The Diplomat
A Commission -composed by the six regional Presidencies of the World Tourism Organization and by the Presidency of the General Assembly- will be in charge of considering the request to suspend the membership of the Russian Federation in this organization, if approved by the extraordinary General Assembly that will begin this Wednesday in Madrid.
The proposed resolution was presented by France in a note verbale, through its Embassy in Spain, on April 20 and is sponsored by twenty-one other European countries, most of them members of the EU.
The signatories state that their proposal for the Commission to be composed of the presidents of the six regional commissions and the president of the General Assembly is based on the fact that “these countries, elected by the regional commissions or by the General Assembly, have the necessary legitimacy to present a report” on the request for the suspension of Russia as a member of the UNWTO.
The Commission may “invite the parties concerned by the procedure to share (before this body) their observations and comments“, after which it will have to submit a report on “the effects of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine on the fundamental objectives of the UNWTO” to the General Assembly at a date yet to be determined.
The request to convene an extraordinary General Assembly was submitted by six UNWTO member countries – Colombia, Guatemala, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Ukraine – in the first week of March, a few days after the invasion of Ukraine began. All of them invoked Article 34 of the UNWTO Statutes, considering that the Russian Federation’s actions contravene “the fundamental objective of the Organization, enshrined in Article 3 of the Statutes”.
The request of the six signatories was approved at the meeting of the Executive Council, held on March 8 as a matter of urgency, which also noted that “the continued military actions in Ukraine are contrary to the principles of the United Nations Charter and Article 3 of the UNWTO Statutes, as well as the values of tourism, as a pillar of peace and solidarity.”
This next General Assembly, which will be the first to be convened by the UNWTO on an extraordinary basis in its history, will have only five items on its agenda, the first four of which are procedural, such as the election of the chairman and vice-chairmen of the conclave.
In this regard, the Executive Council proposes that, since no candidatures have been presented and in order to expedite the work, the Assembly designate the same members of the Bureau that presided over the XXIV General Assembly held in Madrid from December 1 to 3, 2021, that is, Spain as Presidency and Cambodia, Gambia, Hungary, India, Iraq, Paraguay, Uruguay and Uzbekistan as Vice-Presidencies.
