Syrian authorities of chemical weapons prohibited by international law. We underscore that those developments are the result of the impasse in the international community's efforts embodied by the Security Council to reach a political settlement to the bloody conflict in Syria, which has gone on for more than seven years. It has led to hundreds of thousands of casualties and millions of displaced Syrians and resulted in the major destruction of civilian infrastructure in several cities. The chemical weapons issue long enjoyed a unified approach in the Council, which condemned the use of all chemical weapons in Syria regardless of who uses such weapons. Moreover, the Security Council adopted resolution 2118 (2013) unanimously, imposing measures under Chapter VII of the Charter in case of the non-compliance of various parties with its provisions or the continued use in Syria of chemical weapons, which, as we have said, are internationally banned weapons. In order to ensure the implementation of that resolution, in August 2015 the Security Council adopted resolution 2235 (2015), established the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism to determine those responsible for any crime involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In fact, the Mechanism identified the perpetrators of such crimes on several incidents. The unfortunate divide in the positions of the Council encouraged the parties to the crisis to continue their violations of resolutions of international legitimacy, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as well as relevant Security Council resolutions. The most recent resolution 2401 (2018), adopted unanimously, is another example of resolutions being violated. It calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities in order to allow for humanitarian access to the besieged areas. Unfortunately, that humanitarian resolution was not implemented, as we know. The State of Kuwait regrets this escalation and calls on members to overcome their differences within the Security Council and to restore the unity of the Council so that it can shoulder its responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. We also call on members to bridge the existing gap by establishing a new, independent, impartial and professional mechanism to investigate the use of any chemical weapons in Syria and to determine who is accountable for such crimes. We reiterate our full readiness to participate in any effort aimed at achieving a compromise among the positions of members of the Council so as to ensure that those who are responsible for these crimes will be held accountable and punished, and to preserve the non-proliferation regime. It is certain that there is no military solution to the Syrian crisis. Intensive efforts must be made to spare the Syrian people further suffering. We reiterate our principled and firm position regarding the Syrian crisis, which is in line with the position of the League of Arab States calling for the preservation of the unity, sovereignty and independence of Syria; putting an end to acts of violence and the killing; avoiding bloodshed; saving Syrian lives; and reaching a peaceful settlement under the auspices of the United Nations on the basis of the 2012 Geneva First Communique, and resolution 2254 (2015), through a process of political transition S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 16/26 18-10891 with the involvement of all Syrian parties so that the Syrian people can achieve their legitimate aspirations. Mr. Alemu (Ethiopia): I would like to thank the Peruvian presidency for responding quickly to the request for the holding of this meeting, and we would like to express our appreciation to Russia for making the request. It would have been a serious dereliction of duty on the part of the Council if it had failed to meet in the light of what transpired yesterday. We also thank the Secretary-General for his briefing and his presence today. For those of us who are elected members of the Security Council, the responsibility is indeed extremely heavy, to the point of being unbearable. Let us not forget that we are here representing 193 countries, to which, like permanent members, we have made solemn promises that are generally encapsulated in the Charter of the United Nations. For those of us who are members of the African Union, an organization that for obvious historical reasons attaches huge importance to scrupulous adherence to the principles of the Charter, the obligation that we have to tell the truth and to stand up and be counted for peace is also enormously heavy — all the more so when the parties involved, from our own national perspective, are friends. It was only yesterday that the Secretary-General urged Member States to act responsibility in these dangerous circumstances and stressed the need to avoid the serious situation from spiralling out of control (see S/PV.8231); indeed, he repeated the same sentiment today. We have also been repeatedly expressing our concern that the dynamic in Syria could lead to devastating consequences not only nationally, but regionally and internationally. No doubt, the strike undertaken by the three countries yesterday appears not to have led to the situation spiralling out of control. We do not take that lightly, even though it might be difficult to be consoled by that fact in the light of the potential danger we still face. That is why we call for maximum restraint, the exercise of wisdom and a quick return to dialogue among the major powers that have enormous influence on the current situation in Syria. As we stressed yesterday and previously, it is absolutely vital to resume the path of diplomacy. The alternative is without a doubt catastrophic beyond our imagination. We hope that no one wants to see that happen, but it could if we do not act together with a huge sense of urgency to defuse the current tension and reduce further military escalation. By no means do we overlook the genesis of this tragedy we are facing. It has to do with the alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma. At least, that is what ratcheted up the tension, leading to what took place yesterday, which is difficult to defend as being consistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. But there is also one point that makes it difficult for us to understand what took place yesterday. The Fact-finding Mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is arriving, or, as just said by the Secretary-General, has already arrived in Syria to investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons, which is the cause of all this tension. In the light of that, you must excuse us, Mr. President, if we were a little perplexed. While the priority of the time is clearly to avert the further escalation of the latest development, we are not underestimating the importance of ensuring accountability for any confirmed use of chemical weapons in Syria. In that regard, the OPCW Fact-finding Mission should be allowed to conduct a thorough investigation to establish the facts related to the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. The sustainable way to end impunity, which we believe is extremely important, to deter and stop the use of chemicals as weapons is through united and concerted action, including through an attribution mechanism that the Council could and must set up. That has become all the more critical now, when, as we all know, truth is becoming very difficult to establish. An opportunity has been created for parties and even individuals to claim the veracity of their own facts. We know that we are all disappointed by the current deadlock, but that should not justify overlooking the obligation to adhere to the principles of the Charter. Let me conclude by referring to what the Secretary-General said yesterday. I wanted to refer to it again because it reflects the truth and is, therefore, worth repeating: "[T]he Cold War is back with a vengeance — but with a difference. The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present." (S/PV.8231, p. 2) That is why we must appeal to the members of the Security Council, especially the Permanent Five, to help create a situation where diplomacy would have the upper hand and the primacy of politics will be our guide for coming out of what is a troubled moment in our 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 17/26 recent history. The Geneva process and Special Envoy de Mistura need the unqualified support of the Council. Mr. Ndong Mba (Equatorial Guinea) (spoke in Spanish): I thank Secretary-General Guterres for his statement, which clearly illustrates the perspective of the United Nations on this issue. What took place last night was clearly not a surprise to any member of the Security Council. It remained to establish only the day and the time. In fact, as we said in our statement yesterday (see S/PV.8232), we are concerned about the rhetoric that we are hearing and where it will lead us. It has now led us to where we feared and did not want to go — military attacks against Syria. Yesterday in this Chamber, Secretary-General António Guterres spoke about the memory of the Cold War, which in fact returned with a vengeance in the early hours of the morning, reminding the peoples of the world of the conflict of interests that still exists between two blocs. The Republic of Equatorial Guinea has followed with great concern the reports on the attacks carried out by the United States, with the support of the armed forces of France and the United Kingdom. According to estimates, the coalition fired more than 100 cruise missiles and air-to-ground missiles from two United States naval ships stationed in the Red Sea, as well as from tactical warplanes that overflew the Mediterranean and B-1B bombers from another area. The coalition launched a coordinated attack on three targets, which included a scientific research centre in an area of Damascus, a facility to the west of Homs and a command post near that facility. While surgical and very selective, last night's strikes are a violation of Chapter V of the Charter of the United Nations and of the principles and norms of international law. It is important to recall that, according to Article 24 of the Charter, the Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Members of the Council must therefore refrain from creating situations of insecurity and instability. The Security Council should not highlight or disregard the fact that those strikes may have unpredictable and potentially tragic consequences for the Middle East by encouraging or justifying the development of nuclear programmes in order to prevent any further aggression. Experts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are already in Douma to carry out investigations. Until we have reliable and irrefutable proof of the alleged chemical attack in Douma last week, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea is of the view that no aggression can be justified. Our delegation also reiterates that, in accordance with Article 33 of the Charter, in the case of any dispute that is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, it is imperative to seek a solution first and foremost through negotiation, mediation or other peaceful means. History continues to show us that military interventions never resolves conflicts but, instead, cause them to proliferate and to continue, causing devastation and destruction. We must ensure that that does not happen again in the case of the Syrian Arab Republic. We again point out that the military intervention in Libya in 2011 and its consequences today should be a clear lesson to the international community. The Republic of Equatorial Guinea opposes the use of force in international relations. We accept its use only when it is in line with the principles of international law and the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. As we have already said, in the case of Syria, it would not bring about any substantial change in the overall situation in the country. We reiterate that political agreement is the only viable way to find a lasting solution to the Syrian problem. All the parties involved must resolve their differences through dialogue, agreement and consultation. That process requires the support of the international community. The failure of diplomacy only exacerbates the suffering of the Syrian people and is the highest expression of the Security Council's failure. Equatorial Guinea continues to believe that, in order to fully clarify the 7 April events in Douma, a thorough, impartial and objective investigation must be carried out in order to reach a reliable conclusion. We urge the OPCW Fact-finding Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic to promptly carry out an investigation and to report to the Security Council on its conclusions as soon as possible. We also again reiterate the urgent need to establish, under the auspices of the Secretary- General, a professional, independent and transparent investigative body to attribute responsibility for and identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons so that those responsible, whoever they are, are brought to international justice. Only in that way can that thorny issue achieve consensus and unity among the members of the Security Council. S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 18/26 18-10891 I conclude my statement by reiterating the unequivocal position of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, which is that we wholeheartedly condemned the use of chemical weapons by whomever. Mr. Tanoh-Boutchoue (Côte d'Ivoire) (spoke in French): The delegation of Cote d'Ivoire would like to thank the Secretary-General for his presence and for his briefing on the latest developments in Syria following the air strikes carried out by certain members of the Security Council during the night of Friday, 13 April. Côte d'Ivoire requests all the actors involved in the Syrian conflict at the various levels to show restraint and not to further complicate the disastrous situation in which the Syrian people find themselves. Weapons and bombs have struck Syria too often in disregard for our collective action towards peace. Is it necessary to recall that, by signing the Charter of the United Nations in 1945, the founding Members sought to establish a new world order based on multilateralism and its resolve to make peace a universal common good, the maintenance of which was entrusted to the United Nations and the Security Council as its primary responsibility? The Secretary- General has just reminded us of that. In every situation in which the Charter of the United Nations has guided the action of the international community, respect for its principles has always enabled us to overcome the most inextricable challenges, thereby preventing many disasters for humanity. Based on its strong conviction in the virtues of multilateralism, my country therefore believes that resorting to force in order to maintain international peace and security must be authorized by the Security Council in order to preserve its essential legal authority and to thereby prevent any deviation or abuse. Only a Security Council that is strong and representative of our time will be able to mobilize all Member States of the United Nations in support of its primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. Côte d'Ivoire would therefore like to express its deep concern over the inability of the Council to relaunch the dialogue in Syria and to sideline the supporters of a military solution. Côte d'Ivoire would like to take this opportunity to reiterate its unequivocal condemnation of the use of chemical weapons, no matter who is responsible, and we call for the establishment of a multilateral mechanism to attribute responsibility and to bring those responsible for the use of chemical weapons to justice in the appropriate international tribunals. In that context, my delegation reiterates its support for the investigation to be conducted by the Fact-finding Mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in order to shed light on the allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Douma in eastern Ghouta. Côte d'Ivoire once again urges the members of the Security Council to unite with a view to putting an end to their differences and to effect the establishment of this mechanism to establish responsibility, which all the members of the Council would like to see set up. Côte d'Ivoire would like to reassert its conviction and its position of principle that the response to the crisis in Syria cannot be a military response. Quite to the contrary; it must be sought in the framework of dialogue and an inclusive political process, as envisioned in the road map set out in resolution 2254 (2015). The time has come to decisively give every opportunity for dialogue a chance and to make sure that the Council is in step with history. The President (spoke in Spanish): I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the representative of Peru. Peru notes with great concern the developments in Syria. In the face of military action, as a response to information on the use of chemical weapons against the civilian population in the country, we reiterate the need to keep the situation from spiralling out of control and causing a greater threat to stability in the region and to international peace and security. Peru condemns any use of chemical weapons as an atrocity crime. For that reason, we have supported the urgent deployment to Syria of an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact-finding Mission, as well as the establishment of a dedicated, independent, objective and impartial attribution mechanism. We regret the stalemate in the Security Council and our inability to take a decision on the issue. In that regard, Peru encourages the Secretary-General to redouble his efforts in accordance with the prerogatives entrusted to him in the Charter of the United Nations with a view to helping to resolve the stalemate in the Council and to establish the attribution mechanism. Peru believes that any response to the crimes committed in Syria, as well as a solution to the conflict in Syria overall, must be consistent with the Charter, with international law and with the Council's resolutions. 