I'm sorry I'm late, ladies and gentlemen.
The sitting is open.
The Assembly will hold an urgent debate on legal issues and human rights violations related to the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine this morning.
The deadline for amendments was initially set for today at 10:30 a.m. I ask for the agreement of the Assembly to extend this deadline to 12:00 today. Are there any objections?
If not, then that stands approved.
The next item of business is the presentation of and discussion on the report on "Environmental Impact of Armed Conflicts" by Mr John HOWELL, on behalf of the Social, Health and Sustainable Development Committee (Document 15674).
We need to be done with this by 11:45 a.m. I would like to be finished with the list of speakers at about 11.20 a.m. in order to allow time for the reply from the committee and for the votes.
To you, Mr rapporteur, you have seven minutes in which to present your report and then there will be three minutes to reply to the speakers.
You have the floor, Mr HOWELL.
Thank you very much.
I probably will not take my 7 minutes, because the list of speakers in this debate is very long. I want to get as many people in as possible.
The contents of this report I think are absolutely important and are crucial. They fit in very well with the Icelandic premiership –the Icelandic Chairmanship I should say– of this Council, which has a priority of stressing the importance of the natural environment.
What they say about that is that there must be an exploration of the interrelationship between human rights and the environment. That is precisely what this paper does.
What it does at its heart, is move this Council, this Council of Europe, to recognising ecocide as a crime and to put that into our pantheon of crimes that we hold ourselves against.
On page 14 of the report I have set out how we have approached the issue of ecocide at an international level.
It is not a concept for which there is already an exact definition. We are taking the lead in this in this fashion for setting out how we wish to approach it. I think that that is very appropriate that the Council of Europe take the lead in this fashion and show that it really has the ability to be able to do that and to take the lead.
I set out in great detail how we are approaching that. The Assembly should, therefore, advocate for the concept of ecocide to be implemented and made operational through the ongoing revision process of relevant legal instruments. That is a quote from the report, but I think it's a relevant quote from the report.
The international legal framework for the issues that are covered by this report are somewhat confused. The international legal framework –if I'm being honest– is a mess when it comes to these sort of issues. I think it's important that we get the legal framework right. It is only by getting the legal framework right that we can be sure that the actions that we advocate and the actions that we take are correct and set out what is going to happen.
The way that we have approached this report is to look at it in two parts. Firstly, the recommendations apply across the board. They do not apply to a specific country. This is not, for example, a report that is solely about Ukraine. It is every country must fit in into what we are proposing. Every country must adhere to the proposals that we are setting out. That is the sort of approach that we have wished to take.
There are a number of things that are set out in this report, the international law provides indirect protection of the environment during armed conflict, only indirect protection of the environment in armed conflict. I welcome what the Red Cross has done on instructions in its military manuals.
I also commend the work of the International Law Commission of the UN. We did consult the UN during the preparation of this report. It is welcomed that we are at one with the UN on this. I believe that that will stand us in good state.
We already have several legal instruments to protect the environment. These are listed in the report. But what we need in order to get ecocide as a crime in this, and what we need in order to make sure that there are gaps, that gaps are filled in this, is we probably need a new treaty or a new convention to be able to go forward. I think that that is a really exciting place to be. It is an exciting place for this Council to be thinking of a new treaty and a new convention in such a crucial part of keeping our world safe, of keeping our world pleasant, and of making sure that our human rights are as protected as they possibly can be.
The severe destruction or deterioration of nature that could be qualified as ecocide may occur in both times of peace and of war. I think it is necessary to to recognise that.
We also need to recognise the amendments that are being made or being proposed for the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
While we have an impressive international legal arsenal, there are important gaps. There are important gaps that we can recommend to the Committee of Ministers should be taken up by a new treaty, by a new convention.
On that basis, I'm going to stop there and to allow more people to speak in the debate. I hope that we have a very positive debate and that we go forward with this as the potential for the future of our continent and of the countries that we love.
Thank you.
Thank you, rapporteur.
In the general discussion, the first person on the list is Ms Ms Mai KIVELÄ from the Group of the Unified European Left.
Mister President, Dear colleagues,
I want to start by condemning in the strongest terms Russia's attack on Ukraine.
Russia's cowardly actions have destroyed so many lives and caused immense suffering and destruction. I have the strongest respect for the Ukrainians and their fight for freedom and right to democracy.
I want to thank Mr John HOWELL for raising also this aspect of war in his timely and balanced report.
In times of crisis the environment is not on the top of people's minds, but, in reality, war's debris, polluted waters, and poisoned crops can make some war-affected areas inhabitable for decades or even longer. For example, the environmental destruction of Ukraine's farmlands will make it very hard for the farmers to regain their work. This will have an impact not only in Ukraine but on food security all over the world. This will hinder Ukraine's recovery and will bring with it further social problems on top of the war trauma of the people.
Also, the long-term impact on human health cannot be ignored. History has shown that war-related health problems can affect several generations of people. All this will further prolong people's suffering. All this will impact on recovery and reconstruction.
Warfare also produces emissions, which further escalate climate crisis. The same applies to the military build-up, which leads to increases in pollution. Although the production might happen outside our borders, this also needs to be taken into account when we try to reduce our impact on climate.
The report notes that the existing legal framework framework to protect the environment in time of war is not sufficient. Legislation is one way to try to solve the problem, and the Council of Europe is currently working on convention on the environment and human rights, which could include crisis-related aspects under its remit.
In addition to reconstruction, we need to include the responsibility of the aggressor to compensate for the damages it has caused on the environment during the war.
Lastly, the report advocates for the international recognition of the crime of ecocide.
Our our group strongly supports this and hopes to see action towards criminalising ecocide.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Rapporteur.
I call Mr Jeremy CORBYN to speak on behalf of the Socialist Group.
United Kingdom, SOC, Spokesperson for the group
10:24:56
Thank you, Mr President.
I rise on behalf of the Socialist Group to support and welcome this report and complement Mr John HOWELL on the incredibly detailed research work that has gone into it. I think it is a very welcome report indeed.
The environmental impacts of war never go away. In our own countries – pretty well every country in Europe – still finds unexploded ordnance from the Second World War, which causes local huge havoc. And the destruction of many natural places in the Pacific from nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s, the destruction of parts of western USA from nuclear testing and indeed parts of central Asia and parts of Russia from nuclear testing have not gone away. The people of Vietnam still had to contend with the effect of Agent Orange many, many decades after that dreadful war had come to a conclusion.
More recently, the use of depleted uranium in the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 has left parts of southern Iraq still contaminated by the poison that that has left behind. And as colleagues have pointed out, the awful current war that is going on in Ukraine has caused enormous environmental damage and continues to do so and the bombing of industrial establishments leads to the poisoning of water and resources that go with it, as well as damaging the air and the natural world.
And also, in Crimea, there has been – as the report points out – excessive drilling for new water wells, which has led to salination of the water supply. So the fundamental damage from conflict goes on for a very long time. And it often is not appropriate at that time.
There are – as our report points out – considerable numbers of conventions that could help with dealing with these issues but the issues that come up are, one, that we need to recognise that this is an issue, and I am pleased that this report does that. Secondly, that after a conflict is concluded there must be compensation paid and available for clearing up, not just the damage but also the damage to the natural world and the environment, and new laws are required as Mr John HOWELL has pointed out in his report. And that is to recognise that ecocide must become a fundamental in international law. It does require more work on its definition but it has to be done.
Ultimately, it is about the legal empowerment of the natural world and the environment, as COP 25 and COP 26 pointed out. And by us recognising the environmental effects of conflict, the long-term damage that is done and the need to compensate for the damage to the natural world and the environment, I think is a very important step for this body to take, and I welcome this report and I hope it will be accepted by the Assembly here today.
Thank you, Mister rapporteur.
I call Mrs Yelyzaveta YASKO on behalf of the Group of the European People's Party.
Ukraine, EPP/CD, Spokesperson for the group
10:28:18
Dear Colleagues, thank you very much.
You know, yesterday we were discussing the crimes of sexual violence, and I'm very glad that today we're discussing other very hard crimes: environmental crimes. I want to say that it doesn't bring only environmental damage. It also brings physical damage and mental damage to society, to animals, to trees, to all the environment.
I want to tell you that we, Ukrainians, are very connected to our land in every possible way. For us our soil is our soul. Our farmers are working with the land. Our farmers are not exploiting the land.
What happens if mines are there, if farmers cannot plant their seeds any more, if it's bombed, if the land is bombed, if the biodiversity is destroyed? What happens then? What happens when the logistics to import and to export grain is ruined? It means that our soil and our soul is damaged.
Unfortunately, Putin the aggressor knows it really well. He's been trying, and the Soviet Union has been trying to delete our memory with our traditions, with our connections to our land. Now the soil is something that is also being used against us Ukrainians but also against all of you, because he knows that you will suffer from that, because Ukraine as the place as a bread basket is feeding the whole world. And he knows that.
I want to ask here that as a result of this conversation and also in a summit we find a number of things.
First, we need investigation of this crimes. We need expertise. Please, help us to have this expertise: bring your experts on the ground.
The second one, we need publicity of this crimes.
The third one, let's find the tools that will bring justice on environmental crimes, because without it our lives will continue to be destroyed.
Do you know how many animals were killed? How many parks, forests are destroyed? We need help also with the de-mining. Please, help us with that.
The main thing: let's find the real tools for justice in environmental crimes, because maybe it could be the European Court. I think that we need to create new tools, because there are too many crimes. We need that investigation to bring justice.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs Yelyzaveta YASKO.
I call Mrs Yuliia OVCHYNNYKOVA on behalf of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
Ukraine, ALDE, Spokesperson for the group
10:31:28
Dear Mr Chairman, dear Mr rapporteur, dear Assembly,
First of all, let me congratulate Mr John HOWELL on the excellent report on the draft resolution and I am sure that is one of the most crucial reports and resolutions for the Council of Europe today and for the future.
When we recognise the right to a healthy environment as a fundamental human right, the main rule of the Council of Europe is to be the guardian of human rights and the rule of law in times of peace and war. Environmental damage caused by military aggression and war can be multifaceted and mostly irreversible. They affect not only ecosystems but also human beings and human health beyond the conflict area and long after the conflict is over. Nature is always a silent witness and victim of this war, and it is always transboundary. Extensive bombing destroys ecosystems and biodiversity, throughout protected areas a lot of animals are dying, fires in Ukrainian forests – all of this impacts us. Our health, our life.
All of this we see now in Europe – in Ukraine – a full-scale, unprovoked, injust military invasion of the Russian Federation caused irreparable damage to a European country, in particular, the European environment. The war posed new challenges to Ukraine and forced it to look for new approaches to ensure the responsibility of the aggressor country for environmental damage.
Human rights and humanitarian law during armed conflicts have to be harmonised, in particular in terms of human rights for a healthy environment. We have these strengthened measures to outlaw prohibited weapons, which have a disastrous impact on both the environment and humans.
So, we, of course, welcome introducing the notion of ecocide to a legal matter. When Russian missiles have been destroying the European environment, all together, in the Council of Europe, we must do what we are here for: care for human rights and justice, to recognise and clarify the site of the crime and establish clear and effective legal frameworks to protect the environment and harmful damages and persecute if it has happened, particularly during the armed conflicts and wars.
So the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court must include an ecocide article in a real permanent international mechanism to monitor legal infringements and address compensation claims for ecocide crime and environmental damage.
So what the world sees is that there is no real peace where ecocide has taken place and its consequences have not been overcome. There is no real peace where genocide takes place and human right to life is constantly violated, where any child can die from hidden Russian anti-personnel mines, when children who shout from under the rubble of houses "Mum, I don't want to die".
Dear colleagues, I strongly call to support this resolution and encourage all member states to implement the recommendation that will make incredible, tectonic changes to protect human rights to life and a healthy environment.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mrs Ms OVCHYNNYKOVA.
I call Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO of the European Conservatives Group and Democratic Alliance.
Ukraine, EC/DA, Spokesperson for the group
10:35:13
Thank you, Mister President. [in French]
Dear Colleagues,
First of all, I would like to thank Mister John HOWELL for extremely important work. Real bravo! Because that is so important to speak today about what's going on about the possible consequences especially in the time when, unfortunately, big war is back to Europe in Ukraine.
