The Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Jorge Moreira da Silva, said the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz could push “45 million more people into hunger and starvation,” and for this reason the UN has established a task force to create a safe, orderly, and predictable maritime transit mechanism to ensure the flow of fertilizers and related raw materials.
Interviewed by UN News, Moreira da Silva said, “the idea of the task force that I'm leading - UNOPS, UNCTAD, International Maritime Organization and International Chamber of Commerce - was to develop a mechanism, focused on fertilizers and related raw materials such as urea, sulphur, and ammonia, to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis.”
He warned that “the entire fertilizer supply chain is disrupted,” not just in the Persian Gulf region, “but also the production elsewhere due to the lack of raw materials.”
Moreira da Silva said, “I know that there are diplomatic efforts to get a political solution for the Middle East and for this war to have a lasting peace. But the point that I've been making is, we can't wait until everything being fixed to at least get something fixed in time for the planting season.”
He said, “while we don't have that freedom of navigation fully embedded and established, because there are these negotiations in the context of the war - at least let's have a time bound exceptional limited mechanism just for fertilizers and related raw materials.”
The UNOPS official said, “this mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz will be based on the same principle of building trust through more accountability and transparency. It's basically a mechanism that would go through a series of steps such as registration, deconfliction, monitor verification and reporting. So, it's a system that would facilitate the logistic operation.”
He said that if a political deal is reached by member in agreement of a mechanism, “we will need seven days” to put it into practice.
Moreira da Silva said, “if there is a solution that doesn't require the mechanisms, it's because the freedom of navigation was reestablished and we don't need a mechanism for the fertilizers. But in case we don't get a good outcome on the overall negotiations for peace and for the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the UN is ready, if member states want, to go quickly into this operation on the fertilizers to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis.”
In normal times, one third of global fertilizer trade – along with 35 percent of crude oil and a fifth of liquified natural gas – passes through the maritime corridor located south of Iran, but tanker traffic has essentially come to a standstill.
Posted by: Alma Angeles/NET2 News