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 19/26 As the Secretary-General has reminded us, the Council is the organ with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and it is up to its members to act in unity and to uphold that responsibility. Peru joins the Secretary-General's urgent appeal to all Member States to act with restraint in these dangerous circumstances and to avoid any act that could escalate the situation and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people. My delegation reaffirms its commitment to continue working in order to achieve sustainable peace in Syria, to guarantee protection for the civilian population, to ensure that there is no impunity for atrocious crimes, as well as to help defuse the situation. I now resume my functions as President of the Council. The representative of the United Kingdom has asked for the floor to make a further statement. Ms. Pierce (United Kingdom): I should like to respond to the remarks made by the Ambassador of Bolivia about the United Kingdom. We have no doubt about the sovereignty of the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands and surrounding maritime areas. Successive British Governments have made clear that sovereignty will not be transferred against the wishes of the Falkland Islands. The Falkland Islanders voted overwhelmingly to maintain their current constitutional arrangements with the United Kingdom. Turning to the Chagos archipelago, the United Kingdom is participating in the proceedings before the International Court of Justice, even as we disagree with jurisdiction in that case. The President (spoke in Spanish): The representative of the Plurinational State of Bolivia has asked for the floor to make a further statement. Mr. Llorentty Solíz (Plurinational State of Bolivia) (spoke in Spanish): I will be very brief and limit myself to reading out what it says in the special declaration on the question of the Malvinas Islands, signed by all the Heads of State and Government of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Heads of State and Government: "Reiterate their strongest support for the legitimate rights of the Argentine Republic in the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas, South Georgias and South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas and the permanent interest of the countries of the region in the Governments of the Argentine Republic and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland resuming negotiations in order to find — as soon as possible — a peaceful and definitive solution to such dispute, pursuant to the relevant resolutions of the United Nations .". That would include in particular General Assembly resolution 2065 (XX). The President (spoke in Spanish): I now give the floor to the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic. Mr. Ja'afari (Syrian Arab Republic) (spoke in Arabic): I welcome the presence of the Secretary- General at this very important moment in the history and the work of the Security Council. In his important statement yesterday, the Secretary-General warned that the Cold War had returned (see S/PV.8231). That is exactly right. We all agree with the relevance of this remark. I take this opportunity to recall those who relaunched the logic of the Cold War. Of course, we all remember, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, that a number of philosophical books were published here in this country, including The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama. Another author, American thinker Samuel Huntington, wrote an essay entitled The Clash of Civilizations. Those two works marked the return of the Cold War logic. Indeed, the message of those two books was as follows: To the people of the world, you must take the American approach and surrender to the American will or we will attack you. "My way or the highway", as the American saying goes. That marked the return of the Cold War philosophy. Lies serve no purpose. They serve the person who lies once and only once. Lies deceive only once. When a lie is repeated it becomes exposed and exposes the person who is lying. My colleague the Ambassador of France announced that the aggression of his country, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, was carried out on behalf of the international community. If that is the case, I wonder which international community my colleague the French Ambassador is speaking of. Is he speaking of a real international community that S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 20/26 18-10891 actually exists? Has the international community that he represents authorized this tripartite aggression against my country? Did their Governments obtain a mandate from this international community to attack my country? My American, French and British colleagues claimed that they have bombarded centres for the production of chemical weapons in Syria. If the Governments of these three countries knew the actual location of these production centres that they claim to have bombarded, why did they not share that information with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)? Why did they not share this information with the Fact-finding Mission in Damascus before attacking my country? It is just a question I am putting to the Security Council. Furthermore, I would like to assure Council members that the OPCW investigation team arrived today at noon. Obviously, the team was delayed for a full day getting from Beirut to Damascus before the attack, for reasons that we do not know, as though the team was asked not to go to Damascus until after the bombing took place. But the team did reach Damascus today at noon and will hold a meeting in two hours, at 7 p.m., Damascus time, with the local authorities. My Government will, of course, provide every support to the team so that it may carry out its mission successfully. The facility of the Barzah Research and Development Centre, the building that was targeted by the tripartite aggression, was visited twice last year by experts from the OPCW. They inspected it, after which they gave us an official document stating that Syria had complied with its obligations under the OPCW and that no chemical activities had taken place in the inspected building. If the OPCW experts gave us an official document confirming that the Barzah Centre was not used for any type of chemical activity in contravention to our obligations with respect to the OPCW, how do Council members reconcile that with what we have heard this morning? How do they reconcile that with all the accusations and claims that the aggression targeted a chemical-weapons production centre? My American colleague said that the time for discussion is over — that it was over yesterday (see S/PV.8231). If that is so, then what are we doing today as diplomats an ambassadors at the Security Council? Our mission here is to speak, to explain what happened, to shed light on all the issues. We are not here in the Security Council simply to justify an aggression. How can we state that the discussion is over? No, the discussion is continuing in this Chamber, if the idea is to put an end to aggressions or to implement the provisions of the Charter and international law. That is why we are here. My British and French colleagues spoke of a plan of action and have invited the Secretary-General to implement it before the Council and the Syrian Government have agreed to it. Their plan of action is in fact a very strange one. But I would like to present on behalf of my Government a counter plan of action, which, I assume, should have been presented today. First, we should read the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and define and recall the responsibilities of the three States in maintaining international peace and security, rather than threatening it. I happen to have three versions of the Charter, two in English and one in French. Perhaps these three States should read what the Charter actually states. Secondly, these three States must immediately stop supporting the armed terrorist groups that are active in my country. Thirdly, they should put an end to the lies and fabrications being used to justify their aggression against my country. Fourthly, these three States should realize that, after seven years of a terrorist war that was imposed on my country, Syria, a war carried out by these three countries and their agents in the region, their missiles, airplanes and bombs will not weaken our determination to defeat and destroy their terrorists. This will not prevent the Syrian people from deciding their own political future without foreign intervention. I will repeat this for the thousandth time — the Syrian people will not allow any foreign intervention to define our future. I promised yesterday that we will not remain inactive in the face of any aggression, and we have kept our promise. I will explain how we have kept our promise. Allow me now to address those States that remain committed to international law. I would tell them that the Syrian Arab Republic and its many friends and allies are perfectly capable of dealing with the brutal aggression that my country has had to face. But what we are asking the diplomats and ambassadors today who are committed to international legitimacy and the Charter to call on the United States, Britain and France to read the provisions of the United Nations Charter, in particular those pertaining to respect for 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 21/26 the sovereignty of States and to the non-use of force in international relations. Perhaps the Governments of these three countries will realize, if only once, that their role in the Security Council is to maintain international peace and security rather than to undermine it. As I just said, I have three copies of the Charter, and I would ask the Council's secretariat to distribute them to the three delegations so that they might enlighten or awaken themselves from their ignorance and their tyranny. In flagrant violation of the principles of international law and the United Nations Charter, the United States, Britain and France, at 3:55 a.m. on Saturday, 14 April, Damascus time, attacked the Syrian Arab Republic by launching some 110 missiles against Damascus and other Syrian cities and areas. In response to this terrible aggression, the Syrian Arab Republic has exercised its legitimate right in line with Article 51 of the Charter to defend itself, and we have defended ourselves against this evil attack. Syrian air defences were able to intercept a number of rockets launched by the tripartite aggression, while some of them reached the Barzah Centre in — not outside — the capital Damascus. The Centre in that location that includes laboratories and classrooms. Fortunately, the damage was only material. Some of those modern, charming and smart rockets were intercepted, while others targeted a military site near Homs, wounding three civilians. The Governments of these three States prepared for this evil attack by issuing aggressive statements through their senior officials, saying that their only excuse for preventing the advance of the Syrian Arab Army against armed groups was these allegations of the use of chemical weapons. Indeed, in a race against time, the armed terrorist groups did receive instructions from those aggressors to fabricate this charade of the use of chemical weapons in Douma. They found false witnesses and manipulated the alleged crime scene as they did before, which served as the pretext for this scandalous aggression. This can only be explained by the fact that the original aggressors — the United States of America, Britain and France — decided to interfere directly in order to avenge the defeat of their proxies in Ghouta. In fact, those who fabricated the charade of the chemical attack in Ghouta were arrested and admitted on television that it was a fabricated attack. We have a video of that if the presidency wishes to see it. I would like to draw the attention of those who align themselves with the Charter of the United Nations and international legitimacy to the fact that this evil aggression sends another message from those three aggressors to the terrorist groups that they can continue using chemical weapons in the future and committing their terrorist crimes, not against Syrian civilians only but in other countries. There is no doubt about that. In 146 letters we have drawn the Council's attention to the plans of the terrorist groups to use chemical weapons in Syria. There are 146 letters that have been sent to the Council and the Secretariat. Today, some Council members are suddenly reinventing the wheel. The Council knows that this aggression took place just as a fact-finding team from the OPCW was supposed to arrive in Syria at the request of the Syrian Government to examine the allegations of a chemical attack in Douma. Obviously, the main message that these aggressors are sending to the Council and to the world is that they are not actually interested in the Council's mandate and that they do not want a transparent and independent investigation. They are trying to undermine the work of the investigative mission and anticipating the results. They are trying to put pressure on that mission to conceal their lies and fabrications, just as happened six years ago, in 2013, when Mr. Sellström went to Khan Al-Assal from Damascus, as I have explained in a previous statement to the Council. This morning's attack was not just an attack on Syria, as my dear friend, the representative of Bolivia said; rather, it was an attack against the Charter, the Council, international law and 193 members of this Organization. The attempt by Washington, D.C., London and Paris to ensure the failure of the United Nations working groups and fact-finding missions is systematic. While those three States boast of their support for these bodies, behind the closed doors of the Organization they pressure and blackmail them not to carry out the mandates for which they were established. We recall what took place with the investigative missions in Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and Africa. No investigative mission can be successful if it is subjected to political blackmailing. It cannot succeed. Of the three aggressors, I say they are liars. They are compulsive liars. They are hypocrites. They are attempting to ensure the failure of any action of the Organization that does not serve their interests. Ever since the Organization was established, they have tried to undermine the efforts of international investigative bodies. They have tried to exploit them. I need only mention Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and Africa. The aggressors exhausted the Council agendas for decades S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 22/26 18-10891 with their attempts to divert its attention from its role in the maintenance of international peace and security. They used the Council to pursue their aggressive policy of interference and colonialism. Yesterday, in the press of the United States and of the West, the main theme was lying in the context of a campaign that was claiming success, but they know it was a lie. While these three Governments were launching their evil aggression against my country, Syria, and while my country's air defence system was countering the attacks with a great deal of bravery — one hundred missiles were destroyed and did not reach their target — the American Secretary of Defense and the Army Chief of Staff were before the American and international press in an outrageous surrealist scenario. They were not actually able to answer objective questions. Millions of television viewers must have pitied those two men because they were like dunces, repeating phrases without any meaning, and were unable to respond to the legitimate questions of a journalist about their attempts to target chemical weapons facilities and the danger that posed to civilians if the alleged chemical weapons were to spread. They did not respond. They were also unable to respond to a journalist who asked the Secretary of Defense, "You said yesterday that you had no proof that the Syrian Government was responsible for the attack in Douma. What happened in the past few hours? What made you change your mind?" His answer was that he received confirmation from intelligence services. The Syrian Arab Republic condemns in the strongest terms this tripartite attack, which once again shows undeniably that those three countries pay no heed to international legitimacy, even though they repeatedly say they do. Those countries have revealed their belief in the law of the jungle and the law of the most powerful even as they are permanent members of the Security Council, an organ entrusted with maintaining international peace and security and with stopping any aggression, in accordance with the principles and purposes of the Charter. The Syrian Arab Republic is disgusted by the scandalous position of the rulers in Sheikhdom of Qatar, who supported this Western colonial tripartite aggression by allowing planes to take off from the American Al Udeid air base in Qatar. It is not surprising that the little boys of the Sheikhdom of Qatar took that position. They have supported terrorist gangs, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and others, in a variety of ways in order to destabilize Arab countries, including Syria. The Syrian Arab Republic is asking the international community, if it exists — we have heard a new definition of the international community today — and the Security Council to firmly condemn this aggression, which will exacerbate the tensions in the region and which is a threat to international peace and security throughout the world. I call upon those who are committed to international legitimacy to imagine with me the meeting in which the United States National Security Council decided to carry out this attack. I cannot help wondering what was said. "We have no legal basis for attacking Syria. We have no proof that a toxic chemical weapons attack took place in Douma, but let us set that aside. We did not need international legitimacy or any legal argument to conduct military interventions in the past." I am just imagining the discussion that might have taken place among them yesterday. "This military action is necessary for us and for our allies in order to distract public attention in our countries from the scandals involving our own political elite and ensure that the corrupt system in some Gulf States pays the price of such aggression. Most important is how to protect the terrorism that we have sponsored in Syria for years." The President (spoke in Spanish): Members of the Council have before them document S/2018/355, which contains the text of a draft resolution submitted by the delegation of the Russian Federation. The Council is ready to proceed to the vote on the draft resolution before it. I shall put the draft resolution to the vote now. A vote was taken by show of hands. In favour: Bolivia (Plurinational State of), China, Russian Federation Against: Côte d'Ivoire, France, Kuwait, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 23/26 Abstaining: Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Peru The President (spoke in Spanish): The draft resolution received 3 votes in favour, 8 against and 4 abstentions. The draft resolution has not been adopted, having failed to obtain the required