Russia is causing not only genocide against Ukrainians, but ecocide today that is so dangerous for everybody on the planet, when for the first time in human history a nuclear power plant is occupied by an aggressor, the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Parisian nuclear power plant. This is nuclear blackmail and all other awful things which are happening.
That is extremely timely. That is an extremely important topic.
I want to stress one more thing. When we're speaking about environmental results of the war, we should say why it could become real, why they happened, because we are speaking here, and in many other stages, for years about environment, about the dangers to environment. Yet, at the same time we're not speaking about dangers to security, and now we have what we have.
When people like Greta Thunberg are attacking coal mines saying "Oh, this is bad to have coal mines in Europe" and at the same time Putin is sitting and waiting "Wow! Great! You're doing great job for me, you're making them more dependent on me, because I will never let you go to my fossil fuel mines or anything else", he uses these people and they think they're doing good job. They're doing quite the opposite. They are attacking world order.
Security first. Without world order, without international law, there will be no environment, there will be no normal human life.
Dictators, autocracies, they don't care about environment. Look at Putin, look at China, look at other countries. They don't care. They don't care. Only free people with democracy, with the rule of law, with human rights, they care about the environment. They fight for environment.
The first thing is to defend the world order, to defend the international law.
The main ecologist today in the world, the main fighters for environment are Ukrainian soldiers and officers. Ukrainian tank crews. Ukrainian pilots in fighter jets who are defending what is very important for all of us. We will defend the international order, we will defend rule of law, and we will defend human rights.
After this, together with you, like free nations, like free people, we will defend the environment. It couldn't go another way. I want us all to remember this, and I want us all to support these very important reports and to defend what is really important.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO.
Mr Rafael HUSEYNOV has the floor.
Dear colleagues,
Unfortunately, this is not the first time this topic has been debated, and what is doubly unfortunate is that the possibility of continuing such discussions in the future is obvious.
The reason is that big and small conflicts continue uninterruptedly on our continent and throughout the world, as well as wars and armed confrontations, in addition to all their other impacts, also cause long-healing, and in some cases irreparable wounds to the environment.
These problems are well known to us in painful details as a representative of a country, the 20% of whose territory has been occupied for almost 30 years, and whose nature has been seriously damaged in the process.
Last summer, I was horrified when, for the first time, I visited the territories of Azerbaijan finally liberated from aggression. Thousands of kilometres of land seemed to have come to a state after an atomic war. Everything had been destroyed, not a single stone had been left on a stone. And all buildings, monuments, vegetation, forests and trees had been destroyed along with everything that rose above the ground.
In the place of a centuries-old forest, now existed a deserted plain, the soil of which is scorched. Instead of destroyed buildings, roads, bridges, much better ones can be created than a few years ago.
Nevertheless, it takes centuries to restore the destroyed nature and the wounded ecology.
At the end of last year, a large group of environmentalists who, perhaps, were better and more professionally informed how much damage the war and environmental aggression had caused to the nature of Azerbaijan, started protests in the territories of Azerbaijan where the Russian peacekeeping contingent was temporarily stationed, demanding an end to the aggravation of the ecological situation, the plunder of the wealth of Azerbaijan, and the arbitrariness of the Armenians.
Because during the 30-year Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territories, environmental terrorism had been committed against Azerbaijan in the economic regions of Karabakh and East Zangazur, as well as many mineral deposits had been illegally exploited.
In my opinion, the voices of people protesting against environmental attacks, which appear many times more threatening than territorial occupation, should always be raised in all conflict regions. Because the impact of conflicts and wars on the environment always spans a wider geography than it seems and recognises no boundaries. Therefore, the fight against such situations should not be limited only to people in places where these conflicts occur but should become a common movement that unites efforts.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Rafael HUSEYNOV.
I now give the floor to Ms Petra BAYR.
Yes, thank you very much for this really important report.
I would like to focus exclusively on the aspects relating to the International Criminal Court, where ecocide would be the fifth crime, alongside crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and aggression.
I think this would be a very, very important step. There is also a very concrete legal proposal as to how this crime could be defined, where it would be a matter of punishing unlawful or wanton acts that would cause serious, far-reaching and long-term damage to the environment or would have a negative impact on human life and on the cultural and economic resources of the earth. This would include, for example –to use historical examples from outside Europe– the deforestation of the Amazon, or the reactor disaster in Fukushima, as well as the chemical accident in Bhopal, India, many decades ago. All of those would qualify as criminal offenses.
I had the opportunity in November, I think, to talk to Piotr Hofmański –he's the president of the International Criminal Court– about how much the ICC can imagine subsuming ecocide into the Rome Statute, and they can do that very well. There are actually open doors that we are entering. There have actually been initiatives on this fifth crime of the ICC for many years and I think that if this report could now really be taken as an opportunity for member States of the Council of Europe, which are also member states of the Rome Statute, to really make this request and really see that it only requires, in quotation marks, "two thirds" of the member States to agree to expand the Rome Statute. Then that would be a very, very important first step towards an international criminal court. I know myself that the Kampala Amendment, which introduced aggression as a fourth element of crime into the Rome Statute, took a very long time to implement and a very long time to actually set the corresponding legal framework. That is precisely why it is so important to start now so that ecocide really does become part of the Rome Statute as soon as possible and can be punished.
Thank you for the initiative. I really call on all member States that are also members of the ICC, and there are quite a few of them, to become really active. Maybe we can co‑ordinate and join forces and start a joint initiative very quickly.
Thank you, Madam Petra BAYR.
The floor is given to Ms Khatia DEKANOIDZE.
Thank you, Mr President.
First of all, let me congratulate the rapporteur, because it was definitely an excellent and very important topic.
But I have to underline that it would be futile to speak here and condemn violations of the Paris Agreement or of any other international climate accord or environmental standard. A regime that steals, rapes, and murders will also actively violate every human right in a conflict, including the right to a clean environment.
It may take years for anyone to fully scale the environmental damage caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The carbon “bootprint” will be unprecedented. What we can observe, however, is the precedents we unfortunately already have.
Because of the violent Russian destruction of Chechnya, a third of its agricultural lands became unusable. But this is nothing compared to the evidence we already have from Ukraine. Heavy metals contaminate both water sources and soil. Pollutants from explosions are carried by air – and I was a witness just coming from Zaporozhzhia a few days ago.
The Empire of Evil should not think it can avoid the environmental consequences of this war. Let us all remember here that thousands of Caspian seals have died as a result of Russian missile launches. We still don’t know the extent of the damages suffered by Russian invaders as they occupied Chernobyl.
The world has been flirting too close to a nuclear tragedy with the occupation of Zaporozhzhia nuclear power plant.
And just recently, the Speaker of the Russian Duma –probably several days ago– once again threatened the world with the use of nuclear weapons.
Lets remember how many mines are in the soil of Ukraine.
When the time comes to bring Russia to justice, – and it will come for sure when Ukraine will win – we need to make sure that environmental violations are also considered as violations of human rights and as war crimes. To a large extent, the environmental damages of this conflict will continue to impact Ukraine and all of Europe for years, if not generations, after the war ends and after Ukraine’s victory.
I have to underline also that Georgia, my country, is a prime example of the environmental tragedy that conflict can bring. The fauna and flora are disappearing from Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region – these are the occupied territories. Complete mismanagement of water sources in the occupied territories has a direct impact on the people. In many villages, streams that once used to be large sources of fishing and irrigation are now completely dry.
And let me just remind the society here that in Abkhazia 15 hectares of sea space and 186 hectares of land are handed over to the Russian Federation. All buildings and structures will become the property of the Russian Federal Protective Service – it's the land of Georgia, land of Georgian people. And Russia will get a 49-year lease on the Black Sea region and neighbouring areas.
This is an emergency that I call on this Assembly to help Ukraine and Georgia.
And I have to underline also that part of the Enguri power plant station is located in occupied territory.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Khatia DEKANOIDZE.
Ms Ruth JONES has the floor.
Mister President,
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this important debate on the environmental impact of armed conflict across our world.
I thank the rapporteur, my colleague Mr John HOWELL, for compiling this well researched and comprehensive document.
I serve as one of the shadow environment ministers in the United Kingdom, so this is an issue of great importance to me and my colleagues, and many in my country.
As a world we've always counted the sad casualties of war in terms of the dead and wounded soldiers, and of course civilians, men, women, and children. We count the destroyed cities and the broken livelihoods, but far too often for far too long the environment has remained a hidden victim of war.
Over the years, parties to armed conflicts have polluted waters, torched crops, cut down forests, poisoned soils and killed animals to gain military advantage. This is an important point, and we must never forget.
Indeed, environmental degradation and destruction from conflicts not only takes a toll on nature itself, but it also exacerbates food and water insecurity, and destroys businesses, lives and futures.
There are examples right across our world of famine and disaster occurring in the wake of military conflict.
We must recognise the environmental damage that threatens the well-being, health and survival of local populations. This increases their vulnerability for years and even decades.
Furthermore, as a Geneva Environment Network indicates, at least 40% of all internal conflicts over the last 60 years have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources, where the high value resources such as timber, diamonds, gold, and oil, or scarce resources, such as fertile land and water.
Conflicts involving natural resources have also been found to be twice as likely to relapse. For that, we must all remain ever vigilant.
The UK has a proud record of stepping out and standing up to support communities and nations in trouble and in the eye of the conflicts. I will be encouraging ministers in the UK government to do more and go further.
But we must all do more. That is why the Council of Europe is so important. We must lead by example. We must never walk by on the other side, and we must show that we care.
The Conflict and Environment Observatory put it well when they said the environment impact of war begins long before they do. Building and sustaining military forces consume vast quantities of resources. These might be common metals or rare earth metals, water or hydrocarbons. Maintaining military readiness means training, and training consumes resources.
There's so many other things to say, but I think the strongest point is this: war has unimaginable impacts on people's lives and the future of our planet. Let that be the one thing we remember, and together, let's change our world for the better.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Ruth JONES.
Ms Margreet De BOER has the floor.
Thank you, Chair.
The impact of war is enormous.
People die by weapons that are used. Both soldiers and civilians.
People get wounded by these same weapons.
People loose family and friends, people have to leave their home, or what is left of it, or their country.
The weapons that are used by the aggressor are not only military weapons. Hunger and cold are used as weapons, as is sexual violence, as we discussed yesterday.
But also destroying nature, natural resources and a healthy environment is part of many wars. Sometimes as collateral damage, but often on purpose.
It is good and important that this report acknowledges this ecocide as a war crime.
The impact of war is long-lasting. It takes decades to rebuild cities, hospitals, schools, infrastructure. It takes generations to overcome trauma, grief, hatred and distrust.
But destroying ecosystems can be forever, with devastating effects for plants, animals, biodiversity, landscape and, in the end, humans.
The recommendations made by the rapporteur are very precise. Use the legal framework that is already in place and fill in the gaps.
I think both are important because we can do much with what we already have, but it's not sufficient.
I also want to underline the importance of the recommendation of the rapporteur to establish domestic and regional solutions to provide relief to environmental refugees fleeing military conflicts, given the legal vacuum on this matter. This is also very important.
I would add that we should provide relief to all refugees of war and to all environmental refugees.
One last remark, I would also plea to recognise ecocide not only as a crime of war, but also in general, as a crime against humanity also when it is not taking place inside a war.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Margreet De BOER.
Mr Nuno CARVALHO has the floor.
Thank you, Mister President.
The impact of these situations in war is huge concerning all the devastation that we may see in the future regarding crops that no longer exist, regarding water that is no longer drinkable, but the main issue here is to prevent these situations. The main issue here is, also, to uncover what these impacts might do in the future but condemning now these same impacts of these crimes that are made in war.
The fact is that we can we can see devastations of all these impacts in terms of the economy, in terms of the recovering of the of the social structure of countries that are affected by war. This is a very, very important manner, because not only does it change the faces of countries that are affected by them, it changes the societies because the impacts are in several sectors.
It is very very important for us to eliminate this gap and to tackle this problem right now, because the footprint that we assist, that we see in the future, is huge. It goes on for a long, long time; it affects several generations.
We might think that we only see the impacts of war in the first impact that we can see through all the hours that affect directly people. Environmental acts, criminal environmental acts, that are driven by war are also something that absolutely smashes a society, that eliminates the opportunity of recovery. As I said, we are talking about the economy. We are talking about the future in terms of food production. We are talking about what is essential for a country to exist. If you withdraw what is essential for a country, you also withdraw the character of a country. You also withdraw the identity of the country.
