Sigrid Kaag, a Dutch politician and veteran\u00a0United Nations\u00a0diplomat, will take charge of the international body\u2019s effort to\u00a0bring\u00a0humanitarian\u00a0relief to\u00a0war-ravaged Gaza, the UN Secretary General announced Tuesday, filling a position created this month in a breakthrough UN Security Council resolution. <\/p>\n
In a post on X, Kaag said that she would resign her position as finance minister and deputy prime minister of the Netherlands to take on the role of UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeace, security, and justice have always been my motivations,\u201d Kaag said in a statement. \u201cI have accepted this special assignment in the hope to contribute to a better future.\u201d <\/p>\n
The appointment, which is set to take effect on January 8, comes as conditions in the besieged Palestinian enclave reach \u201cnightmare\u201d levels, as the chief of the World Health Organization put it after a recent visit. Shortages of power and medicine have stripped hospitals of most functioning, and the risk of\u00a0famine\u00a0looms over\u00a0Gaza\u2019s population, humanitarian organizations have said. <\/p>\n
Since war began on October 7 following Hamas\u2019 terror attacks,\u00a0Israel has allowed a limited number of trucks\u00a0to bring\u00a0humanitarian aid into Gaza\u00a0through Egypt\u2019s Rafah crossing.\u00a0The UN has described\u00a0this\u00a0amount as a trickle that fails to come close to meeting the needs of the population of over 2 million. <\/p>\n
United Nations Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres has also accused Israel\u2019s tactics in Gaza, which include intensive aerial bombardment, as \u201ccreating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza. <\/p>\n
Kaag will\u00a0now\u00a0be responsible for creating a mechanism to accelerate the movement of aid into Gaza and\u00a0for\u00a0\u201cfacilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying\u201d the relief effort, according to the UN, including the complex process of ensuring aid trucks are screened before they enter the enclave to ensure they\u2019re not carrying non-humanitarian material. <\/p>\n
The Security Council resolution creating the position, which called for immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza, passed last week with the abstention of the US after several days of negotiations and delays. <\/p>\n
In a\u00a0speech last month, Kaag stressed the need for \u201cadequate humanitarian aid\u201d to reach Gaza. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael\u2019s right to exist and its right to defend itself is self-evident to us. But in these dark times, it is important that acts of war comply with international law and the humanitarian law of war in order to avoid innocent civilian victims and enable adequate humanitarian aid to be provided in time,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Kaag previously worked on\u00a0Palestinian\u00a0issues as a senior official at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. She later went on to serve as an Assistant Secretary\u2011General with the United Nations Development Programme and, from 2015 to 2017, as the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon,\u00a0according to a biography provided by the UN. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe is a very experienced diplomat who knows the Middle East well and also speaks Arabic. Before she went to the Netherlands for a political career, she was also a UN envoy who negotiated with Assad about giving up Syria\u2019s chemical weapons,\u201d the official said. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0Syria\u00a0effort, the result of a last-minute US-Russia plan that staved off a US military intervention, was considered a success, with then US President Barack Obama hailing the destruction of Syria\u2019s declared chemical weapons stockpile as an \u201cimportant achievement.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe almost impossible deadlines,\u201d meant \u201cwe couldn\u2019t waste a second,\u201d Kaag told a\u00a0Harvard interviewer\u00a0in 2014. \u201cWe were on message, on mission, looking for results that you can measure.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kaag later held various positions in Dutch electoral politics, leading the social liberal party D66 to victory in a 2021 vote, and serving in various cabinet positions, including as minister of foreign affairs and minister of trade and development cooperation. <\/p>\n
Her tenure as foreign minister lasted only a few months;\u00a0she resigned in September 2021\u00a0after a majority of the Dutch parliament said she had mishandled the evacuation of Kabul that summer after the Taliban seized control of the country. <\/p>\n
In her statement Tuesday, Kaag called her work with the Dutch cabinet \u201cspecial and challenging,\u201d citing progress on climate change and support for Ukraine amid its war with Russia. <\/p>\n
She had said in July that she was planning to leave politics, describing a \u201ctoxic\u201d environment of online intimidation and threats, according to Reuters. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt becomes a battery of so-called slurs that are meant to demonize you, to deconstruct you,\u201d she said at a Council on Foreign Relations event in September.\u00a0\u201cIt erodes the value of our democracy if this persists and is condoned. <\/p>\n
Global diplomats celebrated the announcement in statements Tuesday,\u00a0following months of division and deadlock in the UN Security Council about how to get aid to Gaza civilians. <\/p>\n
Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Hanke Bruins Slot called her \u201cthe right person for this challenging role\u201d given her \u201cextensive knowledge\u201d and \u201cvery broad (diplomatic) experience.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cLook forward to working closely with @SigridKaag in this new role \u2013 and to supporting her efforts to streamline and accelerate the UN\u2019s life-saving work in Gaza. There is no time to lose,\u201d US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield wrote on X. <\/p>\n\n
Sigrid Kaag, a Dutch politician and veteran\u00a0United Nations\u00a0diplomat, will take charge of the international body\u2019s effort to\u00a0bring\u00a0humanitarian\u00a0relief to\u00a0war-ravaged Gaza, the UN Secretary General announced Tuesday, filling a position created this month in a breakthrough UN Security Council resolution. In a post on X, Kaag said that she would resign her position as finance minister and <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}