number of votes. I now give the floor to those Council members who wish to make statements after the voting. Mr. Skoog (Sweden): We voted against the draft resolution submitted by the Russian Federation (S/2018/355) because we believe that its language was unbalanced. It was not comprehensive and failed to address all of our concerns about the current situation. At the same time, we agree with the Secretary-General that actions must be consistent with the Charter of the United Nations and with international law in general. In our national statement delivered earlier today, we explained our view on the current situation in Syria and condemned the use of chemical weapons and the many other flagrant violations of international law in Syria. We also underscore the importance of a sustainable political solution. As members of the Security Council, we reiterate that we must unite and exercise our responsibility with regard to the situation in Syria. If there is any encouragement today, it is that it appears that everyone around the table insists on a sustainable political solution as the only way to end the suffering of the Syrian population. We therefore reiterate our full support for the United Nations political process, which must now be urgently reinvigorated, including through strong support for the efforts of Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura. Mr. Alemu (Ethiopia): We would like to explain why we abstained in the voting on the draft resolution proposed by Russia (S/2018/355). We abstained not because the text does not contain a great deal of truth — indeed it does — or because it does not adhere to principles to which we should all adhere; it does. We abstained on the grounds of pragmatism. We know that even if it had received nine votes, it would have been vetoed. Therefore it would have had only symbolic value. Nonetheless, that is not unimportant. However, for us, it is critical to defuse tensions and prevent the situation from spiralling out of control. We would like to play a constructive role in that regard. Mr. Umarov (Kazakhstan): Kazakhstan abstained in the voting today on draft resolution S/2018/355 because we believe that all disputes among States should be resolved through peaceful dialogue and constructive negotiations on the basis of equal responsibility for peace and security. As I mentioned in my statement earlier today, we call for all parties to refrain from actions that could aggravate tensions and cause the situation to spiral out of control. Mr. Ndong Mba (Equatorial Guinea) (spoke in Spanish): Our abstention reflects the frustration of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea with regard to the failure to adopt a resolution to establish an attribution and accountability mechanism to identify those responsible for the use of chemical weapons. We reiterate our call for a consensus-based resolution that would establish that mechanism and prevent a repeat of the action we witnessed yesterday. In that regard, we recall that the Swedish initiative was endorsed by the 10 elected members of the Council. We could introduce the required changes into the draft resolution to enable its adoption by consensus, which would allow the mechanism to be established under the auspices of the Secretary-General. Mr. Delattre (France) (spoke in French): The draft resolution submitted by Russia (S/2018/355) has just been categorically rejected. The result of the voting sends a clear message that the members of the Council understand the circumstances, reason for and objectives of the military action taken yesterday. The Council understands why such action, which has been acknowledged as proportional and targeted, was required. No one has refuted the fact that the use of chemical weapons cannot be tolerated and must be deterred. That is the key point. It is important that we now look towards the future. As I have just said, the air strikes were necessary and served to uphold international law and our political strategy to end the tragic situation in Syria. It is for that reason that, together with our American and British partners, France will work with all members of the Security Council to submit a draft resolution on the political, chemical and humanitarian aspects of the Syrian conflict with a view to devising a lasting political solution to the conflict. Mrs. Gregoire Van Haaren (Netherlands): The Kingdom of the Netherlands voted against the draft resolution proposed by the Russian Federation S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 24/26 18-10891 (S/2018/355) because the text does not provide for the urgent action that the Security Council must take in response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. It ignores the very essence of the action that must be taken by the Council. It should condemn the use of chemical weapons in Syria, protect its people and hold accountable those responsible. Today's draft resolution does none of the above. Mr. Alotaibi (Kuwait) (spoke in Arabic): Kuwait voted against draft resolution S/2018/355. At the time when the State of Kuwait reiterates its adherence to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which prohibits the threat or use of force as a means to settle disputes and requires them to be settled by peaceful means, yesterday's use of force was the result of efforts to disrupt the will of the international community, specifically by hindering the Security Council in its determination to take measures at its disposal to end the ongoing use of internationally prohibited chemical weapons in Syria. That is a flagrant violation of resolution 2118 (2013), which unequivocally expresses the Security Council's intention to act under Chapter VII of the Charter when one party or several parties fail to comply with its provisions or in the case of the continued use of chemical weapons in Syria. The Council must once again show its unity and bear its responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, in accordance with the Charter. It must agree on a new independent, impartial and professional mechanism for investigating any use of chemical weapons, bring those responsible for such crimes to account, and ensure that they do not enjoy impunity. We call for intensified efforts and a return to the political track, under the auspices of the United Nations, with the aim of reaching a peaceful settlement to the crisis based on the first Geneva communiqué (S/2012/522, annex) and resolution 2254 (2015). Mr. Ma Zhaoxu (China) (spoke in Chinese): China has always opposed the use of force in the context of international relations. We advocate for respecting the sovereignty, independence, unity, and the territorial integrity of all countries. Any unilateral military action bypassing the Security Council runs counter to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, violates the principles of international law and the basic norms governing international relations and, in the present case, will further complicate the Syrian issue. Based on that principled position, China voted in favour of draft resolution S/2018/355, proposed by the Russian Federation. I would like to emphasize here that a political settlement is the only viable pathway to solving the Syrian issue. China urges the parties involved to remain calm, exercise restraint, return to the framework of international law and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiations We support the role of the United Nations as the main channel for mediation, and we will spare no effort to reach a political settlement of the situation in Syria together with the international community. Mr. Nebenzia (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): Today is the day when the Security Council and the world community should raise their voices in the defence of peace, security, the Charter of the United Nations and international law. Every delegation in this Chamber is a sovereign country, and no one should attempt to pressure or dictate to any of us how to interpret international law and the Charter of the United Nations, or how to consult our own consciences. We have never hesitated to vote in accordance with the dictates of international law, the Charter, our conscience and truth. Today's meeting confirms that the United States, Britain and France, all permanent members of the Security Council, continue to plunge world politics and diplomacy into a realm of myths, myths that have been created in Washington, London and Paris. That is dangerous work, representing a kind of diplomacy that traffics in myths, hypocrisy, deceit and counterfeit ideas. Soon we will arrive at the diplomacy of the absurd. These three countries create these myths and try to force everyone to believe in them. We counter their myths with facts and a true picture of what is going on. But they do not want to see or hear. They simply ignore what they are told. They have come up with a legend about Russia as a constant wielder of the Security Council veto whom they purposely provoke into using the veto so as to then present themselves in a favourable light, especially right now. They are distorting international law and replacing its concepts with counterfeits. They are unabashedly hypocritical. They demand an investigation, and before the investigation has even started they name and punish the guilty parties. Why did they not wait for the result of the investigation that they themselves all called for? The Security Council is paralysed because of these countries' persistent deceptions both of us 14/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8233 18-10891 25/26 and the international community. They are not only putting themselves above international law, they are trying to rewrite it. They violate international law and try to convince everyone that their actions are legal. The representative of the United Kingdom gave three reasons justifying the missile strikes based on the concept of humanitarian intervention. They are trying to substitute them for the Charter. That is why we and other countries did not support it then and do not support it now, because we do not want it to become the justification for their crimes. We demand once again that that they halt this aggression immediately and refrain from the illegal use of force in the future. Today we once again showed the whole world how we play our underhanded games. In Soviet times there was a pamphlet entitled Where Does the Threat to Peace Come From? that described Washington and the NATO countries' military preparations. Nothing has changed. The threat to peace comes from exactly the same place. Look at what they say and listen to the war drums that they are beating in Washington today in the guise of hypocritical concern for democracy, human rights and people in general. The five-minute rule in the latest presidential note's rules of procedure (S/2017/507) will not allow me to list them, because the list is too long. I could cite other examples, as for example how the President of France showed interest in a conversation with President Putin in an investigation in Douma and was ready to send French experts there when that idea suddenly disappeared. Because a different algorithm was put forward. That is obvious. Today is a sad day. It is a sad day for the world, the United Nations and its Charter, which has been blatantly violated, and the Security Council, which has shirked its responsibilities. I should like to believe that will not see another day as bad as today. The President (spoke in Spanish): I shall now make another statement in my national capacity. Peru abstained in the voting because we believe that the draft resolution did not adequately reflect the need to guarantee due accountability for the use of chemical weapons throughout Syrian terrority and because its language is imbalanced and would not help to restore the Council's unity, which is critical to addressing the events in Syria in a comprehensive manner. I now resume my functions as President of the Security Council. The representative of the United Kingdom has asked to make another statement. Ms. Pierce (United Kingdom): I think it is obvious why we voted against the draft resolution. We support completely what the French representative laid out about next steps and we will work tirelessly to that objective, along with partners on the Council. The Russian Ambassador referred to myths. These are not our myths. The way forward in the Council has been blocked. The second of our own criteria for taking this action on an exceptional basis must be objectively clear. There is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved. In the 113 meetings of the Council on Syria, I think that has been demonstrated absolutely crystally clear. The United Kingdom believes that it cannot be illegal to prevent the use of force to save lives in such numbers as we have seen in Syria. The reason we took this action — our legal basis — was that of humanitarian intervention. We believe that that is wholly within the principles and purposes of the United Nations. The President (spoke in Spanish): The representative of the Syrian Arab Republic has ask for the floor to make a new statement. I now give him the floor. Mr. Ja'afari (Syrian Arab Republic) (spoke in Arabic): I apologize for requesting the floor once again. The scene that we have just witnessed is quite sad. There are those in the Council who prefer to overlook an enormous elephant that we have spoken of before. The elephant is the direct American military occupation of one-third of my country's territory — a direct American military occupation of one-third of the Syrian Arab Republic territory. However, there are those who speak of minor details which they believe to be pivotal. No, the political scene is far more dangerous than that. We are a State whose sovereignty has been facing a direct military violation by a permanent member of the Council. That is the true scene, and not the allegations and the film prepared by the terrorist organization known as the White Helmets established by British intelligence. We need to focus on the main scene here. Some would claim that they are fighting Da'esh in Syria and Iraq. However they have given air cover to Da'esh. Whenever the Syrian Arab Army makes advances against Da'esh, United States, British and French war planes bombard our military sites. Why? To prevent our decisive victory against that entity. However, they failed S/PV.8233 Threats to international peace and security 14/04/2018 26/26 18-10891 and we were able to achieve victory against Da'esh with our brothers in Iraq in three years and not in thirty, as former President Obama predicted. We understand that the capitals of the three countries that launched the aggression against my country are frustrated. Some colleagues who voted against the Russian draft resolution (S/2018/355) claim to support a political settlement. We tell them now, after their shameful vote against the draft resolution, that those who voted against it are no longer partners of the Syrian Government in any political process. The British Ambassador explained things about the Malvinas Islands. That testimony reveals the facts about the imperialistic policies of Britain. I am actually the Rapporteur of the Special Committee on Decolonization (C-24) and I work under the agenda of the United Nations and the Secretary-General. My task and that of my colleagues in the C-24 is to end colonialism throught the world. The Malvinas are on the list of territories that do not enjoy self-governance. We are working in accordance with the United Nations agenda to end the British occupation of the Malvinas. As for my colleague the Ambassador of Kuwait, I remind him — although he and his Government are well aware of it — that when my country participated in the liberation of Kuwait, we did not justify our principled position to the people of Kuwait. Our position was a principled one. We did not need draft resolutions, meetings or any tripartite aggression. We did not look into the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations or undermine our national obligations to our brothers in Kuwait, nor did we join any bloc that was hostile to Kuwait. We fulfilled our national duty towards our brothers in Kuwait. The Ambassador of Kuwait will also recall that my country could have played a different role at the time and could have negatively impacted the peace, safety and security of Kuwait, but we chose not to do so. We acted pursuant to a national principled position that was not subject to negotiation or discussion. The meeting rose at 1.50 p.m.
Algunos términos portan, por su potencial metafórico, una riqueza hermenéutica que invita a multiplicidad de exploraciones, en especial, de orden filosófico. Es el caso del término 'frontera'.
Desde una perspectiva estética, los sentidos que genera esta idea son particularmente enriquecedores
respecto de las cuestiones artísticas. Un primer atisbo sobre cuestiones de frontera en el terreno de las artes puede establecerse al pensar en aquella que separa al arte de otras disciplinas o ámbitos de expresión, como la ciencia, el lenguaje, la política, etc.
Pero también es posible pensar las fronteras del arte, "hacia adentro", es decir aquellas que involucran distinciones (y/o acercamientos) entre artes diferentes: artes plásticas, audiovisuales, literatura, etc. Trataré de presentar algunas consideraciones en el marco de estas dos posibilidades.
Partiré, solo a modo de introducción, de un muy breve rodeo sobre el sentido que abre este término cuando lo exploramos: ¿qué nos dice, en su amplia connotación metafórica, la palabra "frontera"?
La zona de frontera es una zona de paso, puede interpretarse como zona intermedia, de indefiniciones y de connivencias. En muchas ocasiones es objeto de controversias y hasta de enfrentamientos más serios; de guerras, incluso. La frontera es en buena medida ambigua: es límite, y por ende separación, pero al serlo, también es acercamiento y ligazón; en ocasiones, hasta puede llegar a ser (lo ha sido a menudo) refugio, protección. En la frontera nada es claro; y mucho menos, distinto. La frontera podría considerarse, posiblemente,
como uno de los símbolos más elocuentes de lo que denominaríamos el anti cogito: así, nada es evidente en la frontera.
El pensador francés que fue estimado como "el filósofo de la ambigüedad", que intentó a lo largo de toda su obra (y pese a las propias reformulaciones en sus últimos escritos respecto de sus primeros aportes filosóficos), romper con el dualismo originado en la perspectiva cartesiana, podría ser, entonces, un referente para deliberar sobre las fronteras.
Mucho más cuando pensamos en las fronteras artísticas, pues ha sido el arte una de las expresiones a las que más se ha referido con su pensamiento y el ámbito en el que encontró mayores fuentes de inspiración para sus propuestas sobre la filosofía.