In that way, this is something that affects and impacts all sectors that you might imagine of what makes us a country, of what makes us a culture.
I congratulate the rapporteur for this report because what we are discussing now is something that we now feel, now know. Most of all, it is not only debating what we can save of the planet. We need to debate what we have lost to make sure that we will not keep losing. In times of war, we cannot forget the impact on the environment.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mister Nuno CARVALHO.
Ms Lesia VASYLENKO has the floor.
And a very big thank you to our rapporteur. When Mr John HOWELL took up this topic for report back in 2020, John, you really stood up for the environment, which truly is a silent victim of war.
The report covers a wide spectrum of environmental damage that was caused: air pollution, water pollution, nuclear insecurity, contamination of landmines, biodiversity depletion. It's all in there.
In Ukraine alone, the damage to the environment resulting from Russia's war is estimated at 46 billion dollars.
And every year Russia's aggression produces over 40 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent actually to the annual production of CO2 emissions of a whole separate country, Bulgaria for example.
There's another major problem that I would like to address also, that is not really covered in this report, but is very important for Ukraine: and that problem is of demining.
30% of Ukraine is covered in landmines and explosives. That's 300 000 ordnances over 174 000 square kilometres of land. That's basically, if you want to put it into context, almost the whole of the UK covered in remnants of war.
This spreads over areas of farmland, woodland, over urban areas, cities, towns, villages.
Recently, the occupied areas are the areas which pose most risks to the livelihood of humans. Men, women, and especially children are admitted on a daily basis with wounds from explosives. This is why the number of civilian casualties also grows in Ukraine.
The problem of demining extends to a much more global level, however, than just Ukraine. Unless enough equipment is procured and enough personnel is trained in Ukraine, the fields in Ukraine will not be ready for the farmers to plant by springtime, and this will lead to a domino effect of massive massive problems extending far beyond the territory of Ukraine, far beyond the territory of Europe, but over to Africa, the Middle East and boomeranging back into Europe.
These problems – I will name them – they are famine, they are mass migration, and everything that spreads from this.
Now, to solve this issue, there's a little piece of homework that I would like us to go away with after this report. It's actually to talk to our governments about increasing the pot for demining operations in Ukraine and beyond.
To date, this financial pot is almost dry, and I think every single one of us can go back home and talk to the government to help procure the necessary equipment for Ukraine, to help procure the necessary training for Ukraine. It's small but it will help. It will help save lives in Ukraine, but it will also help produce a stability of a global kind.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Lesia VASYLENKO.
I call Ms Boglárka ILLÉS.
Chairman,
Dear political Assembly,
The war which has been erupted almost for a year has shocked the world. I wouldn't believe that my generation has to experience what our grandparents wanted to forget, but they told us in order to not happen again.
It could be the biggest tragedy of this decade that we couldn't prevent. Now our main task has to be saving human lives, facilitating peace.
Wars and armed conflicts do not only tend to damage our environment, but also ruin the living conditions of people. Imagine, how long we can be here without nourishing soil, drinking water, or clean air.
Neither the war, nor the preparations and aftereffects save them. Above all, could we imagine a long-lasting peace if life-saving natural resources were damaged?
The CO2 emissions of the biggest military and arms facilities are bigger than the sum of all countries.
For example, a T72 tank burns more than 200 litres on 100 kilometres. I haven't mentioned about the grand contamination which can spread dozens of kilometres, and war damages or threats to the safety of nuclear power plants by military occupation.
Above all, I'm a representative of such a country, which is the neighbourhood of the conflict zone. I was born next to the second biggest river of Hungary, the Tisza, which comes from Ukraine and which is one of our national treasures.
Since the outbreak of the war, public waste transport services have been interrupted in an increasing number of municipalities in Ukraine, so that during the rising water levels accumulative amounts of illegally dumped waste arrives in our country on this river.
Hungary is expressing its deep concern for the devastating effects of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine in terms of loss of human lives, several environmental damages with regards to the dramatic effects of increased climate change, and mass migration from starving regions.
We agree that the Council of Europe seizes the momentum to enhance political attention to the widening of the human rights and the environment. We support the Council of Europe to address the possibility to develop a new ecocide crime, even at an international level, even in a convention.
Collective action is essential to tackle multiple and interconnected crisis: from food to pandemic recovery, from energy to finance. It will allow us to focus more on achieving sustainable development goals and supporting the most vulnerable countries.
Last but not least, I would like to congratulate Mr John HOWELL for this excellent report.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Madam ILLÉS.
Ms Sibel ARSLAN has the floor.
Thank you very much, Mister President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I, too, would like to thank the rapporteur, Mr John HOWELL, very much for this report.
Armed conflicts and wars destroy human lives and damage our environment. In peacetime there are also companies that support factories and industrial plants in preventing air, water, and soil from being polluted. In wartime, on the other hand, these destroyed industrial plants cannot be visited at all, because it is not possible to examine the contamination. It is also difficult to give exact figures here.
On 24 March, Russian soldiers had set fire to an oil depot southwest of Kiev. The fire burned for days, incinerating 5 800 tons of oil stored in tanks. The oil spread to the surrounding agricultural fields and polluted large areas. What does it mean when oil seeps into the ground? It can cover the roots of plants, and it causes the soil to be unable to absorb oxygen. The soil cannot absorb oxygen. Also, the land mines left by the Russians around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant could maim and kill a great many people and animals in the future. Mines found everywhere in war zones. The effects of such pollution or crimes are still working for us for a long time.
Those who destroy our ecosystem, biodiversity, animals, and the right to a healthy environment should also be held accountable. The Geneva Convention prohibits the use of methods or means intended to inflict global, permanent and severe damage on the natural environment. In many cases, environmental damage can be seriously long-term and irreversible. Not only ecosystems, but also human health is affected.
I thank you for this proposal to make ecocide a war crime.
Thank you again for this extraordinarily good report.
Thank you, Ms ARSLAN.
Mr Alain MILON has the floor.
Thank you, Miste President.
Thank you to our colleague Mr John HOWELL for this report which highlights the severe damage that wars can cause to the environment and, consequently, to man and his health.
At a time when our Assembly is mobilising in favour of the right to a healthy environment as a fundamental right, it was particularly appropriate to look at the way in which damage caused to the environment in the context of armed conflicts could be characterised and sanctioned. The war that is raging today is a cruel reminder of what is at stake in this issue.
With regard to our colleague's report, the international legal framework seems to me insufficient. The conventions of the Council of Europe whose objective is to protect the environment do not explicitly cover damage caused by an act of war and sometimes even explicitly exclude these contexts.
Admittedly, direct and indirect environmental protection measures in times of armed conflict are provided for by the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques and by the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts. But it seems to me that the Council of Europe and its member States need to become more involved.
I am, therefore, pleased that the Committee of Ministers has taken up this issue in its recommendation adopted on 27 September last. In my opinion, the member States of our Organisation must ratify the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.
As parliamentarians, we have a duty to play a role in this regard.
Finally, it will be necessary to ensure that the revised version of the Council of Europe's Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law also applies in the context of armed conflicts in time of war or occupation. Our Assembly must obviously support and take part in this mobilisation and I will vote for this draft resolution without reservation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr MILON.
Mr Jean-Pierre GRIN has the floor.
Thank you, Mister President.
Mister President, I would like to thank you for your attention,
Dear Colleagues,
The excellent report from our colleague Mr John HOWELL highlights the different impacts on the environment of all armed conflicts. It emphasises that environmental protection is limited during wars and calls for international recognition of the crime of ecocide and measures to prohibit the use of prohibited weapons that have a devastating impact on the environment and humans.
As noted in the report, between 1955 and 1975, the war in Vietnam saw significant destruction of the sustainable environment, some of it irreversible. This was a real scandal that led the United Nations to adopt a new legal instrument on the protection of the environment in times of armed conflict in 1976.
This was not enough. During the war in Kosovo, the bombing in the Balkans had a negative impact on various ecosystems and protected areas: forests, soils and air were polluted in an unprecedented way.
The current escalation of hostilities by the Russian Federation into all-out war has extended the damage to infrastructure and the environment in many parts of Ukraine. An immediate concern is the safety of nuclear power plants subjected to voluntary or involuntary missile attacks or disruptions during certain maintenance operations.
Another problem raised by our colleague Ms Lesia VASYLENKO concerns the post-conflict situation: anti-personnel mines that remain hidden in the ground and are permanent dangers for agricultural operations or any other use of the land. These mines remain active for many years and claim many innocent victims. Clearing the land is a delicate and dangerous operation, with increased damage to nature and a surprise effect on humans or animals.
Dear Colleagues,
Nature is a silent and defenseless victim in the deliberate destruction of agricultural production facilities: crops, irrigation channels, wells, pumps and so on. All this damage undermines food production, causes famine and unbalances many ecosystems for a very long time.
As the discussions in the Committee have shown, there is great political interest in the idea of incorporating the concept of ecocide into the international legal order. The draft resolution in this report fully supports it. It is urgent that the human rights to life and to a healthy environment be recognised and no longer violated.
It is imperative that our Assembly urge member States to take all necessary measures to make the use in conflicts of prohibited weapons that have a disproportionate impact on the environment and that make life impossible in affected areas illegal and subject to criminal prosecution.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Mr Jean-Pierre GRIN.
Ms Nigar ARPADARAI has the floor.
Thank you very much, Mr President.
Dear colleagues,
Armed conflict remains an important cause of environmental damage, leading to food and water insecurity, loss of livelihoods and biodiversity loss.
Wars have devastating effects on the environment. We in Azerbaijan know that very well, unfortunately.
As a result of Armenian occupation, Azerbaijani cities and villages have been destroyed. A number of cities were completely destroyed, and subsequently dismantled to the last stone.
Once a beautiful city, Agdam was called the Hiroshima of the Caucasus by international media, due to the scale of destruction.
Unique endemic forest of Zangilan region was chopped down by occupants. Irrigation systems were totally destroyed in Jabrayil and Fuzuli regions.
Springs and wells have been destroyed, rivers have been polluted. Hundreds of kilometres of Azerbaijani land were turned into trenches and military bunkers.
The scars of occupation will remain for many years to come. Armenia's occupation has inflicted long-term and irreversible damage on the environment of Azerbaijan.
This aside, Azerbaijan's natural national resources were being exploited illegally for many years. This is one of the reasons why Azerbaijani eco-activists run a peaceful protest action on their own soil, on Lachin road, a road connecting Armenia to a part of Karabakh, under temporary control of the Russian military, and where remnants of Armenian occupying forces still hide.
Eco-activists demand ecological monitoring in the region and prevention of the illegal exploitation of Azerbaijan's natural resources. This is their right.
Dear colleagues, after more than two years since the end of the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Azerbaijani public asks questions. Why are Azerbaijani natural resources being exploited illegally by remnants of the Armenian army? Why is Armenia still openly financing its puppet regime in Karabakh, including the purchase of landmines, ammunition, and salaries of militants?
There are serious reasons for the ongoing action. The purpose of the Lachin road is to provide for the passage of people and goods during transitional post-war period. But for the last two years, the road has been extensively used to transport Armenian soldiers, military supplies, including landmines and ammunition. It was widely used to transport Azerbaijani natural resources – metal ore and gold – from Karabakh to Armenia illegally, without any governmental monitoring.
Now, the Armenian side is trying to cheat, to create this fake story, in order to start again. Unchecked supply of weapons and transportation of gold and ore from Karabakh to Armenia.
Dear colleagues, we respect our obligations, but Azerbaijan... We are under no obligation to allow the illegal exploitation of Azerbaijan's national natural resources and unchecked transfer of weapons and military, or any other stuff, in contradiction to our laws. Because Lachin road and peace of Karabakh, where Russian soldiers are now stationed, are Azerbaijini soil, where the Azerbaijani constitution must work. The sooner the better.
Mr John HOWELL, this is an excellent report. I'm thanking you especially for the fact that you would like to, you propose to create a competent body to study the feasibility and legal instrument for all these subjects.
Thank you very much for raising this up.
Thank you, Ms Nigar ARPADARAI.
Mr Paul GAVAN has the floor.
Thank you, Mister Chairperson.
I want to begin by warmly welcoming this report and congratulating the rapporteur Mr John HOWELL. There is an awful lot of detailed research here. I think it is important to recognise that work.
