Charamba clears air on UN vote

Harare (New Ziana) – Zimbabwe’s foreign policy is dictated by its past experiences, interests and understanding of world affairs, as such it will not pursue or support agendas that do not benefit it, a senior government official has said.

Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet (Presidential Communications) George Charamba said this after Zimbabwe voted against a UN resolution dubbed “The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity,” on Tuesday this week at a UN General Assembly plenary meeting.

In total, 115 states voted in favour of the resolution, 28 countries including Namibia and Angola abstained while 15 countries including Zimbabwe, Egypt, China, Indonesia and Russia voted against.

In response to the vote, Western and opposition aligned media went on a frenzy making uninformed accusations that Zimbabwe had effectively voted against protecting its citizens.

But, Charamba explained that such resolutions were prone to abuse by western countries that use them as an excuse to invade foreign countries.

“The responsibility to protect citizenry of any nationality is that of the nation-state of that polity. It is a moot point to ask United States of America to accept a joint Russia-Chinese-led global intervention on its territory to exercise and enforce responsibility to protect blacks in America who are victims daily genocidal attack. Zimbabwe’s foreign policy options at United Nations are that clear, and grounded in its own history, experience, interests, principles and understanding of world affairs,” he tweeted.

The concept of the responsibility to protect draws inspiration from Francis Deng’s idea of “State sovereignty as a responsibility” and affirmed the notion that sovereignty is not just protection from outside interference – rather is a matter of states having positive responsibilities for their population’s welfare, and to assist each other.

Consequently, the primary responsibility for the protection of its people rested first and foremost with the State itself, however, a “residual responsibility” also lied with the broader community of states, which was “activated when a particular state is clearly either unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibility to protect or is itself the actual perpetrator of crimes or atrocities.”

Charamba said: “Those with no sense of recent history or who mistakenly think western global imperial power is benign and benevolent, forget it was precisely this same clause – Responsibility to Protect – which was used to attack Gaddafi’s Libya, and which almost got invoked for use against Zimbabwe had it not been for the double veto by Russia and China.

“And Libya tells the world how the West needs the clause to arrogate unto itself the responsibility to invade for oil, land, minerals and other interests using spurious grounds and securing a veneer of UN legality. Today, Gaddafi is dead; Libya continues to die while the West retains the prerogative to do war while stealing Libyan oil amidst that war it started and continues to fund and fan.”

Charamba ridiculed the Western countries for their unmatched hypocrisy.

“Often what is termed genocide is not that; rather, it neatly fits within Western extra-territorial goals. This is why what Israel does against the Palestinians falls neither under genocide or responsibility to protect even though we all know it is genocidal definition itself crying out for an American-led responsibility to protect .

“Daily America, United Kingdom oppose even the mildest resolution in defence of the Palestinian people yet are keen to indict China on Chinese citizens of Moslem faith, and Venezuelans of Venezuela,” he said.
New Ziana