A juzgar por la perspectiva con la que aborda el trabajo del pintor, por ejemplo en uno de sus artículos más visitados, ya desde su título, "La duda de Cézanne", el ámbito del arte aparece como un ámbito fronterizo: de dudas, de decepciones y de vueltas a empezar; pero, sobre todo, de indeterminaciones, de ambigüedades, de búsquedas, de interrogaciones.
Sentido y sinsentido es el título del libro de Maurice Merleau-Ponty (que de él se trata) en el que se incluye el trabajo sobre Cézanne y que reúne una serie de artículos cuya edición original es de 1948. El volumen se estructura en tres partes tituladas, a su vez, "Obras", "Ideas", "Políticas". Salta a la vista que lo que tienen en común estas tres secciones es una convicción que atraviesa todo el pensamiento merleaupontyano: no se trata de pensar filosóficamente qué será la obra de arte, o cuál será la idea filosófica más atinente o, incluso, qué debe decirse de la política. El pensamiento de Merleau-Ponty no es un pensamiento que aborde las cuestiones en singular, más bien es un pensamiento sobre pluralidades.
En tal sentido, Merleau-Ponty se desentiende de lo que podríamos figurar como una frontera, digamos, categórica. El aristotélico principio de no contradicción pierde fuerza en el horizonte merleaupontyano: no hay ya un ámbito del arte separado de uno que no lo es….
No hay, asimismo, un orden de lo político autónomo respecto de lo no político…. Es imposible, además, separar la idea de lo sensible… En un mundo de pluralidades como éste, lo primero que pierde vigencia es la pretensión esencialista que supone factible el reborde exacto de cada una de las cosas/hechos de la realidad. Como en las pinturas de Cézanne, en la perspectiva filosófica de Merleau-Ponty no hay manera de establecer esos "dibujos", esos bordes o contornos definidos que nos permiten afirmar sin vacilar qué cosa es cada una de las cosas que nos rodean y, por extensión, qué no es cada una de ellas.
Y esto es así porque se parte de la comprensión de la realidad como contingencia: en uno de los últimos artículos agrupados en la parte "Políticas" en el que intenta dar cuenta de la condición del "héroe" contemporáneo, sostiene:
El héroe de los contemporáneos no es un escéptico, un diletante o un decadente.
Simplemente, posee la experiencia del azar, del desorden y del fracaso, (…). Vive en un tiempo en que los deberes y las tareas son oscuros.
Experimenta, como nunca se ha hecho, la contingencia del porvenir y la libertad del hombre. (2000, p. 276)
Azar, desorden, fracaso, oscuridad, contingencia y al mismo tiempo libertad, definen la experiencia del hombre contemporáneo: bien podríamos decir que es toda una experiencia de frontera.
En este trabajo y con el apoyo de algunos conceptos merleaupontyanos, presentaré una indagación sobre las fronteras artísticas en torno a dos cuestiones que, a mi juicio, mantienen hoy una vigencia indiscutible: por una parte la frontera entre la imagen y la palabra, o, también, para decirlo en otros términos, entre la visualidad y el lenguaje verbal. Cuando los límites entre los diferentes lenguajes –el escrito y el plástico– se ven constantemente
desdibujados, yuxtapuestos o amalgamados en escenarios aparentemente tan distintos como una publicidad, una instalación artística, un video para televisión, una película, etc., los interrogantes sobre las diferencias y especificidades entre los diversos lenguajes posibles adquieren una nueva potencia.
Por otra parte, las relaciones entre dos visualidades diferentes, la pintura y la fotografía, por las mismas razones, pero también porque en nuestro tiempo cada una de estas manifestaciones han experimentado cambios de orden técnico muy profundos y se han expandido las posibilidades de acceso y de intercambio, muy especialmente respecto de la fotografía y a través de las redes sociales, se han complejizado de un modo impensado unas pocas décadas atrás.
Recurriré para todo ello, además del ya mencionado Merleau-Ponty, a algunos conceptos de François Soulages en su Estética de la Fotografía (2005) y a las apreciaciones sobre lo fotográfico de John Berger.
En primer lugar, entonces, problematizaremos la cuestión de la frontera –entendida como límite distintivo– entre la imagen y la palabra, que se ha desdibujado, particularmente en la contemporaneidad, de manera contundente.
Luego, a través de la confrontación entre las obras de dos artistas, uno fotógrafo, el otro pintor, notaremos, aquí la frontera se vuelve todavía más ambigua, hasta qué punto si podemos hablar de "saber" en el terreno artístico, éste tiene que ver singularmente con el receptor.
Fronteras entre imagen y palabra
La relación entre imagen y palabra constituye un tópico de la historia del arte que tiene una historia sumamente extensa y muy rica. No es mi intención, por tanto, reconstruirlo ni siquiera fragmentariamente.
Cada una de esas producciones, las visuales y las habladas-escritas, han tenido a lo largo de esa historia momentos de mayor o menor esplendor; pero ha sido la palabra la que ha obtenido en mayor parte la primacía, de conformidad con los principios rectores de nuestra tradición cultural.
Se ha tomado la fórmula horaciana del ut pictura poesis como el origen de una relación que intentaba marcar los encuentros entre ambos tipos de expresiones y en ese camino la concepción de Leonardo da Vinci aparece como uno de los esfuerzos más intensos por encumbrar a la pintura por sobre la literatura o la poesía: la "ciencia" de la pintura tiene la virtud, si es ejercida por los grandes maestros, de generar una "segunda naturaleza" y así resulta el vehículo más potente y efectivo para comprender la realidad, más que la propia ciencia y que la filosofía.
En un intento de dar una apreciación equilibrada de una tal historia, la estudiosa del tema Ana Lía Gabrieloni transcribe, en un trabajo sobre la relación entre pintura y poesía, una cita de W. Mitchell:
La dialéctica entre la palabra y la imagen aparenta ser una constante en la tela de signos que una cultura entreteje en torno a sí misma. Lo que cambia es la naturaleza concreta del tejido, la relación entre la urdimbre y la trama. La historia de la cultura es, en parte, la historia de una prolongada lucha por la dominación entre signos pictóricos y signos lingüísticos, donde unos y otros reclaman para sí determinados derechos de propiedad sobre una "naturaleza" a la que solamente ellos tendrían acceso. (Mitchell 1986, p. 43)1
En nuestra contemporaneidad, la imagen, artística o no, ha cobrado un protagonismo inusitado, invasivo de ámbitos usualmente reservados a la letra escrita, por lo cual ha sido y es objeto de innumerables análisis filosóficos, comunicacionales, estético-políticos, sociológicos, etc. En todos ellos, la fotografía ocupa un lugar destacado como producto técnico visual, representativo del desarrollo tecnológico que caracteriza, en particular, la visualidad del siglo XX en adelante, atravesada, como dijera hace ya tanto tiempo Walter Benjamin, por la reproductibilidad.
La fotografía en particular, nace con el mandato implícito de representar lo más fielmente posible a la realidad, eximiendo, en principio, a la pintura de tal cometido (pretensión, en rigor, imposible); así, la fotografía fue poco a poco oscilando entre ser un instrumento de testimonio respecto del mundo y un ámbito de creación propio del arte.
Un significativo estudioso de las cuestiones ligadas a la imagen es el crítico de arte, escritor y también pintor en sus comienzos, John Berger quien, en un capítulo de su ensayo Mirar, de 1980, dedica algunas reflexiones al análisis sobre la imagen fotográfica, inspirado en el texto Sobre la fotografía de Susan Sontag de principios de la década del `70.
Allí dice Berger que fue en el período de entre guerras cuando "(…) se creyó en la fotografía como el método más transparente, más directo, de acceso a lo real: el período de los grandes maestros testimoniales del medio (…)" (Berger, 2000, p. 47)2. Lejos, sin embargo, de estimar a la fotografía como heredera de las artes plásticas, el grabado, el dibujo, la pintura, Berger considera que la función que la cámara fotográfica pasó a cumplir era desempeñada, antes de su invención, por la memoria. Las fotos son, dice, como los recuerdos: conservan
las apariencias instantáneas. Pero eso mismo constituye una desventaja para Berger pues no narran por sí mismas. Es necesario apoyarlas, para comprender verdaderamente, con la palabra, ya que la palabra, y más bien la narración, al contrario que la imagen visual, se desarrolla y se explica en el tiempo. Y, entonces, afirma, citando textualmente a Sontag:
"Sólo lo que es capaz de narrar puede hacernos comprender". (Berger, 2000, p. 49)
Es a partir de esta frase, que estimamos polémica, que se vuelve a poner de relieve la disputa entre la imagen y el lenguaje, dando por seguro que la comprensión es producto de éste último y arriesgando relegar a la imagen a un lugar subsidiario, de mera ilustración.
Más adelante, sin embargo, Berger también rompe con el paralelo que había establecido entre la memoria y la fotografía: la memoria, dice, conserva todavía algún aspecto que puede ligarse con la valoración o la justicia. La cámara, en cambio, a fuerza de pretender suplantar a la memoria, genera imágenes para el olvido:
La memoria entraña cierto acto de redención. Lo que se recuerda ha sido salvado de la nada. Lo que se olvida ha quedado abandonado. (…), la distinción entre recordar y olvidar se transforma en un juicio, en una interpretación de la justicia, según la cual la aprobación se aproxima a ser recordado, y el castigo, a ser olvidado. (…) la cámara nos libra del peso de la memoria. Nos vigila como lo hace dios, y vigila por nosotros. Sin embargo, no ha habido dios más cínico, pues la cámara recoge los acontecimientos para olvidarlos (Berger, 2000, p. 50-51; el destacado es del autor)
Nada más atinente cuando pensamos en las cientos de fotos virtuales que tomamos en cuestión de segundos y que destinamos, en buena medida debido a la cantidad, a un acopio electrónico jamás revisitado.
Por su parte, Maurice Merleau-Ponty estima las imágenes visuales artísticas, él toma como referente la pintura, como "voces del silencio", es decir expresiones que trasmiten "ideas" pero no en forma de conceptos sino como núcleos de significación sensible que requieren para ello de la materialidad del arte y se ofrecen a la interpretación. Se trata, entonces, de ideas sensibles, que también están presentes en la literatura: por ejemplo, la frase musical de Vinteuil o las pinturas imaginarias de Elstir el personaje pintor, en la novela de Marcel
Proust, los escenarios de Kafka, si tomamos ejemplos de la ficción. Pero también los cuadros de Cézanne, de Van Gogh o de Klee.
Es cierto que en ocasiones los títulos (palabras) de las obras artísticas colaboran con la interpretación. Pensemos, por ejemplo, en el famoso cuadro de Magritte, La Gioconda, al que solo asociamos con el original de Leonardo, precisamente, por su título.
Asimismo, admitimos que las imágenes, también las fotos consideradas artísticas, llegan a nosotros (y nosotros hablamos de ellas) mediadas por interpretaciones discursivas que ponen de relieve sus coordenadas de tiempo y espacio, las apreciaciones que suscitan plasmadas en los escritos críticos, los acentos arbitrarios de una mirada que atiende más a algún detalle que a otro, etc.
Sin embargo, tampoco la palabra parece suficiente para dar cuenta de una realidad, ni completamente objetiva, ni estrictamente subjetiva, de una realidad compleja, ambigua, esquiva a la categorización y la descripción plena, y así, consecuentemente interpretable de manera múltiple. No menos cierto es, entonces, que para evitar conducir a su potencial receptor a una interpretación predeterminada ya establecida, muchos artistas deciden "titular" a sus obras, paradójicamente, Sin título.
Algo a contrapelo de la consideración anteriormente referida de Berger, François Soulages plantea en un abordaje teórico pero sustentado profusamente en la producción fotográfica, Estética de la fotografía, tres maneras, entre otras posibles, en las que los fotógrafos, especialmente los que operaron hacia fines del siglo XX, se ubicaron explícitamente más allá de las concepciones estándar de la producción fotográfica como réplica o como ilustración de un suceso. A veces, incluso, confrontaron con la sociedad mediante una ruptura o un rechazo del reportaje alienado de la sociedad del entretenimiento: en tal empresa, aclara el autor, ya no se busca la captura del instante o el mero reportaje espectáculo, sino lo que estima una instalación en el tiempo, que, a la vez, no puede sino explicarse como una interrogación en el tiempo.
Así propone analizar una fotografía considerada "de investigación" que apela a la "larga duración"; una fotografía "de la memoria" que se ubica en el "pasado" y una fotografía "de interacción" que hace uso de un "tiempo intersubjetivo". (Soulages, 2005, p. 235)
La fotografía de investigación se caracteriza por el intento de captar lo esencial, lo común, la estructura y, de ese modo, aspira al mantenimiento de su vigencia: "El soporte de esas fotos ya no es lo cotidiano que apunta a la información, la actualidad, ese presente que mañana carecerá de valor (mercantil) (…)" (Soulages, 2005, p. 235). Por esta razón, estas imágenes son naturalmente hospedadas en un libro, una revista, un museo. Al no buscar la
ilustración que se acomode a la letra escrita, sino la conformación de una obra que hable por sí, este tipo de fotografía puede producir no solo la obra, sino también el sentido de la misma.
Por su parte, la fotografía como memoria, intenta establecer una lectura sobre el pasado, sobre algún acontecimiento del pasado. Son ejemplos paradigmáticos las fotografías de documentos oficiales o de situaciones extremas como los campos de concentración o la vida carcelaria. Aquí la fotografía es al mismo tiempo, imagen crítica e imagen de imágenes.