I think the key message from your report is that the International Criminal Court now needs to move to call for the international recognition of the crime of ecocide. As we know, they currently exercise jurisdiction of crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and the crime of aggression. It is very clear from the detail of the report that this is a move that needs to be made.
Indeed, I know the Irish government has been active in terms of environmental issues while they had a seat at the UN Security Council. I know they are currently looking at this issue and I would encourage them to clearly come out after this report is hopefully adopted –hopefully unanimously– today. I want to see the Irish government come out and support that call so that we can make further progress internationally on the issue.
You give a number of examples in terms of the damage done. The Kosovo War has been cited a few times where industrial sites and energy installations were damaged by bombing or missile strikes. The destruction and fires at these sites caused serious damage to the country's national environment. The bombing affected ecosystems, surface water, groundwater, protected areas, forests, landscapes, soil and air in the Balkans, which were contaminated in an unprecedented manner. Over 100 toxic substances were involved, including ordnance containing the depleted uranium used by NATO in several operations. Of course, there's a growing amount of evidence that the dispersion of depleted uranium can be linked to the increased incidence of aggressive cancers, such as leukaemia among the local population, military personnel, and peacekeepers.
Others have mentioned, rightly so, the Vietnam War and Agent Orange. Of course, we need to bear in mind the current war on Ukraine and the huge environmental damage inflicted by that particular conflict.
The one I also want to mention, though, is in relation to Yemen and the huge damage that has been done by Saudi Arabia. They have continuously bombed infrastructure like desalination plants, dams and reservoirs, depriving communities of easy access to water. Indeed, I might just mention that for a body that focuses on human rights, I am always surprised at how rarely Saudi Arabia gets a mention in this Chamber given their appalling record in terms of human rights and that disgraceful war that is going on there at the moment.
It is worth, in the last few seconds I have, just focusing on a few facts in terms of the impact of the military on our environment. Militaries consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels; bombing and other methods of modern warfare directly harm wildlife and biodiversity; pollution from war contaminates bodies of water, soil and air; and of course, warfare releases greenhouse gas and missions.
One startling fact that I will leave you with is that if the US military were a country it would have the 47th highest emissions total worldwide. Bombings and other methods of modern warfare directly harm wildlife and biodiversity.
This is an important report. I hope it gains widespread support. Again, I want to recognise the work of the rapporteur.
Thank you, Mister Paul GAVAN.
We must now interrupt. Ah, I am told that we can still take a speaker.
Ms Inka HOPSU has the floor.
Mister President,
Dear Colleagues,
First of all, thank you very much for the important report. Congratulations to Mr John HOWELL.
The war in Ukraine is a shocking humanitarian crisis. My thoughts are with the Ukrainians and all who suffer because of war.
War also has an impact on the environment, which can be seen very concretely in Ukraine. The country of huge environmental diversity is home to tens of internationally significant wetlands. All this is under threat as acts of war raise the risk of forest fires and toxic waste of ammunition pollutes important water sources. The environment suffers from the effect of tanks, broken war machinery and even nuclear waste. In addition to human suffering, the environmental impact of war will have far-reaching consequences.
The environmental impact of war is not limited to Ukraine’s borders. As countries are struggling to ensure energy security, the temptation to water down emission targets and climate change measures increase.
In Finland the war in Ukraine increases logging as forestry companies must seek alternatives to Russian wood to cover for the lack of wood chips as an energy source. We can also see a shift in Finland’s peat policy. This is very unfortunate, as peat is known to have dire effects on the climate and the environment: it increases emissions. It is evident that the energy crisis forces us to find alternative energy sources, but we must not do this at the cost of cutting emissions and fossil fuels.
Ensuring energy security and tackling climate change are two problems with one solution: sustainable renewable energy. Developing renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power are the best ways forward in reducing greenhouse gases. All investments should now be directed towards these technologies at the same time as we should encourage energy efficiency and saving.
Dear Colleagues,
In the same way as we have convictions for war crimes and genocide, we need to be able to bring before the courts also the worst environmental criminals and destructors of the environment, and convict them of ecocide. Including such a crime into international law may not stop crimes against the environment, but it might obstruct such acts.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms Inka HOPSU.
We must now interrupt the hearing of the speakers.
Registered speakers who have been present during the debate and have not been able to speak may submit their typed statement within four hours to the Table Office for publication in the Official Report. This text must not exceed 400 words and must be transmitted electronically.
I call for the reply of the Committee.
Mister rapporteur, you have the floor for 3 minutes.
I thank you very much for this debate. I thank everyone who has spoken. It has been quite emotional for me to hear such tributes to the debate that we have heard.
I would just like to read you an email that is typical of the emails that I have received on this.
It's from somebody who says: "I am a law professor currently seconded to an organisation in a member country". He says: "the idea of combining, on the one hand, the effective and crossed implementation of human rights and humanitarian law, and on the other hand, the international recognition of the crime of ecocide is a strong and crucial idea. I want to congratulate you and thank you for the quality of your report entitled Environmental Impact of Conflicts".
I just wanted to read that, because that is typical of the responses that I have had.
I am aware that many, many people have spoken about the effect, essentially, of ecocide in Ukraine. I have been a great supporter of Ukraine right from the very beginning. But I would just point out what I said at the beginning – that the purpose of this report is to cover all countries, not one specific country, but to make sure that all of their activities are included within it.
What is the point of this?
People can ignore it. People can can say go to hell.
I think one of the speakers – I can't remember which one it was – made the point very clearly. We have to stand up for what we believe in. We have to stand up for the things that are important to us. That may well mean that we can bring to account the people who go against those values that we hold hold dearly. And if that helps to solve the problems of the environmental effect in times of armed conflicts, then I will be very pleased.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mister Rapporteur.
Does Ms Selin SAYEK BÖKE, Chairperson of the Committee, wish to reply?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:25:30
Thank you very much, Mister President.
As the chair of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, I'd like to extend our gratitude and congratulations to our rapporteur as well as our Secretariat for having put forth a report that was extremely well received at this plenary.
I think the debate we've had is proof of the work that has been done, but more so the proof of the need for this work to have been done.
As I say, the debate itself has spoken many of the words that I just want to underline and reiterate.
First of all, this report takes stock of the necessity of taking into account the immense destruction armed conflict and war is putting on globally.
Human lives, the environment, biodiversity is being destroyed. It's as our duty as the leaders of an organisation seeking to protect and promote human rights, rule of law, and democracy, to ensure that not only do we avoid such destruction, but in case it occurs we ensure that human rights and humanitarian aspects of the issue is coordinated and ensured in unison.
This report not only takes stock of this need, but it also takes stock of the role that we have played as an organisation in being a pioneer to ensure that a healthy environment is sought out as a critical part of our human rights. But it also takes stock of the need to actually ingrain ecocide as a crime in universal jurisdiction.
And it takes a step further in saying that this should not only be done in peacetime but also made sure that we take it into account as a crime when we have armed conflict.
I'd like to congratulate again our rapporteur but also share my enthusiasm that there was a consensus in this plenary in giving strong support to actually having an international mechanism to monitor the legal infringements and address compensation claims when we do have such destruction and violation of the indivisible rights that we are trying to seek.
Human rights should include in it the environmental rights, and it is a crime when it is violated.
So, once again, I found it very heartening that there's consensus in this Assembly to the report that was drafted in our Committee.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The general discussion is closed.
The Social, Health and Sustainable Development Committee has presented a draft resolution to which three amendments and two sub-amendments have been tabled, and a draft recommendation to which three amendments and two sub-amendments have been tabled.
The amendments will be called in the order in which they apply to the text, as published in the collection of amendments.
Dear colleagues, I remind you that the time limit for each amendment is 30 seconds.
We shall first consider the draft resolution.
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights has tabled a sub-amendment to Amendment No. 1.
I call Ms Olena KHOMENKO to support Amendment No. 1.
You have 30 seconds.
Speech not pronounced (Rules of Procedure, Art. 31.2), only available in French
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
A safe and healthy environment is a human right and therefore those who breach that right, in particular on a mass scale during wartime as an act of ecocide, must be legally accountable in an international court of law. So this Council of Europe imitative for a convention and treaty to help deliver environmental justice and to help pay to repair the damage is welcome.
The devastation of habitats, species and our natural environment must have consequences.
The brutal illegal invasion of Ukraine which has already cost over a quarter of million lives is also an act of ecocide - with lasting environmental and public health impacts for future generations including emissions, water and toxic wastelands.
In Ukraine agricultural land has been bomb-drenched undermining it as a bread basket of the world. Habitats have been destroyed, forests ignited - with 37,000 fires in the first 4 months; we have wrecked factories spewing pollution - like the Azoustal steel works in Mariupol and the rivers of Donbas are polluted by wrecked industry, sewage works and coal mines.
30 per cent of the country’s protected areas are bombed polluted or burned. Only 3 per cent of steppe grassland remain and twenty steppe species may disappear Rare steppe and island ecosystems in the south threaten endemic grassland plants and insects. In Crimea forest fires threaten 44 unique species. Illegal exploitation of historic forests and destruction of peat also threatens the environment.
Nuclear power installations including Chernobyl and, Europe’s biggest, at Zaporizhzhia are at risk of creating radiation pollution at scale.
Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe and its ruthless bombardment amounts to ecocide.
We have seen environmental destruction before in Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere.
It is crucial that as we gather the evidence, agree the laws and conventions and bring forward environmental justice and compensation and these proposals show a vital step forward in achieving this.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Dear Chairman,
Dear Mr Rapporteur,
Dear Colleagues,
Damages caused to Ukraine as a result of the war exceed 700 billion dollars, recovery needs have increased due to Russian attacks on infrastructure.
Environmental damage in Ukraine caused by the invasion of the Russian Federation is estimated at more than €37 billion, in addition, millions of hectares of nature reserves are under threat.
Among them, the air suffers the most from the burning of oil products and forest fires.
20% of nature conservation areas of Ukraine were in the combat zone. "The Russians occupied eight Ukrainian nature reserves and 10 national parks. They do not respect the security status of these territories and use them to station their troops.
As a result of hostilities in Ukraine, about a third of the country's forest plantations were destroyed or significantly damaged, 450,000 hectares of forests are under Russian occupation. 2.45 million hectares of forest plantations have been released so far, but they have been burnt and dug with trenches and decades are needed to restore them.
Currently, more than 2000 events that have signs of eco-crime have been entered into the unified register of damages. For some of them, damage calculations have already been carried out according to the available methods, for the rest of the already recorded cases, it is still impossible to calculate the losses either due to the lack of methods, or due to insufficient information on such recorded cases, some of them are located in temporarily occupied territories.
Russia is trying to cause ecocide in Ukraine, as well as reduce soil fertility.
In 2016, the UN Environment Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing the role of healthy ecosystems and rationally managed resources in reducing the risk of armed conflicts. What's going on? Russia, having countless natural resources, is encroaching on what the Ukrainian people own. We don't just have an irrational use of natural resources - the Russian invasion turns into a bonfire what does not belong to it and will never belong to it
I call on the Assembly and the entire democratic society to take into account all the environmental crimes of Russia in the war in Ukraine during the condemnation of Putin and his criminals in the Special Tribunal and do everything possible for Ukraine to receive reparations for all environmental damage.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Dear Mr President, dear colleges,
I would like to command a reporter,
Mr John HOWELL for good report as it is of utmost importance, especially today when not only a full-scale war and genocide against Ukrainian nation is happening in the heart of Europe in my country.
But, an enormous ecocide against nature and environment in the whole Europe.
Massive killing and bombing (5000 exploded bombs and about 15000 units of military equipment of various types were destroyed, mining (30% of the territory of Ukraine is mined), destroyed fuel storages, all of which is not only killing our people, but contaminates the soil and groundwater with chemicals and heavy metals.
Thousands of Russian tanks and armored vehicles pollute the ground with fuel and lubricants, and the burned ones continue to cause damage .
44% of the most valuable areas of the nature reserve fund are in the war zone, under the temporary control of Russian invaders or are inaccessible to Ukraine.
Russian agressor wants Ukraine to become a "devastated and mined land" .
Ukraine is 35% of Europe's biodiversity .
Ukraine is more than 70 thousand biological species.
Ukraine is almost 63 thousand rivers.
Ukraine is 11% of the Carpathian mountain massif, where a third of all plant species in Europe grow.
The Ukrainian government and eclogists from the first days of the Russian invasion try record all the damage they are causing to the Ukrainian environment.