Se fotografía a la sociedad, no en su actualidad, sino en los recovecos de su memoria, usualmente ocultados por inaceptables, pero que dan razón de ella, la exploran, la analizan.
Por último, la fotografía de interacción, se constituye como un intento de relacionar las acciones del fotógrafo con las de los no fotógrafos, constituyendo un tiempo intersubjetivo.
Estos últimos, los no fotógrafos, en ocasiones, por ejemplo en algunos proyectos fotográficos3, se hacen cargo de variadas tomas en el entorno de su propio ámbito. Con ello generan imágenes perturbadoras, porque nos devuelven miradas que se instalan como críticas de la mirada ya establecida sobre esos grupos.
Estas tres variantes de la práctica fotográfica pueden, naturalmente, cruzarse en trabajos específicos. En todos ellos parece renovarse la inquietud respecto de las posibilidades de la fotografía, sobre todo aquella que trabaja con cuestiones sociales, de constituirse como arte. El viejo interrogante respecto de las potencialidades artísticas para constituirse en mirada crítica se renueva en el ámbito fotográfico.
Esta forma de comprender la producción fotográfica –que también involucra la potencia de su recepción– genera, interpreto, una posible superación de una dicotomía inconciliable entre imagen y palabra. Puesto que la fotografía es capaz de por sí de investigar, de instalar una lectura sobre el pasado, de operar como interacción entre distintos actores –todas ellas acciones habitualmente asociadas con la palabra–; puesto que, además, se
propone como promotora de una mirada crítica que atraviesa lo social, lo artístico, la interpretación histórico-política, perspectiva tradicionalmente vinculada con la palabra filosófica; puesto que aun así, finalmente, la palabra emerge a la hora de la intercomunicación entre miradas diferentes sobre las mismas fotos, entonces lo que sigue teniendo vigencia respecto de la relación entre la palabra y la imagen como instrumentos de comprensión sobre lo real, es la tensión permanente entre ellas.
Tal vez, se trate de una suerte de "entre-deux" (entre-dos), para parafrasear la concepción de Merleau-Ponty cuando intenta resumir su visión superadora del dualismo que divide el objeto del sujeto: un entre la imagen y la palabra; o tal vez pueda asociarse al "a la vez" que propone Soulages para definir la fotografía: a la vez la palabra y la imagen. O quizá como ha pensado el propio John Berger con referencia al famoso cuadro de la pipa que no es una pipa de René Magritte (La trahison des images) solo se trata, dado que se anulan mutuamente, del fracaso de ambos lenguajes, del de la imagen y del de la palabra.
Es decir, la distinción entre la imagen y la palabra constituye, en definitiva, una frontera; y en tanto tal, resulta un ámbito de indefinición, difuso y en constante tensión.
Fronteras entre el saber y el no saber. La mirada del receptor
Sentido y sin sentido, el título del libro de Merleau-Ponty al que hacíamos referencia al principio de este trabajo, precisamente mienta la siempre dual característica de la experiencia cognoscitiva de nuestros días. En su prefacio sostiene su autor: "Convendría que la razón a la que llegamos no fuera aquella que habíamos abandonado tan ostensiblemente.
Convendría que la experiencia de la sinrazón no fuera sencillamente olvidada. Convendría formar una nueva idea de la razón". (2000, p. 27)
Si las diferencias y/o cercanías entre palabra e imagen de las que hablábamos nos ubican en un terreno de ambigüedades e indefiniciones, es decir en lo que consideramos una frontera, ¿no repercute esa consideración en el plano cognoscitivo? ¿Hay, paralelamente, un saber de la imagen y un saber de la palabra?
Volviendo sobre la cita de la experiencia del héroe de hoy que lo vuelve habitante de múltiples fronteras, ¿qué puede, este hombre contemporáneo, aspirar a saber? La respuesta no será, naturalmente, en singular. Apenas podría bosquejar una expectativa de encontrarse con esbozos de verdades, quizá apenas conjeturas, así, en plural. Y aquí, nuevamente, aparece la frontera: ese espacio algo indefinido que separa (pero al mismo tiempo asocia) el saber y el no saber, la verdad y la falsedad, la apariencia y la realidad. Entonces, en el terreno de la Estética, el interrogante crucial desde esta perspectiva es el que se dirige hacia la posibilidad de que el arte, las obras de arte, sean (o no) vehículos o constituyan (o no) núcleos de saber.
La tajante separación kantiana entre la afirmación científica –es decir, de conocimiento, un juicio de carácter conceptual u objetivo– y el juicio estético –que lo es en tanto refiere a un sentimiento subjetivo, aunque bien con pretensión de universalidad–, ha generado una tradición estética sustentada en la contemplación que ha negado al arte, precisamente, su cualidad cognoscitiva y enseñable, pese a que no pueda decirse sin más que Kant sostuviera que el arte nada tiene que ver con el saber4.
Una experiencia reciente y fundamentalmente casual –he aquí cómo obra la contingencia– hizo que me encontrara con una obra fotográfica que me produjo al instante una asociación pictórica: buscando imágenes de fotografías ligadas con la posguerra española para un trabajo dedicado a ese período de la literatura y sus relaciones con las producciones visuales, me llamó mucho la atención la obra de Franz Muller, un fotógrafo húngaro, nacido en 1913 y que en 1947 se establece en España, después de haber sufrido persecuciones y haber ambulado y fotografiado por diferentes países, no solo de Europa. Un verdadero artista de fronteras, que ha tenido que vivirlas, atravesarlas y en muchas ocasiones descifrar cómo lograr eliminarlas.
Me detuve en la fotografía que lleva por título Descargando sal (Oporto), Portugal, tomada en el año 19395. La imagen de la foto de Muller inmediatamente me recordó las pinturas del pintor argentino Benito Quinquela Martín; de este último, es profusa la cantidad de imágenes portuarias pictóricas que nos ha legado. Apenas unos años separan el origen temporal de las imágenes de Muller y algunas de las de Quinquela6. Y unos pocos años más
separan a ambas de la aparición del libro de Merleau-Ponty, Sentido y sinsentido, al que hacíamos referencia, editado, como dijimos, en 1948. En perspectiva histórica diríamos que tanto las imágenes como el libro son de la misma época.
Nicolás Muller es uno de las grandes figuras de la fotografía social húngara, compatriota de grandes fotógrafos hoy consagrados como BrassaÏ, Robert Capa, André Kertész y Kati Horna. Con ellos comparte, además, la experiencia del exilio7.
Entre fin de año de 2013 y fines de febrero de 2014 y con motivo de los cien años de su nacimiento, la Sala Canal de Isabel II, en Madrid, expuso la colección "Nicolás Muller.
Obras Maestras"8. Una de las gacetillas que anuncian la muestra presenta el siguiente comentario, que parece definir clara y sintéticamente el trabajo de Muller:
Como otros fotógrafos de su generación, Robert Capa, Brasaï o Kertész, está muy influido por las teorías constructivistas de la época y por las nuevas formas visuales que se originan en la escuela alemana de la Bauhaus.
Este conjunto de influencias dará lugar a una fotografía directa, expresiva y social que busca retratar a las clases sociales más desfavorecidas desde un humanismo que pone en valor la fuerza de lo cotidiano9.
Por su parte, Benito Quinquela Martín, uno de los pintores más populares de nuestro país, fue autodidacta, lo que ocasionó que la crítica no fuera siempre positiva con su obra. Su rasgo técnico distintivo es que usó como principal instrumento de trabajo la espátula en lugar del tradicional pincel. Ha retratado como nadie la vida del trabajo en el puerto, a la que conocía desde pequeño cuando ya cargaba bolsas de carbón para ganarse la vida.
Volvamos a las imágenes. Podríamos conjeturar que la "anécdota" de ambas vistas, la pictórica y la fotográfica, es semejante. Que la asociación se produjo debido a que describen escenarios similares. Sin embargo, de ningún modo pretendo sugerir que haya alguna relación de hecho entre lo que cuentan la producción pictórica que alude al puerto de Buenos Aires y la toma de Muller del puerto portugués de Oporto (por ejemplo, que Quinquela
se hubiera inspirado en la foto de Muller suponiendo que hubiera tenido oportunidad de conocerla, lo que en verdad es altamente improbable, o a la inversa, lo cual resulta más improbable aún). Pero si hubiera sido así, todavía tal cuestión sería irrelevante para lo que pretendo sustentar en este trabajo.
¿Por qué me pareció significativo tal parecido? En verdad, dado el momento histórico común (la década del `40 del siglo XX), no es para nada sorprendente que haya fuertes coincidencias en los elementos descriptos en cada imagen: cada una cuenta, en sus términos, la manera en la que por entonces se llevaba a cabo la carga y descarga de ciertas mercaderías en los puertos. Hasta podría darse explicación epocal para la vestimenta de los personajes que allí aparecen, la conformación de los barcos, las técnicas de descarga, etc.
No es, entonces, la anécdota lo que cuenta. Lo que me parece que vale la pena confrontar son, precisamente, las miradas de dos artistas alejados geográfica y hasta culturalmente; incluso técnicamente, ya que estamos hablando de una foto en comparación con una pintura.
Pero que, a la vista de un receptor, resultan semejantes. Es decir, estamos frente a un interesante ejemplo de "fronteras": frontera entre lo fotográfico y lo pictórico, frontera entre la cultura europea y la sudamericana (y todavía cabría aquí hablar de las diferentes fronteras hacia el interior de la frontera cultural, por ejemplo, las costumbres húngaras y/o españolas y las rioplatenses), frontera entre el ambiente político-social de la posguerra y el de los cambios profundos en la esfera del trabajo de la Buenos Aires de los `40-50, etc.
Y es entonces que pienso en Merleau-Ponty, en su concepción de la mirada como constitutiva del mundo, no en un plano puramente imaginario, ni en uno conceptual, ni siquiera como testimonio afirmativo, sino en tono interrogativo: "La primera que interroga al mundo no es la filosofía sino la mirada", dice en su obra póstuma Lo visible y lo invisible" (1970, p. 132). Lo asombroso es que en perspectiva fotográfica, un fotógrafo húngaro
exiliado y finalmente radicado en España, hace una toma de un puerto portugués en 1939 que se parece mucho, al menos en una recepción particular, a la pintura al óleo de un pintor porteño que gusta retratar ciertas postales del hoy mítico barrio de La Boca. El primero genera una imagen en tonos de grises, el segundo una de colores predominantemente cálidos; podríamos extremar la metáfora: una frontera cromática.
Pero la contingencia, el azar, ha hecho que una mirada receptiva las asocie. Y las interrogue, poniéndolas en diálogo pese a sus diferencias constitutivas, e incluso frente a sus coincidencias. Tiene sentido, y al mismo tiempo no lo tiene, asemejarlas. Hay algo de razonable y a la vez de fortuito en su confrontación. Es que las imágenes, por todo esto que decimos pensando en la aseveración merleaupontyana, no se conforman con un sentido que se agota en alguna explicación, sino que son expresiones y, como tales, su sentido (su significado, su inteligibilidad) se monta sobre un fondo de sinsentido: su potencia sensible, diría Merleau-Ponty, su carne. De este modo sostiene: "Tanto en la obra de arte o en la teoría como en las cosas sensibles, el sentido es inseparable del signo. La expresión, por lo tanto, nunca puede darse por acabada. La más alta razón es vecina de la sinrazón". (2000, p. 28)
"Cézanne se pregunta si lo que ha salido de sus manos tiene sentido", reflexiona en el artículo que le dedica; es decir, Cézanne duda, porque lo que quiere lograr, poner de manifiesto un segmento de mundo, es una tarea sin fin. Porque no solo hay sentido en la obra, sino también sin sentido, entonces, su "decir", lo que nos muestra, es, por contingente, por ambiguo, expresable al infinito, de interpretación inagotable.
Así, la comprensión de una obra, la comprensión de una puesta frente a frente de dos obras que parecen decirnos algo semejante, la interpretación de los por qué, incluso, las hemos enfrentado, las preguntas que nos sugieren, también se instalan en una zona de frontera: no es una cuestión ni completamente sensible ni completamente inteligible. De tal modo que, no se trata, plenamente, ni de un saber ni de un no saber, sino de una mirada interrogadora que, contingentemente, habrá o no encontrado alguna idea significativa en la presentación sensible a la que se enfrenta.
Conclusiones
Muchas fronteras, lo hemos señalado, se aúnan en la asociación entre Quinquela y Muller: naturalmente fronteras geográficas (Buenos Aires/Oporto), pero también técnicas (toma fotográfica/pintura al óleo), artísticas (fotografía/pintura), culturales (Europa en guerra/ Buenos Aires de inmigrantes), si se quiere, hasta políticas (que derivarían todas de las otras), fronteras entre lo explícito y lo implícito, fronteras entre lo sensible y lo inteligible, es decir, entre el sentido y el sin sentido. A su vez, ambas imágenes hacen foco en una zona límite como es un puerto que puede pensarse, así, como una zona de frontera: la que se erige entre la tierra y el agua.
La frontera no solo constituida, sino también atravesada por la mirada receptiva, es la que nos pone en el lugar de la interrogación y la apertura hermenéutica.