I call on on you to take all possible urgent actions to help the Ukrainian eco-system to prevent harder damages and develop a separate package for the environment aid, as well as in the recovery package.
We would ask you to include special support for restoring the damaged environment
We have to unite our efforts to preserve the environment, as it has no border limits on a separate territory of state.
These crimes are living proof that Nazism has already revived in Europe. Again, 80 years after World War II. Today, Ukrainians are killed simply because they are Ukrainians.
Putin is not just a new Hitler, he is worse than Hitler. He is destroying an entire state in Europe in front of the eyes of the entire civilized world.
We need weapons and support to stop the destruction of Ukraine.
Speech not pronounced (Rules of Procedure, Art. 31.2), only available in German
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Mr. chairman, let me first thank Mr. Howell for raising such an important issue in times when different member states are facing consequences of armed conflicts
For my country especially in recent times this question has become a top priority issue. Three-decade-long Armenian occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan is the main reason for the environmental degradation in the region. Prior to occupation, the Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur region was ecologically rich. The pictures taken before the conflict and the available satellite images of those areas are clear proof of the aggression committed by Armenia for 30 years.
As a country facing growing water depletion preventing pollution and conserving water are one of the priority issues. Karabakh is a region of Azerbaijan with a dense water network. However, Armenian control of the region affected the availability and quality of Azerbaijan’s water resources, revoking the right of people to access the water resources for three decades.
During the occupation, assessing the environmental status of the main transboundary rivers between Azerbaijan and Armenia was impossible. After the liberation of occupied territories, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources carried out physical and chemical analyses of the water samples. Based on the monitoring results, it was determined that these rivers are extremely polluted with heavy metals.
In particular, the River Okhchuchay is continuously polluted with untreated industrial water from copper-molybdenum refineries in Armenia and domestic wastewater generated in Gafan and Gajaran. The severe pollution of the Oxchuchay River has also led to the mass extinction of fauna species.
During the 44-day war, strong explosions and fires occurred due to shells fired by Armenia in the territory of Azerbaijan. The indiscriminate missile attacks launched against National Parks (Aggol and GoyGol) of Azerbaijan, which locate far from the frontline, destroyed the green areas, thousands of bushes, trees, and topsoil in the area.
Additionally Armenian Armed Forces have used internationally banned cluster bombs and weapons containing white phosphorus. During the investigation, it was determined that one projectile containing "white phosphorus" was fired by the Armenian armed forces on the territory of Babı and Alkhanli village of the Fuzuli region and two projectiles on the territory of Sahlabad village of the Tartar region.
More than month now, the action of representatives of Azerbaijani non-governmental environmental organizations in the area of the city of Shusha has been going on. The purpose of the action is to demand to stop the criminal exploitation of the Gyzylbulag and Demirli deposits by the Armenian side and the export of illegally mined gold, copper and molybdenum abroad. As a result of illegal actions, Armenian separatists have been stealing these deposits in the territory of Azerbaijan for decades.
The Armenian side has been illegally receiving significant funds from the exploitation of these deposits for many years. However, after the end of the Second Karabakh War, when Armenia lost most of the occupied Azerbaijani territories, which brought significant income, the production at these mines increased.
It should be especially noted that the extraction of gold and other metals in these deposits is carried out by the Armenian side using barbaric methods, without observing any environmental standards, which leads to soil and water pollution, causing enormous damage to the environment. In the period after the end of the First Karabakh War, Azerbaijan did not have the opportunity to provide the international community with solid evidence of the theft of natural resources in the occupied territories, due to the lack of means of objective control and the remoteness of this territory from the advanced positions of the Azerbaijani army. After the end of the Second Karabakh War and the liberation of most of the occupied territories, the Azerbaijani authorities were able to assess in real time and visually the scale of ongoing illegal work in these fields, as well as calculate the volume of rock exported abroad.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Mr President as we speak this morning a war rages in the Ukraine. A war which has left thousands of innocent citizen dead on both sides. As we speak cities are being destroyed. As we speak the infrastructure of the whole country is being razed to the ground. As we speak the environment in the Ukraine is one of the biggest casualties effecting both human health and local ecosystems.
As reported, stretches of forest have been destroyed, targeted attacks on storage facililties and depots have led to leaks of fuel and industrial waste into rivers, ground water and sewage systems. Reports speak agricultural fields contaminated by gasoline, and rivers where the natural habitat has suffocated under oil slicks. To date Russian forces threaten nuclear energy plants. With a steady barrage of strikes on refineries, chemical plants, energy facilities, industrial depots and pipelines, the country's air, water and soil have been polluted by toxic substances
There are reports of damage to water supply infrastructure with millions of people in Ukraine currently having limited or no access to safe water.
This savage war has once again reminded us that armed conflicts cause so many casualties. So many victims and the environment is one of them.
Mr President This is history repeating itself
We all recall, the environmental damage cause by Iraq in the Gulf war in the 1990’s. Then, the Iraqi forces deliberately caused Environmental catastrophe with approximately 3.5 million tons of crude oil released into the desert and 800,000 tons of oil spilled into the Persian Gulf.
Then in the desert, 250 oil lakes covered 50 square kilometers , as a result of the sixty million barrels of spilling from the burning oil wells. Then an estimated six to eight million barrels of oil polluted the marine environment.
The Coast coast suffered over 100 miles of damage. Oil, 15 inches deep in certain areas, destroyed the nesting grounds for endangered sea turtles and birds, fisheries, and shrimp-spawning areas. Beaches, tide had been damaged, and thousands of bird species were killed.
Following the Gulf War of the early 90s, the U.N. Security Council voted to force Iraq to pay reparations to Kuwait, “including environmental damage,” which ultimately amounted to about three billion dollars of Iraq’s $52 billion post-war financial obligation. Iraq finished paying off this debt only last February.
Today thirty plus years after the Gulf war, war still rages in different parts of the world. Today a war rages in the heart of Europe
I am sure Mr President that the war in the Ukariane will come to an end and the Ukraine will triumph. Post-war reconstruction will be a monumental task and will require comprehensive, well co-ordinated and well-funded effort. When this happens a defeated Russia should be made to pay reparations for the damage and destruction caused , including the environmental damage it has deliberately created
It is the Council of Europe’s obligation to also see that this happens. I say all this in the light of the excellent report and resolution this Plenary is discussing. A report which rightly concludes that Armed conflicts, wars and military aggression destroy human lives and damage human living space. Armed conflicts cause Environmental damages which are multifaceted, severe, long-lasting and mostly irreversible.
The existing international legal framework provides for a limited protection of the environment in times of war. I therefore support the need highlighted in this report to ensure co-application of human rights and humanitarian law during armed conflicts. I advocate the call for the international recognition of the crime of ecocide and measures to outlaw the use of prohibited weapons which have disastrous impact on both the environment and humans. It is for this reason that I shall support and vote in favour of this resolution and report.
Thank you for your attention.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Mr. President
I welcome this timely and excellent report on the environmental impact of armed conflicts and the comprehensive, sharp, and convincing argumentation for taking strong actions against the crime of ecocide and building more effective legally binding instruments so that those committing the crimes can be held accountable.
It stands to show the outstanding work by our rapporteur, Mr. John Howell, and is put forth at a moment in time when we need it the most.
We have been vividly reminded in recent years - and not the least now with the aggression against Ukraine - of the disastrous harm being done to the environment by armed conflicts, and like we see now, senseless destruction of communities, cities, towns, fields, and ecosystems.
This has to stop; this has to have legal consequences for those responsible. We need to have an international framework that better tackles such crimes in a decisive manner, and we need to act now.
Systematic destruction of the environments has become an instrument of terror by some.
To suppress communities, to disrupt them and force people to leave their lands as they can no longer make their living, risking their health with a poisonous environment, active mine fields and other means of destruction of their environment should be seen as an instrument of terror.
Fragile ecosystems are under a threat due to armed conflicts. Biodiversity, individual species, and their continued existence is at stake.
Many species do not respect the borders that mark the national territories of nations. Coherent ecosystems span many countries.
Mindless or intentional destruction of the environment is a crime and should be treated as such. Our Assembly has emphasized that the right to a healthy environment shall be declared as a fundamental human right by all. PACE has declared the uttermost importance of taking decisive steps at the Reykjavík Summit to turn its will into direct actions.
I want to emphasize the uttermost importance of identifying the environmental impact of armed conflicts as an integral and timely part of a new and strengthened legal framework for the ratification of the right to a healthy environment as a fundamental human right.
New treaty, new convention, the crime of ecocide shall be criminalized and dealt with in a stronger legally binding way with swift consequences for those committing the crimes.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
I commend the leader of the UK Delegation for this inspired report which deals with a very serious problem which we all ignore.
Of course our top concern must be the loss of life.
And we have to recognise the reality, as we are seeing in the Ukraine day after day, that armies, soldiers and leaders can be brutal and evil.
As Putin and his genocidal generals, bomb Ukrainian schools, hospitals, and civilian buildings as part of a tactic to so destroy and weaken Ukraine’s resolve to survive and fight we know that they have made torture, murder and rape of innocent civilians a military tactic also.
Therefore, they will not care about damage to the environment.
But that means that we should accept the key recommendations of this report.
Ecocide should be added to the list of war crimes in the International Criminal Court.
Everyone worries about the danger to Ukraine nuclear reactors but how many billion tons of concrete will be required to rebuild destroyed buildings and at what cost to the environment.
When Saddam Hussein was being driven out of Kuwait he set fire to their oil wells causing massive environmental damage.
Every conflict causes environmental damage, but it is way down our list of concerns. Indeed it is probably not even on the list.
That is why I support Recommendation 3.3 which states "mandates the governing body of the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats – (The Bern Convention) – to elaborate recommendations regarding the protection of environmentally sensitive areas during armed conflicts, to study the feasibility of an additional Protocol to the Convention to this end, and to consider creating a review mechanism to ensure that the recommendations are implemented by States parties (notably, transposed into domestic law, incorporated into military doctrine, and shared broadly with a view to developing good practice)"
There is nothing there to frighten any member states. All the recommendation asks is that the Bern Convention governing body study the feasibility of adding an additional Protocol. If it is feasible then we have the option to accept it.
I hope that it is feasible, and I would like to see it fully explored.
However, I consulted the UK’s leading expert on the Bern Convention, Professor Colin Galbraith who Chairs the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and he also chaired some Bern investigation and case reviews.
He tells me that whilst the additional Protocol suggestion may be helpful, implementation on the ground seems likely to be the main problem in reality. Indeed, he says, if the existing Bern Convention case-file system, if properly focused on key issues, and adequately resourced, that may be sufficient in providing a mechanism to address the intent of the recommendation from John Howell.
He reminds me that resources are important, and as you will know the Bern Convention is resource poor, with work underway to amend a protocol about financial contributions.
My final observation is that I regret that I was not able to visit one of the world’s best nature reserves when I was in Ukraine in 2019, and that was Chernobyl. No war in 1986 – just nuclear meltdown but all people were removed.
When you take people out of the equation, then wildlife and nature flourishes.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
I commend the rapporteur on an excellent report.
Colleagues,
War casualties are always counted in terms of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, destroyed cities and livelihoods – the environment is often a hidden victim of war.
Over the years, parties to armed conflicts have polluted water, torched crops, cut down forests, poisoned soils, and killed animals to gain military advantage. Environmental degradation and destruction from conflicts not only takes a toll on nature itself, but also exacerbates food and water insecurity and destroys livelihoods.
The environment has become a hostage of armed conflict.
With every new day of the war in Ukraine it becomes increasingly clearer that the implications for the food and agricultural sector are profound. Ukraine is a global powerhouse in the production of grains.
When oil fields are set ablaze, millions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. This can also contribute to climate change, as large volumes of greenhouse gases may be forced into the atmosphere.
On a visit to UK Parliamentary visit to Lebanon last year with the Coalition for Global Prosperity, I walked through the minefields of the Blue Line, on Lebanon’s southern border, and met families living right next to land littered with deadly cluster bombs.
Land mines, cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war can restrict access to agricultural land and pollute soils and water sources with metals and toxic energetic materials. In major conflicts, large volumes of military scrap containing a range of polluting materials, contaminate soils and groundwater, whilst exposing those working to remove it to acute and chronic health risks.
Lebanon’s situation is a striking example of the often-ignored long-term impacts of conflict – and a reminder that the war currently raging in Ukraine will continue to devastate lives long after the guns have fallen silent.