Por otro lado, hemos hablado de la frontera entre lo escrito o dicho y lo visual. Hay ideas que surgen de las manifestaciones visuales, pictóricas o fotográficas, que también nos ofrecen un lugar, parafraseamos a Kant, para mucho pensar. Como sostiene Merleau-Ponty, se esconden entre las luces y los pliegues de las obras artísticas a modo de "ideas sensibles" sin que nos puedan ser dadas de otro modo (cf. 1970).
En ambos casos se ponen en juego enigmas sobre las posibilidades de saber, la potencia del arte (pero no solo del arte) para trasmitirnos algo más o menos parecido a la verdad.
Siempre se interpela, en definitiva, el papel del receptor.
Mucho sentido y mucho sinsentido, volvamos al libro del que hemos partido, conviviendo al prestarse a la interpelación de la mirada que, en forma interrogativa, pone en cuestión las convicciones más elementales de nuestra tradición filosófica: que el pensamiento solo piensa y que los sentidos solo sienten. Para Merleau-Ponty no hay una verdad menos cierta que ésa.
This is introduction, acknowledgements and dedication part from Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes. Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes is a collection of select peer-reviewed scholarly articles developed from concepts and positions presented and generated at the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (ISLSP) celebrated on April 13–14, 2012 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (United States). The symposium gathered 31 speakers and over 80 participants from all over the nation and other parts of the world. Each speaker brought a unique perspective of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), which was essential to pave the way to enlightening, fruitful and engaging discussions throughout the 2–day symposium. ; To cite the digital version, add its Reference URL (found by following the link in the header above the digital file). ; Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes Lourdes Sánchez-López Editor UAB Digital Collections Birmingham, Alabama, March 2013 Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes ISBN 978-0-9860107-0-5 UAB Digital Collections Mervyn H. Sterne Library University of Alabama at Birmingham March 2013 Editor Lourdes Sánchez-López University of Alabama at Birmingham Production Manager Jennifer Brady University of Denver Editorial Board Julia S. Austin University of Alabama at Birmingham William C. Carter University of Alabama at Birmingham Alicia Cipria University of Alabama Sheri Spaine Long United States Air Force Academy / University of Alabama at Birmingham Jesús López-Peláez Casellas University of Jaén Clara Mojica Díaz Tennessee State University Malinda Blair O'Leary University of Alabama at Birmingham Susan Spezzini University of Alabama at Birmingham Rebekah Ranew Trinh University of Alabama at Birmingham Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon University of Alabama at Birmingham Table of Contents INTRODUCTION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & DEDICATION Lourdes Sánchez-López . x ON LSP THEORETICAL MODELS Continuing Theoretical Cartography in the LSP Era Michael S. Doyle . 2 ON THE CURRENT STATE OF LSP Language for Specific Purposes Job Announcements from the Modern Language Association Job List: A Multiyear Analysis Mary K. Long . 15 ON LSP PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES Spanish for the Professions: Program Design and Assessment Carmen King de Ramírez and Barbara A. Lafford . 31 Spanish for Professional Purposes: An Overview of the Curriculum in the Tri-state Region Leticia Barajas . 42 The Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate (SSPC) Program: Meeting the Professional Needs of Students and Community Lourdes Sánchez López . 62 French for International Conference at The University of the West Indies, Mona: Total Simulation in the Teaching of Languages for Specific Purposes Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo and Gilles Lubeth . 73 ON THE UNEXPECTED LSP PARTICIPANT The Unexpected Spanish for Specific Purposes Professor: A Tale of Two Institutions Sheri Spaine Long . 88 A Doctoral Student's Shift from Modified AAVE to Academic English: Evidence for Establishing a Language for Specific Purposes Focus Susan Spezzini, Lisa A. La Cross, and Julia Austin . 99 ON METHODOLOGY Teaching Business Chinese: The Importance and Methodology of Building Pragmatic Competence and the Case of Buhaoyisi Yahui Anita Huang . 110 Enhancing Language for Specific Purposes through Interactive Peer-to-Peer Oral Techniques Susan Seay, Susan Spezzini, and Julia S. Austin . 121 Orchestrating a Job Search Clinic for International Scholars and Students Kristi Shaw-Saleh, Susan Olmstead-Wang, Helen Dolive, and Kent D. Hamilton . 129 iii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Contributors Julia S. Austin, PhD is Director of Educational Services for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Graduate School and has been a university administrator and a teacher educator for 25 years. She has been continuously funded since 2000 by the US Department of Education National Professional Development grant program to prepare teachers to effectively serve English learners. Dr. Austin has published and presented on effective teaching practices, academic writing, authorship ethics, and collaborative mentoring. Leticia Barajas, MA is a doctoral student in the Second Language Studies program at the University of Cincinnati where she also teaches academic ESL. Her areas of expertise are Language for Specific Purposes, Spanish for professional purposes and Academic English. Prior to this position, she worked for the Spanish department at the University of Kentucky and developed curriculum for Business Spanish and Spanish for Law Enforcement courses in Mexico and Spain. Leticia Barajas is currently writing her dissertation on Spanish for professionals and working on teacher training for professional development. Jennifer Brady, PhD is the Assistant Managing Editor of Hispania and Lecturer of Spanish at the University of Denver where she teaches all levels of Spanish language and Iberian Culture and Civilization. Her research interests include masculinities in contemporary Spain, doubling and repetition in contemporary Spanish fiction, and modification and illness in physical bodies in Spanish fiction. William C. Carter, PhD is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His biography Marcel Proust: A Life was selected as a ―Notable Book of 2000‖ by The New York Times, a ―Best Book of 2000‖ by the Los Angeles Times, and a ―Best Biography of 2000‖ by the Sunday Times of London. Harold Bloom has written that Carter's book, Proust in Love is ―a marvelous study of the comic splendor of the great novelist's of human eros and its discontents.‖ He co-produced the award-winning documentary Marcel Proust: A Writer's Life. His website is http://www.proust-ink.com. Alicia Cipria, PhD is Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include theoretical and applied issues of tense, aspect and aktionsart (Spanish and English), teaching methodology, Spanish/English contrasts, translation, and contact of Spanish with other non-indigenous languages. Helen Dolive, MA is the International Student Advisor at Birmingham-Southern College. She previously worked as an Immigration Advisor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She holds Master's degrees in English from Xavier University (Cincinnati, Ohio) and in teaching English as a Second Language from UAB. A British citizen, Helen completed her undergraduate studies in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, during which she lived for a year in Belgium. Her research interests include ESL for adult learners, English for Specific Purposes, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, and orienting new international students. iv Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Michael S. Doyle, PhD is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he chaired the Department of Foreign Languages from 1993–1999. He has also served as Graduate Coordinator (1999–2003 and 2005–2009), Director of the Certificate in Business Spanish (1998–) and Director of the undergraduate and graduate Certificates in Translating and Translation Studies (2000–2012). He received his PhD in Spanish from the University of Virginia in 1981. His specialties are Spanish for Business and International Trade, Business Language Studies (BLS), Translating and Translation Studies (TTS: language, discourse, and transcultural studies, literary and non-literary), and 20th-century Spanish literature. Kent D. Hamilton, MA Ed is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Master of Education in ESL/EFL and is currently working southern Thailand at The Prince of Songkla University, Trang Campus as a lecturer in the Department of Languages. His teaching responsibilities include classes in listening, speaking, grammar, and assisting with professional and staff development classes to improve their English language proficiency. Before entering the field of education he had successful careers as a firefighter/paramedic and as an attorney Yahui Anita Huang, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Modern Foreign Languages Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Her principal academic specializations include Chinese linguistics, Semantics, Pragmatics, and language pedagogy. Her research includes the form and meaning of Chinese conditionals with a focus on quantification, presupposition, modal implications, pronoun occurrence as compared to English ―whatever‖ and ―whoever‖ sentences, and teaching Chinese for specific purposes with an emphasis on building students' pragmatic competence. She teaches Chinese language, culture, and linguistics courses and works as an interpreter and translator. Carmen King de Ramírez, PhD is Clinical Assistant Professor and coordinator for the Spanish for the Professions Program at Arizona State University. She teaches Latin American Culture for the Professions, Spanish in US Communities, Introduction to Interpretation, and Spanish for Health Care. Dr. King de Ramírez specializes in community based learning and professional internship placements for undergraduate students. Her current research interests include LSP programs, heritage learners, digital pedagogy, and service learning/community engagement. Lisa A. La Cross, MA is currently in a doctoral program in Linguistics at the University of Georgia. Her recent research has examined the sociolinguistic implications of the use of the schwa in French and the syntactical structure of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Her future projects include investigating the role of the social variety of French and AAVE within education. Before moving to Georgia, she taught English as a Second Language (ESL) in an urban, public, high school in Birmingham, Alabama. Barbara A. Lafford, PhD is Professor of Spanish linguistics and heads the Faculty of Languages and Cultures for the School of Letters and Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU). Since arriving at ASU she has published in the areas of Spanish sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, Spanish applied linguistics, computer assisted language learning, v Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) and Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), including the 2012 focus issue on LSP that she edited for the Modern Language Journal. In her administrative role, she has overseen the creation of a Spanish for the professions minor/certificate focused on programs offered on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus (e.g., education, healthcare, criminology, social work, journalism). Mary K. Long, PhD is Senior Instructor and Director of the International Spanish for the Professions major in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her publications in this area focus on cross-cultural communication and cultural sustainability in the global setting as well as LSP program development. She has also published about the role of artists and writers in the nation-building projects of 20th- and 21st-century Mexico and is co-editor of the volume Mexico Reading the United States (Vanderbilt UP, 2009), which explores the dialogue between the two countries from the Mexican point of view. Sheri Spaine Long, PhD is Professor of Spanish at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the US Air Force Academy (2011–2013). At the US Air Force Academy, she is engaged in research focused on the integration of foreign languages and leadership development. From 2006–2009, Long served as Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Language Annals, the journal of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). In 2010, she began serving as Editor of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese's (AATSP) Hispania, where she is in her second term as Editor. Long's publications include eight coauthored college textbooks as well as over 40 scholarly articles, notes and reviews on literature, culture, and language education. Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, PhD is Professor of English and Comparative literatures at the Universidad de Jaén (Spain). Currently Research Project Manager, he coordinates an international team of scholars studying the construction of English early modern identities. He has published internationally on early modern English and Spanish literature, popular culture, Joyce, and comparative literature, and he has been visiting fellow at Michigan State University, Arizona State University, and Penn State University, and at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Between 1999 and 2006 he was Vice-rector for International Relations at his university. He is a Corresponding Member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE). Gilles Lubeth, MA is a native of Guadeloupe and a graduate from the Université Antilles-Guyane (UAG). He worked at The University of the West Indies, Mona as Assistant Lecturer from 2005–2010 where he taught French language from beginners to advanced level. At the advanced level, he taught the Translation into French module and French for International Conferences. He was the advisor for exchange students going to the UAG and International Relations students participating in the joint-degree program with University of Bordeaux IV-IEP/UWI/UAG. He is currently based in New York. Clara Mojica-Díaz, PhD is Professor of Spanish at Tennessee State University. She has taught elementary through advanced Spanish, foreign language teaching methods, culture and civilization, and studies in linguistics. She has presented papers on discourse analysis, cultural vi Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) issues, second language acquisition, and language teaching at national and international conferences. She is co-author of the Pueblos Activities Manual (Cengage) and various professional articles. Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo, PhD is Associate Professor of French at The University of the West Indies, Mona and the former Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (2005–2011). She is specialized in the Teaching of French as a Foreign Language and a researcher in the literature and culture of the French-speaking Caribbean. In 2004, she received the French order of the Palmes académiques (Chevalier). She is a past President of the Haitian Studies Association (2005–2006), and the recipient of the 2013 Principal's Award for Research for her article ―The Haitian Short-Story: An Overview‖ (Journal of Caribbean Literatures, 6[3]). Malinda Blair O'Leary, PhD is Assistant Professor of Spanish. At UAB, Dr. O'Leary teaches introductory, intermediate and advanced courses on Spanish language and cultures as well as Spanish for the professions and business. In addition to teaching, Dr. O'Leary serves as the foreign language student teacher supervisor in the UAB School of Education. Susan Olmstead-Wang, PhD an applied linguist, focuses on teaching English as an International Language and developing curriculum for English for Specific Purposes at the School of Education, University of Alabama, Birmingham. She is also adjunct instructor at the Paul J. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, where she teaches advanced graduate writing. Research interests include Mandarin-English code-switching and English for Medical Purposes especially in Chinese-speaking environments. Rebekah Ranew Trinh, MA is the Director of the English Language Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she is responsible for development and oversight of the Intensive English Program and English for occupational purposes programs, advocacy for issues related to second language learners at the university, and management of ESOL teachers. She holds an MA-TESOL from the University of Alabama. Lourdes Sánchez-López, PhD is Associate Professor of Spanish and founding director of the Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She directed the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (UAB, 2012). Her scholarship/teaching areas include: Spanish for specific purposes; second language acquisition; applied linguistics; cultural studies and foreign language pedagogy. She is co-author of a Spanish intermediate textbook and student activity manual and has published articles in various scholarly national and international journals. She is the editor of Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013). Susan Seay, PhD is Assistant Professor in the School of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her main research interests are reading instruction and English as a Second Language. She has been a classroom teacher, a reading program director, an ESL Resource teacher, and a family literacy teacher, and she has been involved in the field of education for over 25 years. vii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Kristi L. Shaw-Saleh, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Master's Program for Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her current research interests include identity, gender, and hybridity among distinct immigrant populations in Alabama in an effort to develop best practices for teaching English to these diverse groups of adult language learners. She is especially interested in the effectiveness of interactive teaching strategies and in addressing the need to identify and meet the goals of adult English language learners through job clinics and community-based programs. Susan Spezzini, PhD is Associate Professor of English Language Learner Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the School of Education, University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is also program director of Secondary Education and the principal investigator on two federal grants for training classroom teachers in the effective instruction of English learners. Her main research interest is promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning through collaborative mentoring, visual analogies, and oral interactive techniques. Before coming to UAB, Dr. Spezzini had been a teacher educator in Paraguay for over 20 years. Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She holds a BA in English from L'École Normale Supérieure of Sousse in Tunisia and an MA and a PhD in English from Michigan State University. Her areas of specialization are post-coloniality, feminist theory and African literature with a specific emphasis on the Maghreb. Her current research projects are: the Holocaust in North African Literature and Tunisian women during WWII. She is author of The Production of the Muslim Woman: Negotiating Text, History and Ideology (Lexington Press, 2005). viii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) INTRODUCTION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND DEDICATION ix Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Introduction Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes is a collection of select peer-reviewed scholarly articles developed from concepts and positions presented and generated at the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (ISLSP) celebrated on April 13–14, 2012 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (United States). The symposium gathered 31 speakers and over 80 participants from all over the nation and other parts of the world. Each speaker brought a unique perspective of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), which was essential to pave the way to enlightening, fruitful and engaging discussions throughout the 2–day symposium. The keynote address was given by Business Language Studies and Translation Studies renowned scholar Dr. Michael S. Doyle (Theory and Method in Translation Studies (TS) and Business Language Studies (BLS): Illustrative Considerations for LSP in American Higher Education and Beyond). He accurately approached the need for a stronger research agenda in LSP studies (particularly in non-English LSP) while strengthening pedagogies and resources. Because of the discussions that occurred during and after the symposium, participants concluded the first ISLSP may have prepared a solid ground for something larger, collaborative and long-lasting, with strong national and international repercussions. To contextualize the current state of LSP it is helpful to briefly examine its history. The teaching of LSP originated in the 1960s in the United Kingdom and was established as a discipline as English for Specific Purposes (ESP). A landmark publication, The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching (Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens, 1964), called for linguists to carry out research based on samples of language in specific contexts to develop appropriate pedagogical materials. Moreover, the focus of the teaching of LSP has as its primary goal to fulfill the communicative needs of a specific group of people (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Since the 1960s, slow but steady global attention has been given to LSP in both research and the development of pedagogical materials for the classroom for the professions, such as medicine, law, sciences, social work, business, translation and interpretation, among others. However, the specificity of these types of programs does not root in the teaching of a specific language, neither it is determined by the specific professional context. The specificity of LSP depends largely on the students themselves. Courses vary depending on the students taking them, that is, a needs assessment analysis prior to the course development is paramount. Generally, these courses were—and today still are—geared towards adult learners (both traditional or regular/degree seeking and non-traditional or non-regular/non-degree seeking learners) preferably with a basic language background, who clearly necessitate the language in specific professional or academic contexts. Courses are usually developed according to: 1) the student level of communicative competence, 2) the urgency to use the language in a professional context, 3) the specific characteristics of such context, and 4) the design of a program that promotes the learning process (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). For all these reasons, LSP represents the teaching of languages according to learners' characteristics, and its teaching is closely determined by these elements. Typically, the offering of LSP programs is mostly limited to adult or college students for two reasons: 1) the students must have a basic general target language background, and 2) the university system allows for more flexibility or experimentation in course offerings than elementary and secondary education (Almagro, 1997). Therefore, LSP is not considered a discipline separate from the teaching and learning of languages for general purposes, but x Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) rather, it is as an extension (Sánchez-López, 2006). Most researchers agree that LSP pedagogy has been consistently learner-centered, long before the term became main-streamed in pedagogy. By definition, LSP ―attempts to give learners access to the language they want and need to accomplish their own academic or occupational goals.‖ (Belcher, 2004, p. 166) Overall, LSP has a number of weaknesses in terms of institutional recognition and teacher training (Swales, 2000). There are still few professorial positions worldwide in LSP. The majority of the instruction is delivered by adjunct instructors. However, this situation is slowly changing, and, most likely, will continue to change, as the demand for languages for the professions increases in light of recent data (―Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,‖ 2007; ―Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature,‖ 2009). Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes is divided into five sections. In the first section, On LSP Theoretical Models, Michael S. Doyle expands on his previous work of constructing a theoretical framework in Translation Studies (TS) and Business Language Studies (BLS). He calls for the development of non-English LSP theory development working groups to further develop theoretical cartographies and narratives, which the gathering era of global LSP will require in American higher education. He urges non-English LSP scholars and educators to expand on their work in theory and methodology to devise a general non-English Language for Specific Purposes theoretical model, essential to the maturation of the field. The second section, On the Current State of LSP, Mary K. Long presents findings on a recent study of the LSP job announcements posted in the MLA Foreign Language Job Information List. Her study seeks to find answers to the new state of the foreign language profession in light of above mentioned MLA report ―Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World‖ (2007), which recommended that the language disciplines decenter away from literature and design programs that are more directly related to everyday life and applied contexts. Long's article sheds new light on foreign language professions by presenting a multiyear analysis of LSP MLA job announcements. The third section, On LSP Programs and Practices, includes four chapters, each depicting an LSP program or curriculum currently offered in higher education. Carmen King de Ramírez and Barbara Lafford provide an overview of the Spanish for the Professions minor/certificate (SPMC) program at Arizona State University (ASU) and discuss student-learning outcomes. Leticia Barajas's study investigates whether the field of LSP has been influential in conceptualizing the design of the college-level Spanish curriculum in her region of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. Her findings shed light on the principal factors that affect the development of Spanish for Specific Purposes in the overall Spanish curriculum. Lourdes Sánchez-López describes the history, design, implementation and outcomes of the Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate (SSPC) program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The goal of the SSPC is to fulfill the needs of its dynamic millennial students and of the increasingly diversified community. In the last chapter of this section, Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo and Gilles Lubeth present a general overview of the LSP context in the Caribbean region—as well as recent additions to the French for Specific Purposes courses offered at the University of The West Indies, Mona—the methodological choices made, and their implication for assessment. Section four, On the Unexpected LSP Participant, explores two different cases of unexpected LSP participants. Sheri Spaine Long chronicles her transition from professor of xi Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Spanish for general purposes (SGP) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to professor of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP, with a military emphasis) at the United States Air Force Academy. Her reflection documents two transitions that mirror current curricular changes in undergraduate language programs in the United States. She urges foreign language educators to find common ground between SSP and SGP as they design hybrid programs to respond to multiple demands of today's Spanish learners. Susan Spezzini, Lisa A. La Cross and Julia S. Austin explore how a Language for Specific Purposes focus in a presentation skills course helped a doctoral student from a disadvantaged urban background shift from modified African-American Vernacular English to Academic English when giving course presentations. Their study suggests establishing an LSP focus when teaching, assessing, and researching speakers of social varieties who are learning to use an oral academic variety in a professional context. Finally, section five, On Methodology, presents three different methodological aspects of LSP. Yahui Anita Huang discusses issues in teaching Chinese to American college students for professional purposes while focusing on building students' pragmatic competence. Using the multivalent buhaoyisi as an example, Huang argues that in order to use and understand the language appropriately in a business context, pragmatic classroom-based methodology must be woven into the curriculum. Susan Seay, Susan Spezzini and Julia S. Austin propose Peer-to-peer, Oral Techniques (IPOTs) as a methodological tool to help learners understand and use language specific to a certain field or occupation. In their article, these authors describe several IPOTs that can help instructors implement effective strategies to promote interaction in the LSP classroom. And finally, Kristi Shaw-Saleh, Susan Olmstead-Wang, Helen Dolive and Kent D. Hamilton explore how a job search clinic for international scholars and students was conceptualized and implemented at their university. The goal was to help international students in negotiating a job search process in the context of the United States. Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes intends be an important contribution to the LSP field. It is our wish to follow the path of previous, well-respected collections in the disciple (Lafford, 2012; Long, 2010). Collaboration, integration and unity are key elements for the success of our growing field. If this volume helps generate debate, thoughts, new ideas and fresh energy in the LSP profession, it will have achieved its purpose. Lourdes Sánchez-López Editor xii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) References Almagro, A. (1997). La relación entre el inglés para fines específicos y su proceso instructivo en la etapa de estudios universitarios. The Grove: Working Papers on English Studies, 4, 39–52. Belcher, D. (2004). Trends in teaching English for specific purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 165–186. Doyle, Michael S. (2012). Theory and method in Translation Studies (TS) and Business Language Studies (BLS): Illustrative considerations for LSP in American higher education and beyond. Keynote address given at the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (April 13–14, University of Alabama at Birmingham). First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes. Retrieved from http://www.uab.edu/languages/symposium Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. (2007) MLA ad hoc committee on foreign languages. Profession published by the Modern Language Association. (May). Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/flreport Halliday, M., McIntosh, A. & Strevens P. O. (1964). The linguistic sciences and language teaching. London: Longman. Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A learning centered approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lafford, B., ed. (2012). Languages for specific purposes in the United States in a global context: Update on Grosse and Voght (1991) [Special Issue]. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 1–226. Long, S. S., ed. (2010). Curricular changes for Spanish and Portuguese in a new era. Hispania, 93(1), 66–143. Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature. (2009). MLA ad hoc committee on foreign languages. Profession published by the Modern Language Association (February). Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/pdf/2008_mla_whitepaper.pdf Sánchez-López, L. (2006). ―La implementación de nuevos programas de español para fines específicos en la universidad estadounidense‖. Revista ALDEEU (Asociación de Licenciados y Doctores en Estados Unidos), 11, University of Jaén Publications. Swales, J. M. (2000). Languages for Specific Purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 20, 59–76. Acknowledgments First, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the colleagues who participated in the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes and who contributed to its success. I am deeply grateful to the UAB Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, and to the following individuals for their critical role in the planning and implementation of the symposium: Sheri Spaine Long, John K. Moore, Brock Cochran, Malinda O'Leary, Yahui Anita Huang, Rebekah Ranew Trinh, Susan Spezzini, Mike Perez, Niki Cochran and Karl McClure. I am also indebted to the symposium sponsors: UAB xiii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, College of Arts and Sciences; UAB Office for Research and Economic Development; UAB School of Medicine; Cengage Learning; and Pearson. I would also like to thank the colleagues who conducted the peer anonymous reviews of the proposals and to the colleagues who served as session chairs. Last but not least, I will always be indebted to Michael S. Doyle for promptly accepting my invitation to give the keynote address and for honoring us with his presence, expertise and leadership. I have no doubt that he was the perfect keynote speaker for the inaugural ISLSP. I am profoundly grateful to the Editorial Board of Scholarship and Learning on Languages for Specific Purposes who served as anonymous readers and offered invaluable feedback: Julia S. Austin, William C. Carter, Alicia Cipria, Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, Clara Mojica Díaz, Malinda Blair O'Leary, Sheri Spaine Long, Susan Spezzini, Rebekah Ranew Trinh, and Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon. I would like to offer my sincere appreciation to Jennifer Brady for her exceptional and upmost professional work as production manager of this anthology. I would like to thank the UAB Mervyn H. Sterne Library for publishing this volume and to Heather Martin, who facilitated the process. And finally, I am most appreciative of my family, who is the source of my energy and motivation every day. Dedication This book is dedicated to all Languages for Specific Purposes educators and researchers around the world. xiv Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013)
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Auf gewaltige 47,4 Milliarden Euro beziffern die Kommunen den Sanierungsbedarf. Doch wenn es um Schul- und Unigebäude geht, fehlt in "Doppel-Wumms"-Deutschland das Geld. Und der Wille.
Erst mussten fast alle zu Hause lernen, dann gab es Wechselunterricht: So startete das neue Schuljahr an der Willy-Brandt-Gesamtschule in Kerpen. Foto: Screenshot von der Website.
NEIN, SAGT THOMAS MARNER, diese Misere habe keiner vorhersehen können. "Das war ein absolut unsachgemäßer Bauablauf." Marner ist Erster und Technischer Beigeordneter der Stadt Kerpen bei Köln, und seit August musste er einen zerknirschten Brief nach dem anderen an die Eltern der Willy-Brandt-Gesamtschule und der Realschule im selben Gebäude schreiben. Über dramatische Wasserschäden und Schimmelfall. Die Anordnung von Distanzunterricht, Wechselunterricht und das Verfrachten mehrerer Schulklassen in die Turnhalle.