If we fail to call for greater protection before and during conflicts, damage will be seen as acceptable.
If we ignore the environment after conflicts, not only will states miss out on opportunities to achieve sustainable recovery, but they will remain vulnerable to future resource conflicts.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Mr(s) President,
Before I turn to my address proper, let me state my joy at just having gained membership in this august body of ours! I look greatly forward to working with you all!
The excellent report before us prepared by our Rapporteur Mr Howell and our Social Affairs Committee reflects a major widening in stages as regards our comprehension of the totality of consequences that flow from armed conflicts.
To begin with: In centuries past, peace conferences following wars dealt almost exclusively with territories gained or lost between states, or an new pecking order among them. Little or no attention was paid to human suffering, let alone environmental damage. Examples are the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 after the Thirty Years’ War, and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 in the wake of Napoleon’s fall.
But already by the mid-19th century, the conception of the consequences of wars had widened - now also to include protecting human life and health, ensuring respect for all human beings, and alleviating human suffering. Examples here are ‘The Red Cross and Red Crescent movement’ - founded in 1863, and at present with nearly 100 million volunteers who tend to wounded soldiers around the world.
And today, as part of a further sharpening in our awareness of the consequences of armed conflict, we have in the report an outstanding analysis of the need for an enhanced legal framework to protect the environment directly and indirectly. There are also the efforts underway to integrate humanitarian and ecological concerns within one and the same legal context.
The report concludes with a sad account of a number of recent conflicts that also have led to environmental disaster.
Prominent among them is Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, an action that, as we speak, is violating all the areas I have just raised. That is, the proper international conduct between states, and the duty to prevent human suffering and ecological disaster.
To conclude, Mr(s) President, this report provides a perfect opportunity for all concerned to further integrate the various areas of importance in our common efforts to reduce the consequences of armed conflicts. Its focus on the environment is long overdue.
Thank you, Mr President.
Dear Colleagues, Mister Rapporteur,
We do believe that it's not only important to support the establishment of the standard methodologies for the collection of evidence for the environmental harm, and also for the calculation of the damage and related capacity-building efforts.
We have our tragic experience in Ukraine. Our authorities have developed seven methodologies to calculate environmental harm.
We hope that no country will have the same precedent as we do, but standard methodologies for calculating damages is also very important.
Thank you, dear colleagues.
Thank you, Ms Olena KHOMENKO.
We come to the sub-amendment. I call Mr John HOWELL to move the sub-amendment on behalf of the Committee.
I have tried in these Amendments to seek a compromise with the person who is putting them forward, because I agree with many of the points that she has made.
In this one I would just like to take out the words "and calculation of environmental damage and related capacity building efforts", because I think they confuse the message of the report and in order to keep it as straightforward as possible.
Does anyone wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
What is the opinion of the mover of the amendment on the sub-amendment?
Yes, I am against the sub-amendment.
The Committee is obviously in favour of this sub-amendment.
We will proceed to vote on the sub-amendment.
The vote is open.
The sub-amendment is adopted.
We return to Amendment No. 1.
Is there anyone who wishes to speak against the amendment as sub-amended?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:32:31
Unanimously in favour.
We will proceed to vote on the amendment.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment No. 1 is adopted.
I call Ms Olena KHOMENKO to support amendment No. 2.
Dear colleagues,
Please support this amendment.
We would like to provide an example of a more open-minded interpretation used in the cyberspace domain.
States are exchanging and sharing their positions on applicable international law amd it may serve as an example to shape a framework in a more open and good manner.
So, the same we should employ in this domain, in the domain of environmental harm as a result of armed conflict.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms Olena KHOMENKO.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
Mr Rapporteur?
I did try to to seek a compromise on this, but I don't think it is possible.
It is the use of the term "the official interpretation of applicable international environment laws" where we need the flexibility to be able to approach the issue much more broadly.
I would reject this particular amendment.
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:34:50
The Committee reject it by a two-thirds majority.
The amendment was rejected by a two-thirds vote of the Committee.
We will proceed to vote on the amendment.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
Amendment No. 2 was rejected.
Amendment No. 3 is the subject of a sub-amendment by the Committee.
I call Ms Olena KHOMENKO to support Amendment No. 3.
Dear colleagues, we should protect areas that might need to acquire special attention. And I know the position of the rapporteur on these specific examples: nuclear power plants and hydropower plants. But it is just an example, this means that it's inclusive but not limited to, saying in legal terms.
Thank you.
We come to the subamendment.
I call on Mr John HOWELL to support it on behalf of the Committee.
Thank you.
I am happy with the beginning part of this amendment, up to "and areas that might need to acquire a special protection status".
When you put in examples of this, it automatically tends to want people to exclude other examples. I don't think we need to make that exclusion.
I would reject it, or I would propose a sub-amendment and just take out those words.
What is the opinion of the mover of the amendment on the subamendment?
I do not agree with this sub-amendment because, as explained, this is not narrowing, this is not limiting us to consider only nuclear power plants and hydropower plants. This was provided as an example, this wording in brackets.
Thank you.
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:37:46
The Committee accepted the sub-Amendment by a two-thirds majority.
We will proceed to vote on the sub-amendment.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
The sub-amendment is adopted.
We'll move on to Amendment No. 3.
Is there anyone who wishes to speak against the amendment as sub-amended?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:38:40
The Committee accepts it.
We will proceed to vote on the amendment as amended.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed. I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment No. 3 as amended is adopted.
We shall proceed to vote on the draft resolution contained in Doc. 15674 as amended.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed. I call for the result to be displayed.
The resolution contained in Doc. 15674 is adopted.
We come now to the draft recommendation.
Amendment No. 4 was the subject of a sub-amendment by the Committee.
I call Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO to support Amendment No. 4.
Thank you very much.
In this amendment we are speaking about certain areas which should be especially protected. We're speaking about conventions. All conventions which are, for the moment, ratified in part of international law in the defence of environment, they mostly don't speak about the possibility of war at all. We need to change this by preparing new conventions. That is why it is so important.
We come to the sub-amendment.
I call on Mr John HOWELL to support it on behalf of the Committee.
Thank you.
As I have stressed throughout this morning, I have tried to keep the first part of this report exclusive of areas related to one particular country.
I would, therefore, like to propose a sub-amendment that takes out, for example, the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea to the end of that paragraph, and leave only the beginning of that paragraph in, as the amendment. So I introduce a sub-amendment to remove that paragraph.
Does anyone wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
I would like to say that I support, in general, what you are saying.
Through this example I wanted to show why in such conventions it is important to say about the possibility of war and, for example, in the Convention on [the Protection] of the Black Sea there is not.
I agree with the author. We can just leave the main important part without an example.
Thank you.
What is the opinion of the Committee? Is it in favour of the sub-amendment?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:42:09
Yes, the Committee accepted the sub-amendment.
Thank you, Madam President.
We will proceed to vote on the subamendment.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for result to be displayed. The sub-amendment is adopted.
We return to Amendment No. 4.
Is there anyone who wishes to speak against the amendment as sub-amended?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:42:50
The Committee accepted as amended.
We shall proceed to vote on the amendment as sub-amended.
Amendment No. 4 is adopted.
I call Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO to support amendment No. 5.
Now, this is a very important amendment because, yes, it tells us that they are very important areas and, two, we urge the member states to foresee the demilitarisation of such areas. So it means, "welcome Mr Putin" because he is not a member state, he does not care about any of our rules.
It is to say, if you do not want a war then just destroy your army. Okay, you will destroy but the aggressor will not. To protect your cities, do not protect them, do not fight for them, just leave them and then the aggressor will make genocide inside.
So I understand the idea but it is wishful thinking of a wonderful world, which, unfortunately, does not exist at least now.
So please support this amendment.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
What is the opinion of the committee?
Oh, sorry, Mr HOWELL, against?
This is a difficult amendment.
I have every sympathy with the aims of this, but we had advice from the legal people within the Council that it seeks to protect the environment only against aggressors, not defenders. We want it protected against everyone.
I think, therefore, that it's politically and legally problematic. The mention of Article 51 doesn't help. It seeks to alter Article 51 here when it is not an article of this Chamber. It's an article of the UN Charter.
What is the opinion of the Committee, Madam Chair?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:45:13
The Committee rejected by a two-thirds majority.
We will proceed to vote on the amendment.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the results to be displayed. Amendment No. 5 is rejected.
Amendment No. 6 is the subject of a sub-amendment by the Committee.
I call Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO to support Amendment No. 6.
In this amendment we are speaking about the elaboration of the recommendations to member States to protect critical infrastructure, the damage of which can cause huge consequences.
There is a sub-amendment from the rapporteur. I want to say that I support it. It's taking out part of the amendment, but the main idea, the main core, to protect these areas is inside. I support the sub-amendment.
Thank you.
We come to the sub-amendment.
I call on Mr John HOWELL to support it on behalf of the Committee.
Thank you.
This is another amendment that I have sought to make a compromise on by introducing a sub-amendment to take out the specific words relating to specific assets within this amendment. Because once you include those assets, it starts to exclude other assets as well.
Does anyone wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
What is the opinion... Yes, you have already given it, exactly.
We will proceed to vote on the sub-amendment.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed. I call for the result to be displayed.
The sub-amendment is adopted.
We return to Amendment No. 6.
Is there anyone who wishes to speak against the amendment as sub-amended?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Türkiye, SOC, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
11:47:45
The Committee accepted.
We will proceed to vote on the amendment.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment No. 6 is adopted.
We shall now proceed to vote on the draft recommendation contained in Doc. 15674, as amended.
I remind you that the required majority is two-thirds of the votes cast.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
The draft recommendation in Doc. 15674 is adopted.
I congratulate the rapporteur on the recommendation.
We shall now change the Chair.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
11:52:02
Dear colleagues,
The next item on the agenda is the debate on the report titled Contact tracing applications: ethical, cultural and educational challenges in Document 15648 presented by Mr Duncan BAKER on behalf of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media.
We shall also hear an opinion from Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN on behalf of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Document 15660.
In order to finish by 1:00 p.m., I will interrupt the list of speakers at about 12:40 p.m. to allow time for the reply and the vote on the draft resolution.
I call Mr Duncan BAKER, rapporteur. You have 7 minutes now and 3 minutes at the end to reply to the debate.
You have the floor.
Thank you very much for everyone coming. It's both a privilege and a pleasure to be back in Strasbourg once again.
I want to thank everybody that has helped me with this report. It is the first time that I have been a rapporteur, and it has been an extremely enjoyable experience to talk about contact tracing and the ethical and social dilemmas that that brings.
Yesterday we had a meeting of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media, and I'm very pleased to be able to say that it was unanimous in favour of all of the sub-amendments.
I thank my friend here from Armenia, Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN, who has helped and supported me through the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, and made this such a seamless process.
I also stress my thanks to the whole Committee who has supported me through this whole process.
Contact tracing applications are something that most governments – and indeed people – are now familiar with. Their emergence into the public mind was hastened by the pandemic, and in its wake, we are now able to reflect and to evaluate.
This, of course, throws up many dilemmas for us: health priorities, health management. But also issues to think about more widely: data misuse, surveillance, monitoring, the dilemmas around data protection.
Contact tracing applications have evolved, but we have to question sometimes how effective they are. The time pressures in a worldwide health crisis has given us many of these issues to now think about.
As this report now seeks to demonstrate, a key part of this process lies in addressing the several difficult challenges – from ethical to cultural – and even educational considerations which face us now. These must be discussed and dealt with before any state rollout of contact tracing applications can feasibly take place.
This is what this report is all about. It aims to shine a light on a nascent, and therefore largely untouched subject.
Moreover, it is worth noting that there currently exists little substantial scientific evidence of the impact of contact tracing applications and they're effectiveness. This is a hurdle that we have to overcome and a gap that we must all learn to fill.
The draft resolution in this report details many recommendations for the Council of Europe member states. The list is by no means exhaustive, but rather a good starting place from which governments can think seriously and deeply about CTAs.
To my mind, many of the recommendations are good old common sense, and merely put into writing what I hope any sensible and thoughtful government would already be considering. For example, the resolution's recommendations encourage member states to make sure that digital health technologies are part of a comprehensive national epidemiological strategy based on careful impact and effectiveness evaluations. Or to ensure the collection of people's data is backed up by legitimate public health objectives and keep the public well informed about public health issues and the benefits digital technologies can bring with them.
Moreover, these recommendations actively promote the signature and ratification of Convention 108, and the modernised one on a global level, including through working with supranational institutions collaboratively, thereby allowing governments to share experiences and best practices.
Data protection standards must be considered as an advantage in conditions of uncertainty such as a pandemic. However, these regulations must be interpreted in a way that allows for detailed data collection with appropriate safeguards. We must always strike the right balance between data protection standards and health impact assessments, this must be struck not only to help fight the current pandemics and future ones, but also to design future technology aimed at tackling future health crisis.
I hope that you will agree with me on the sensible nature of these recommendations in the report. For me, they form a solid base upon which CTAs can be looked at and implemented in a safe, effective and meaningful way. As I say, they are not holistic, but they rather form a point from which we can all start, and base upon which we can build.
As I said consistently throughout this report's main stages and processes of refinement, on a very basic level these recommendations are a plea for member states and their governments to think carefully before embarking upon the widespread rollout of CTAs during a public health crisis.
We must understand these technologies and their impacts, and ensure the necessary provisions and guidances there, before condoning their state-backed adoption and use.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, I am incredibly grateful to receive the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights comments on this report, and welcome their support and guidance here. Their amendments, they are thoughtful. Yesterday, the few sub-amendments that we had were accepted to help clarify the scope of the recommendations, and to maintain a key message of the report, namely, that a greater amount of data is needed by the scientific community for research purposes and health impact assessments with the appropriate safeguards.
Thank you all once again for your time and your attention, and for your support with this resolution.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
11:58:47
Thank you, Mister BAKER.
I now call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN, the rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights to present the Committee's opinion.
You have 3 minutes.
You have the floor.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
11:58:59
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Dear colleagues,
Today, I am presenting the opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on the report of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media on contact tracing applications prepared by Mr Duncan BAKER.
The report considers specifically the ethical, cultural and educational challenges of such applications. The report, in my view, is a helpful contribution to considering the important issues and challenges posed by digital health technologies, such as contract tracing applications.
The Committee on Legal Affairs suggested some amendments designed to supplement and not in any way contradict the valid contribution from the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media.
Firstly, the Committee suggests some amendments to highlight the requirements of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The draft resolution quite rightly focuses on the importance of data protection as protected under the Council of Europe Convention 108 and Convention 108+.
Amendments 2 and 4 and Amendment 8 as sub-amended additionally highlight the important role played by the right to private life protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Secondly, the draft resolution quite rightly focuses on data protection. Amendments 5, 7 and 9 as sub-amended and Amendment 10 contain some minor amendments to make clear specific data protection, namely the obligation to ensure that any retention of data continues to be justified and the requirement that consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.
Thirdly, it is important to acknowledge that different considerations may apply when dealing with the personal data or contact tracing of children. Amendment 6 as sub-amended, therefore, seeks to acknowledge that whenever digital applications either target children or could be used by children, specific rules exist and enhanced protection is required. Such an approach is important to ensure that children are adequately protected whenever they may use these technologies.
We have also suggested a few other minor amendments to ensure appropriate references, for example, to previous resolutions of the Assembly.
I am grateful for the constructive approach by the rapporteur Mr Duncan BAKER and the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media in considering the amendments and sub-amendments. I can confirm that I am content with those as a constructive way of addressing the points set out in the opinion.
In summary, this is a useful report. The opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights merely sought to supplement some of the references related to the legal and human rights considerations, which are of relevance to this subject matter and that warrant inclusion in the Assembly's final resolution.
I can further support the sub-amendments in addressing the points raised in the opinion and congratulate my friend Duncan, the rapporteur, and the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media on this report.
Thank you for your attention.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:02:31
Thank you, Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN.
In the debate I call first Ms Marietta KARAMANLI on behalf of the Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group.
Madam KARAMANLI, you have the floor.
France, SOC, Spokesperson for the group
12:02:44
Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you Mr rapporteur.
Dear colleagues,
I would like to thank our rapporteur Mr Duncan BAKER for his findings and proposals regarding public health applications featuring tracking technologies and automated data processing.
He places his recommendations in a triple perspective:
The balance between the presumed advantages of tracking in relation to a benefit that is in fact poorly evaluated and involves significant disadvantages, particularly in terms of invasion of privacy;
More or less positive acceptance by citizens, although some would rather have nothing to do with them;
Social fractures, the potential for discrimination and so on.
Following this threefold concern, you also mention the need for a convincing data protection framework, to ensure that we have proper public debate, allowing us to assess the impact of these apps in terms of public health, and to ensure transparency and parliamentary control.
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights wishes to reinforce the coherence of the report by tabling a number of amendments.
We argue that individual rights must not take precedence over the general interest; that the two things should not be mutually exclusive; that we need to analyse how long data should be stored, in proportion to the intended purpose; and that the rights of children are protected.
The Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group can only agree with these welcome clarifications. However, there are three points that we consider require additional attention.
On the one hand, the effects of such surveillance may be felt differently among different socio-economic groups.
Some groups are more vulnerable to disease or may have less access to care; some may not have the necessary technical resources, such as smartphones and so on, and we need to take this into account.
We also need to ensure that we have full transparency. The social dimension of health must be considered in a transparent way, and possible biases exposed and discussed.
These apps or tools can potentially be very expensive in return for only limited results. It is therefore our duty to ensure that public or social resources are used in the best possible way, in the greatest benefit of all, with the least possible discrimination. There is, of course, a social and economic cost to limiting individual rights and public liberties.
Accordingly, it is important that we keep an eye on big tech, to ensure that what they are doing does not run counter to public health objectives. There is a lot that we do not know about these apps or about the management of public and private health data. We need proper monitoring of what is happening. Many big tech apps such as GAFA use personal health data as resources to feed their monopolies, to capture clients or users and to promote products and services that are not of interest from an individual or public health perspective.More transparency is needed, as much of data management, storage and marketing remains obscure.
We also need to consider the need for an observatory for public and private health data, which would scrutinise and report on events, allowing parliaments to develop "horizon scanning" in this matter. This would enable them to work hand in hand with the Council of Europe to analyse results, implement monitoring and propose new, innovative solutions.
In any case, our group will support the draft resolution and we invite you to continue this work.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:06:15
Thank you, Madam KARAMANLI.
The next speaker on our list on behalf of the Group of the European People's Party is Ms Marie-Christine DALLOZ.
You have the floor.
France, EPP/CD, Spokesperson for the group
12:06:27
Thank you, Madam President.
Mr Rapporteur,
Dear colleagues,
On behalf of the Group of the European People's Party, I would like to thank Mr Duncan BAKER for this report.
The fight against the Covid-19 pandemic led to the extensive use of contact tracing applications to identify people who may have been infected or to ensure compliance with lockdown rules.
Despite the public health benefits of these technologies, there has been some reluctance to making them more widespread, mainly because of the potential threats to privacy and, more broadly, to human rights and fundamental freedoms. China's "zero covid" policy and its excesses show that the fear of seeing surveillance of the epidemic turn into surveillance of populations is not unfounded.
On the other hand, data protection rules must not be an obstacle to public health.
The Council of Europe has already addressed this issue. The Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Convention 108) and its modernised version (Convention 108+) have established standards for the protection of personal data.
States that have not yet signed and ratified the convention should be encouraged to do so. An effective response to a pandemic can only be coordinated at the international level.
For other countries, it is necessary to ensure that the domestic legal framework for tracking applications has been assessed against the Convention and if necessary amended to ensure a proper balance between data protection and health effectiveness. This is necessary also in times of crisis, when the authorities have to take extraordinary measures.
Voluntary disclosure of data is essential for the optimal use of tracking applications. The public will only consent to this if they are assured that all precautions are taken, namely:
- The sole purpose of data processing must be to contribute to an improvement in public health.
- Data processing must be anonymous.
- Only the authorities in charge of health issues should be the recipients of the data collected. They should not share it with any other authority.
- The data collected must be deleted as soon as they are no longer useful for the management of the health crisis.
Only then can public confidence be gained.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:09:33
Thank you.
The next speaker on behalf of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe is Ms Mireille CLAPOT.
You have the floor.
France, ALDE, Spokesperson for the group
12:09:43
Thank you, Madam President.
Rapporteurs,
Dear colleagues,
First of all, I would like to thank Mr Duncan BAKER for this very instructive report on the challenges posed by contact tracing applications and other similar technologies designed to fight future epidemics.
The examination of your draft resolution allows us to come back to the difficult question of the right balance to be found between the protection of personal data and the effectiveness of these new digital tools for fighting epidemics.
While there is doubt in many minds on the issues of security and integrity, let us recall the existence of international data protection standards such as Convention 108+, adopted by our Assembly in 2018, or the European Regulation for data protection within the European Union. These have been able to provide a functional legal framework allowing the development of these applications while guaranteeing their users respect for their privacy and individual freedoms.
These guarantees are essential for the confidence of our fellow citizens in these applications. However, without this trust and the support of users, the very effectiveness of these applications is called into question.
We must therefore scientifically evaluate these applications with internationally recognised indicators in order to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each contact tracing system. These evaluations will provide data and expertise that are still missing for an informed public and parliamentary debate on this subject.
Three years into the Covid-19 epidemic, we need to answer these questions:
Have these applications been as effective as expected? The populations most at risk from Covid-19, especially the elderly, are those who have the least access to these technologies: have they really benefited from this tool to protect themselves from the virus?
Second, was the financial investment in developing these applications rather than other proven or technologically more conservative tracking systems justified?
Third, is the demand for millions of citizens to share sensitive personal data (location, contacts, vaccination status...) proportionate to the usefulness of these applications and the risks of abuse or security flaws they pose?
Answering these questions is essential to prove that public action has been taken in the general interest, in order to ensure the right to health, security and privacy for all.
Authoritarian regimes are on our doorstep. The technological surveillance on which they often rely should make us question our own boundaries in terms of personal data protection.
This draft resolution clearly reaffirms them: this is why, on behalf of the ALDE Group, we will vote for it.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:12:34
Thank you.
The next speaker on behalf of the European Conservatives Group and Democratic Alliance is Ms Nigar ARPADARAI.
Ms Nigar ARPADARAI, you have the floor, and you have 3 minutes.
Azerbaijan, EC/DA, Spokesperson for the group
12:12:43
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Dear Colleagues,
The resolution feels like a breath of fresh air after the pandemic scaremongering and a series of disturbing reports and resolutions undermining freedom of speech and human rights produced by our Assembly.
We are finally getting back to our core mission, which is defending human rights, not undermining them.
During the last few years, we substantially retreated the standard of human rights. It would be an oversimplification to blame solely the pandemic for it. Worse economic turmoil all contributed to this.
The process itself is much more complex, and started well before the pandemic.
When the whole internet and IT industry were starting one generation ago it felt differently. Technology seemed like the way towards more freedom and opportunities, more chances for the underprivileged, more openness and education, unfiltered information. Access to knowledge promised a new bright future and equality for all.
Time passed, and apparently this technological ocean turned into a place where large corporations sought for ways to become richer and more powerful, and where an individual and his personal data became a commodity, something one can buy and sell without the individual's consent or knowledge.
Essentially, whales and sharks of the internet feed on small fish and plankton.
If goes on like that, the corporations will continue to push the boundaries, simply due to the fact that it will give them more money and power. They will keep on explaining that contact tracing is important not only for pandemic tackling, but it's also very important for crime solving, for terrorism watch, for prevention of paedophilia or whatever. They will scare people into accepting this new reality step by step.
We have to put proper checks and monitoring mechanisms on such processes with people's interest in mind.
Can we fully stop contact tracing? Obviously not, but I see a few points, a few principles that should be adopted at the gate.
There should be a principle of clear agreement by a person and a real choice. The agreement should be a meaningful one. When one downloads the app without which one can't go to a shop or a restaurant, enter an office building or board a train, and the app requests an okay from the individual for contact tracing. Otherwise, it simply won't work. It's not a meaningful choice by the individual. It's a mere trick. An illusion of choice.
If you don't have an app, you can't function as a member of society.
Today, this fake choice is an algorithm of apps. It's a reality, and we must get rid of that.
There should be a principle of total disclosure of algorithms used when contact tracing. We should not let them hide behind commercial or scrutiny considerations. People should have the right to know what for and how their data is used.