Kerpen ist kein Einzelfall. Überall in Deutschland zerbröseln Schulen. Und mit ihnen die Grundlage für eine solide Bildung, für Wissenschaft, für Innovationen, für Wirtschaftskraft. Zig Milliarden Euro müssten für die Sanierung von den Kommunen aufgebracht werden. Doch es liegt nicht allein am Geld, dass Renovierungen verschleppt, Sanierungen vertagt und Bauarbeiten über Jahre und Jahrzehnte gestreckt werden. Das zeigen Beispiele wie der Willy-Brandt-Schule in Kerpen und der Kurt-Schumacher-Grundschule in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
In Kerpen stammt das Schulgebäude zu großen Teilen aus den 70er Jahren, besonders dringend mussten die Flachdächer über den Fachräumen für Musik und Naturwissenschaften saniert werden. In den Sommerferien legten die Dachdecker los – und hätten dann alle Lichtkuppeln auf einmal entfernt, anstatt sie einzeln auszutauschen, sagt Marner. Als nächstes begann der Regen. Wasser strömte ein, durchnässte Räume, Mobiliar und Ausstattung – mehrere Male. So genau wisse sie das nicht, sagt Kristiane Benedix, die stellvertretende Schulleiterin der Willy-Brandt-Schule. Aber die Feuerwehr sei mindestens einmal gekommen.
"Es war wie in Corona-Zeiten", sagt der Vater eines Achtkässlers
Kurz darauf die nächste Hiobsbotschaft: Tests ergaben, dass sich Schimmelsporen ausgebreitet hatten, vor allem in die angrenzenden Gänge und dort in die Zwischenräume der abgehängten Holzdecken. "Praktisch alle Schüler und Lehrer beider Schulen mussten da durch, das konnte ich nicht verantworten", sagt Marner. Weshalb er die Sperrung des Gebäudes anordnete.
"Es war wie in Corona-Zeiten", sagt Markus Rixen, dessen Sohn in die achte Klasse geht. "Distanzunterricht für fast alle Klassen. Angekündigt von einem Tag auf den nächsten." Doch das war nur der Anfang. Der Ausnahmezustand an der Willy-Brandt-Schule würde sich bis zu den Herbstferien fortsetzen.
Auf gewaltige 47,4 Milliarden Euro beziffern die deutschen Kommunen im jährlich erhobenen Kommunalpanel der KfW-Bankengruppe den aktuellen Sanierungsbedarf an ihren Schulen. "Wenn in Kommunen das Geld knapp ist, werden anstehende Bauinvestitionen mit als erstes aufgeschoben", sagt KfW-Chefvolkswirtin Fritzi Köhler-Geib. "Gebäude schreien halt nicht, wenn sie erst ein Jahr später saniert werden."
Und wenn dann endlich saniert wird, geht mitunter noch schief, was schiefgehen kann. Nur noch episch zu nennen ist der Super-Gau, der die Schüler, Eltern und Lehrkräfte der Kurt-Schumacher-Grundschule in Berlin-Kreuzberg 2012 ereilte. Von einem Tag auf den anderen wurde das Haus nach einer Brandbegehung geschlossen. Kinder und Kollegium saßen im Hortgebäude fest, ohne Mensa, ohne Sporthalle, ohne Fachräume, für mehr als ein Jahrzehnt. So lange dauerte es, bis auch nur der erste Bauabschnitt fertig war.
Eltern twitterten vom Schul-"BER Kreuzberg"
"Leider hat man sich damals für eine Sanierung entschieden, der Neubau wäre schon längst fertig", sagt Schulleiterin Anna Vonhof. Das Bezirksamt Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg habe "versäumt, ausreichende Bausubstanzuntersuchungen durchzuführen", urteilte 2019 der Landesrechnungshof.
Auf Twitter machte die Schule als "BER Kreuzberg" Karriere, weil eine Elternvertreterin diesen Skandal nicht mehr hinnehmen wollte und öffentlich machte. "Mittlerweile hat die erste Generation von Schülern die Kurt-Schumacher-Grundschule verlassen, ohne jemals einen Fuß in das Schulgebäude oder die Turnhalle gesetzt zu haben", schrieb sie. Und weiter: Über Jahre hätten die Bauarbeiten geruht, mehrfach seien "Firmen insolvent gegangen, hätten den Auftrag gekündigt oder wurden gekündigt", kann man auf der "BER- Kreuzberg"-Website nachlesen.
Inzwischen ist die Elternvertreterin längst weg, doch die Geschichte eines öffentlichen Komplett-Versagen geht weiter. Der zweite Gebäudeteil soll angeblich bis 2026 fertig sein, doch, sagt Schulleiterin Vonhof, "dafür müssten die Arbeiten am zweiten Bauabschnitt erstmal beginnen. Doch da passiert gar nichts." Sie richte sich darauf ein, dass es bis weit nach 2026 dauern werde, "das sagt mir zwar bei den Behörden keiner so, aber die Erfahrungen der letzten Jahre sprechen dafür."
Andy Hehmke ist seit Ende 2021 Stadtrat für Schule, Sport und Facility Management im Berliner Bezirk Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, womit er nach eigenen Worten "letztlich die politische Verantwortung" trage, dass der zweite Bauabschnitt bald fertig werde. Allerdings räumt er ein, dass bereits eine Verzögerung eingetreten sei, statt Sommer soll nun Ende 2026 Fertigstellung sein. Die Schule sei informiert worden, im Januar treffe er sich in großer Runde vor Ort mit Schulleitung, Elternvertretung und Hochbauservice.
Seit Beginn der Berliner Schulbauoffensive laufe vieles anders als früher, versichert Hehmke, jetzt gebe es bei großen Sanierungen zunächst ausführliche Bedarfsprogramme mit Beteiligung der Schule, gegebenenfalls Machbarkeitsstudien und Bausubstanzuntersuchungen. "Damals war all dies nicht der Fall. Die Schließung kam völlig unerwartet. Es war kein Geld vorhanden. Der Bezirk versuchte damals, mit wenigen Mitteln schnell zu reagieren und stellte erst im Prozess fest, was hier eigentlich an Problemen vorhanden ist."
Für nichts geben Kommunen mehr aus als für ihre Schulen, trotzdem wächst der Sanierungsstau
Die Erhebung der KfW-Bankengruppe zeigt, dass die deutschen Kommunen gegenwärtig für nichts mehr ausgeben als für ihre Schulen. 12,1 Milliarden Euro sind es dieses Jahr, 28 Prozent aller geplanten Investitionen. Trotzdem reicht das nicht einmal, um den Sanierungsstau nicht noch weiter wachsen zu lassen: um 800 Millionen Euro gegenüber 2022.
Hinzu kommt, dass die Not der Schulen sehr ungleich verteilt ist: 47 Prozent der Kommunen sehen keinen oder nur einen geringen Investitionsrückstand. 39 Prozent bezeichnen ihn als nennenswert. Und 13 Prozent als gravierend. "Aus den Daten können wir nicht ableiten, ob diese 13 Prozent die besonders armen sind", sagt KfW-Volkswirtin Köhler-Geib. Das sei indes eine valide Vermutung. "Denn eine angespannte Haushaltslage ist eines der wichtigsten Investitionshemmnisse für Kommunen."
Welche Schulen dann zuerst dran sind mit der Sanierung und welche warten müssen, hat womöglich zudem noch mit dem gesellschaftlichen Druck zu tun, den die Eltern machen können – oder eben auch nicht. Anna Vonhof will darüber nicht spekulieren, doch fest steht: 269 der 288 Schüler der Kurt-Schumacher-Schule stammen aus Familien, in denen Deutsch nicht die erste Sprache ist. Und auch an der Willy-Brandt-Schule in Kerpen gibt es sehr viele sozial benachteiligte Familien.
Geld, sagt KfW-Chefvolkswirtin Köhler-Geib, sei in jedem Fall nur ein Problem, und welche Rolle die angeblich so knappen Kapazitäten bei Handwerkern und Baufirmen spielt, lasse sich kaum einschätzen. Worüber die Kommunen bei Umfragen neben der Finanzlage aber stets als erstes klagten, sei der dramatische Personalmangel in ihren Verwaltungen. "Viele Investitionsvorhaben scheitern daran, dass es keinen gibt, der sie betreuen und umsetzen kann."
Der Schul-Stadtrat verweist auf "mehr Bürokratie bei gleichzeitigem Fachkräftemangel"
Fragt man den Kreuzberger Schul-Stadtrat Hehmke, warum es schon wieder Bauverzögerungen gibt an der Kurt-Schumacher-Schule, verweist er zunächst auf neues EU-Recht, das noch aufwändigere und zeitraubende europaweite Ausschreibungen vorsehe. Und dann ebenfalls auf die Personalnot: Mehrere Stellen im Hochbauservice seien nicht besetzt, und es gebe kaum oder gar keine Bewerbungen bei Ausschreibungen. "Mehr Bürokratie bei gleichzeitigem Fachkräftemangel. Dies sind die Gründe."
Auch Thomas Marner von der Stadt Kerpen sagt: "Jahrzehntelang hat uns das Geld gefehlt, jetzt fehlt uns ganz massiv das Personal."
Wer darunter leidet, sind vor allem die Schülerinnen und Schüler, 1200 an der Willy-Brandt-Schule. Am ersten Schultag Anfang August durften nur die 12. und 13. Klassen kommen und wurden im Kerpener Gymnasium unterrichtet. Die Klassen 5 bis 11 mussten komplett zu Hause bleiben. "In der dritten Schulwoche", berichtet Kristiane Benedix, "haben wir dann für die Jahrgänge 8 und 9 Wechselunterricht begonnen", im tageweisen Wechsel. Die restlichen Jahrgänge seien in Präsenz, teilweise in Fachräumen beschult worden.
So lange dauerte es, bis die Behörden zumindest den Anbau aus den 90er Jahren für schimmelfrei befunden hatten. Nochmal zwei Wochen später, nachdem weitere Gebäudeteile "freigetestet" waren, wie Benedix das nennt, gab es wieder für alle täglich Unterricht. Doch kamen die sechs achten Klassen, insgesamt über 150 Schüler, komplett in der Turnhalle unter, voneinander nur mit Planen getrennt, bei Temperaturen von teilweise über 30 und Frischluftzufuhr nur über die Lüftungsanlage. Die Mensa wurde zum Lehrerzimmer umfunktioniert. Bis zu den Herbstferien waren immer noch 13 Klassen- und Kursräume und fast alle Fachräume gesperrt.
Markus Rixen gehörte zu den Eltern, die sich das nicht gefallen lassen wollten von der Stadt. Er habe sich einen Anwalt genommen, erzählt er, "nachdem die Stadt Kerpen zuvor die Erstattung der uns durch das Homeschooling entstandenen Kosten abgelehnt hat, da laut NRW-Gesetzgebung kein Anspruch auf Präsenzunterricht bestehe." Das stimme jedoch nicht, sagt Rixen. "Laut Anwalt darf Distanzunterricht nur im Pandemiefall angeordnet werden, im Falle einer großen Naturkatastrophe oder bei Erkrankung zu vieler Lehrer. Nicht aber, weil die Stadt ein Sanierungschaos nicht in den Griff bekommt." Sechs Wochen nach Schuljahrsbeginn durften die Achtklässler dann in ihre Klassenräume zurückkehren.
Warten, bis die Versicherung zahlt?
Thomas Marner von der Stadt sagt, er könne keine rechtliche Grundlage für den Distanzunterricht nennen. "Aber aus gesundheitlichen Gründen hatte ich schlicht keine andere Wahl." Davon habe er auch die Schulaufsichtsbehörde und die Bezirksregierung sofort informiert.
Frustrierend sei, sagt Fritzi Köhler-Geib von der KfW, dass die Kommunen in den vergangenen Jahren nah daran gekommen seien, den Sanierungsstau in den Schulen endlich zu verkleinern. "Doch jetzt hat sich ihre Finanzlage drastisch verschlechtert, wozu die Wirtschaftslage ebenso beiträgt wie steigenden Kreditzinsen und die Zunahme der zu betreuenden Geflüchteten. Gleichzeitig steigen die Anforderungen an den Klimaschutz und die Digitalisierung stark an." Die Schlussfolgerung der KfW-Chefsvolkswirtin: "Ohne zusätzliche Finanzmittel von den Ländern und dem Bund werden viele Kommunen das nicht schaffen können."
An der Willy-Brandt-Schule öffnete elf Wochen nach den Sommerferien die Mensa wieder. "Endlich", steht auf der Website. Ihre große Sorge, sagt Kristiane Benedix, seien jetzt die naturwissenschaftlichen Fachräume – also da, wo das Wasser eingedrungen sei. Im letzten Brief, den Thomas Marner an die Eltern geschrieben hat, hieß es, die Stadt arbeite "mit Hochdruck" an deren Wiederherstellung, "doch hier sind wir aber sehr stark abhängig von der Versicherung des Verursachers, bedeutet hier haben wir die zeitliche Abwicklung nicht alleine in der Hand." Kristiane Benedix sagt, das mache ihr Sorgen, weil sie keinerlei Zeitplan habe.
Thomas Marner sagt, es gehe hier um einen Millionenschaden. Er fürchtet, dass man ohne Freigabe der gegnerischen Versicherung den Anspruch verwirke. Deshalb müsse man leider abwarten, doch sei er optimistisch, dass man sich bald einig werde. Im Übrigen sei er der Meinung, "dass man Biologie oder Physik zur Not auch mal eine Weile theoretisch und ohne praktische Experimente unterrichten kann."
Markus Rixen sagt: Er frage sich, warum die Stadt einerseits ihren Bildungsauftrag beschwöre, anderseits aber nicht das Geld aus ihrem Haushalt vorstrecken wolle. "Mir fehlt hier in einem großen Maße auch das Schuldbewusstsein der Verantwortlichen der Stadt Kerpen."
Dieser Beitrag erschien in kürzerer Fassung zuerst im Tagesspiegel.
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