Any situation where systems push through with enforcement of contact tracing using crime solving or public good instrument, there should be stringent systemic and individual accountability. For example, we are still waiting for answers for a number of questions which are looming from the times of the Covid-19 pandemic. Were travel bans efficient? Did the obligatory masks work? What were the mistakes made and how are they going to be fixed?
I'm not aware of any meaningful accountability case in this very messy and hardly transparent public management story. There should be a mechanism of investigation and follow-up.
Thank you very much.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:16:08
Thank you.
And the last speaker on behalf of political groups is Mr Kriton-Ilias ARSENIS.
You have the floor.
Greece, UEL, Spokesperson for the group
12:16:17
Thank you, Chairperson.
Of course we are discussing about contact tracing applications, and here we all think not only about surveillance, but also what is going to happen with all this big data.
The use of big data did not finish with Cambridge Analytica, did not finish with the manipulation of big data by Mr Trump, it's still here, it's still so vivid today.
In Greece there is a scandal regarding the platform used for e-learning, for e-schooling during the lockdowns of the pandemic. There is the company Cisco was supposed to have given the platform for free to the Greek government only to find out finally that the exchange was the big data, the data of all the children, of all the teachers that took part in the e-learning.
This of course is a huge scandal. And we should have extended the scope of this resolution, not only to contact-tracing applications, but all the Covid-19 related applications, and all the big data generated by them.
It's a huge issue of control.
This big data can be used by governments, by candidates, as we saw in the case of Mr Trump, and of course by multinationals, by big companies.
So, when the report favours the voluntary permission for the use of personal data so that people can say "Okay, I'm willing to provide my personal data so that you can assess the effectiveness of the application", there there is also a big issue. At least in Greece, as far as I know in most countries, if not in all countries, this voluntary permissions are given as a prerequisite to access services. So, in most applications, if you don't give this permission, you don't go further.
So we should be very careful with what is voluntary, truly voluntary, and what is hiddenly compulsory.
Also, we are going to discuss of course further on in the discussion of amendments, our political party will be against narrowing the scope of these resolutions. We believe we would seriously need to expand the scope to cover all applications that are related to Covid-19 and all the big data created by them.
Thank you very much.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:19:00
Thank you.
The next speaker is Mr Constantinos EFSTATHIOU.
Mr Constantinos EFSTATHIOU, you have the floor.
Thank you very much.
I'd like to congratulate Mr Duncan BAKER on this report. It is very excellent, and I'd like to thank him for his position, the position he takes.
In other words, that the right to privacy has to be thoroughly protected both in its scope and its duration. So I thank him very much for what he's done here.
Of course, depending on your point of view, you might say that the pandemic gave us an opportunity, or even obliged us as states or state authorities, to implement contact tracing applications, or rather digital apps. But of course, we must remember that there are risks associated with the use of such apps, which have to do with the protection of private life.
For most of our citizens, the use of new technologies is also linked to a risk of certain abuses of one's personal data, or misuse of personal data. It can be very difficult of course for us to maintain control of our personal data once we've.... So we clearly need binding standards which are clear and effective, and which will allow data to be stored when there is good reason to do so, but with a restriction in the length of time that it can be stored for.
We need a strict legal framework that will guarantee everybody's rights to privacy within our democratic societies and within our societies based on the rule of law.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:21:14
Thank you.
I call next Mr François CALVET. You have the floor, and you have 3 minutes.
Madam President,
Dear colleagues,
There are a range of contact tracing applications available for mobile phones, many of them which may be installed free of charge. Some of these applications were used by the governments of the member states of our organisation in an attempt to limit contagion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we often say in this House, public debate and transparency about government action in this area are essential in order to foster public trust. These privacy standards are now embodied in the modernised Convention 108, known as Convention 108+, and I hope that all member states of our organisation to ratify it. I note that in addition to this convention, the European Union has a General Data Protection Regulation: the GDPR, which sets high standards for the protection of personal data.
The complementarity between the GDPR and Convention 108+ is obvious, as both instruments ensure a high level of protection of privacy and personal data. Although the Council of Europe Convention is less detailed than the GDPR and the Police and Justice Directive, it is based on common principles: the principle of purpose, the principle of proportionality, the principle of relevance, the principle of a limited storage period, the principle of security, the existence of rights for individuals such as the right of access to data, the right of rectification or the right to erasure. Similarly, the rights of data subjects, the protection of these rights by the supervisory authorities, and the obligations of data controllers are reaffirmed.
By decision of 9 April 2019, the Council of the European Union authorised the member states of the Union to ratify the modernised Convention 108 in the interest of the Union. This decision was necessary insofar as the protocol partly covers areas within the exclusive competence of the European Union.
I therefore hope that the Council of Europe's Data Protection Commissioner and the European Data Protection Committee set up by the GDPR for the European Union will ensure the harmonious implementation of the two standards in the interest of all Europeans.
In any case, I welcome the conclusions of our rapporteur and will vote for this draft resolution.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:24:30
Thank you.
Now I call Mr Attila TILKI. You have the floor.
The Hungarian VirusRadar app was launched on 13 May 2020 in maintenance of Ministry of Innovation and Technology. The app was developed by a Macedonian company called NextSense and offered to Hungary for free of charge. It is one of only two EU apps which use a centralised app architecture.
The app could be installed on citizens’ smartphones to capture anonymised interactions between smartphones by using Bluetooth technology, who are closer than two metres and who have been running the same application for more than 20 minutes in the last 14 days.
If the test is positive for coronavirus, the user can indicate this through the application, and the public health authority can also use the contacts of the infected phone for contact tracing. However, with regard to the expectations of the public health profession, the application professional parameters do not meet the epidemiological expectations in all respects, so in practice it was ultimately not used to serve official purposes.
According to the decision of Operational Tribe, the VirusRadar system and mobile application was phased out on 25 June 2021, and its IT background support was terminated.
Since its launch, the VirusRadar app has been downloaded more than 95 000 times.
App downloads as a share of the population: 1 %
App architecture centralised the anonymised interaction cases uploaded to the central server operated by the public health authority, which performs the assessment of risk interactions.
Hungary was one of only two EU countries to choose the centralised app approach, alongside France.
Currently, apps with a centralised architecture cannot be connected to the European Federation Gateway SService, which enables apps from different member states to talk to each other and exchange cross-border notifications in case of detected exposures.
Thank you for your attention.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:27:17
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Ms Khatia DEKANOIDZE.
She's not on her seat so we will move to the next speaker.
The next speaker is Mr Mehmet Mehdi EKER.
You have the floor.
Thank you, dear President, dear colleagues.
Firstly, many thanks to the rapporteur for his subtle report. Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, governments and stakeholders used data analytics and digital technologies to identify people exposed to the Coronavirus and stop onward transmission. Contact-tracing applications were the primary resources used for this purpose during the pandemic.
While these apps can help prevent infections and are a valuable public health tool, they also raise a question about people's privacy. This application collects their users' data on an industrial scale.
States, political parties, various organisations and businesses hold remarkably detailed and powerful information about us. And more and more aspects of our lives are being digitally tracked, stored, used and, unfortunately, misused. This issue could easily lead to the violation of people's private lives.
Since every person should enjoy the right to privacy, both in conventional and digital ways, the data which is collected by these applications must not be used beyond its intended purpose.
Furthermore there are reasonable concerns regarding these applications beyond the privacy issue. As the report mentions, there are sorts of contact-tracing applications for different purposes and these are being used not just to monitor and categorise, but to influence as well.
The government or developers could use the data collected via applications to scare or manipulate people to waive their basic rights. This phenomenon could lead us to a non-democratic society.
In this sense, since these applications are open to abuse in a way that diminishes human rights, they must be closely monitored and ensure that they comply with the data protection standards. We cannot grow ignore that digital technologies' value for human rights and development is enormous.
However, its unquestionable benefits do not cancel out its unmistakable risks. Thus, the Assembly and Member States must be vigilant and take the necessary precautions to protect democracy also in the digital world.
For this purpose I sincerely support the suggestions given in the report, especially on the issues of monitoring the applications seeking constant data sharing, transparency of applications, and informing the public.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:31:00
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Mr Björn Leví GUNNARSSON.
Mister Björn Leví GUNNARSSON, you have the floor.
Thank you.
It is in trying times when human rights have the most value, and at the same time they are hardest to defend.
The desire to protect public health with mass surveillance via contact tracing applications is understandable from the perspective of a practical person. This is an option that could possibly have a very big impact on public health.
But it is in the face of these options that breach the right to a private life, a right that is so precious that we must ask ourselves what the possible consequences are.
The possibility of Big Brother technology is at the same time as appealing as it is dangerous.
We must be cautious and provide guidelines on how this wonderful piece of technology that many of us carry around in our pockets is to be used properly to protect our most basic human rights.
Our existence cannot be the plaything of the dystopian Gattaca or the food of data brokers whose goals were made apparent by the Cambridge Analytica case, where the access to swaying the opinion of nations and their elections was for sale.
The things that once were difficult are now easy to do. Data literally flows streams out of our pockets into the pockets of various corporations and governments. If not by choice of the user, an often uninformed one, then by spying, as the leaks from multiple whistleblowers have revealed to us. Whistleblowers and those that report on them, journalists that various governments do their utmost to track down and punish with impunity.
I welcome this report and its focus on health-related applications. I agree with its conclusions, but I want to give a word of caution.
All too often, governments bypass ethical concerns by legalising them in some way. Here, I refer to the words in the reports such as, and I quote "justified by legitimate public health objectives", end quote.
Here, I have too often seen the excuse "but no laws were broken", when the spirit of the law was definitely broken.
Just having laws to protect public health is not enough to justify the means. The laws themselves need to ensure that privacy is protected.
I urge lawmakers to err on the side of caution when dealing with privacy issues. We need to demand more transparency for corporations and governments, and greater protection of privacy for individuals.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:33:47
Thank you.
The next speaker on the list is Mr Yuriy KAMELCHUK. He is not here. Oh, he's here.
You have the floor.
Thank you.
Dear Chairman,
Dear Mister Rapporteur,
Dear Colleagues,
Contact-tracing software has been the subject of considerable innovation and debate over the past few years. Ensuring health and safety is critical, but this should not come at an unacceptable cost to their privacy or civil liberties.
In democracies during Covid-19, the ethical debate surrounding the use of digital health technologies has mainly concerned the extent to which they provide anonymity for individuals, the security of their personal information, and the protection of their rights as members of a just and lawful society.
Critical issues also relate to the power and control different actors have over these technologies and the data they receive, which may include not only health authorities but also other government agencies, quasi-governmental organisations, third-sector organisations, technology companies and various "shadow" players.
Governments in countries such as China, South Korea, Israel, and India have implemented coercive approaches that severely violate privacy to help control the spread of Covid-19, including precise location tracking of identifiable individuals, mining of personal data, widespread facial recognition technology, and wearable devices for compliance with quarantine. In general, their citizens complied, whether out of choice, conformity, and a sense of collective responsibility, or because the price of non-compliance included fines, unemployment, or prison terms.
In contrast, the desire for freedom from government surveillance and interference is strongly felt in Europe, and privacy is a highly political issue. Therefore, apps that use anonymous or pseudonymised proximity registration have an advantage over those that use location tracking during Covid-19. However, the prospect of storing identifiers or proximity logs in a government database faces strong opposition on the grounds that people could theoretically be re-identified, their social networks mapped through contact, or the data could be used in other ways.
As some of the examples discussed here show, public trust is critical for democracies willing to implement contact-tracing programs, but can be easily damaged if their privacy, utility, sustainability, accuracy, or security are questioned, or if institutions are perceived as exceeded their authority, social license to track or collect data.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:36:44
Thank you.
I call next Ms Hilkka KEMPPI. Ms KEMPPI, you have the floor and you have 3 minutes.
Madam President,
Mr Duncan BAKER's report is a timely example of the various modern challenges to human rights and democracy. During the last few years, the use of contact tracing applications and other health monitoring applications has exploded. While people eagerly feed personal data, such as information on diet, illnesses, and menstrual cycles into these apps, the legislation is lagging.
When the pandemic hit, contact-tracing applications were developed in a haste often at the detriment of privacy and the right to family life. At some point, more than a million Finns had downloaded the “Corona alert” app. That is a lot in a country of five million people. Still, it is quite hard to trust whether the application in fact did save lives. I agree with the resolution that such apps should only be used when they are proven to be beneficial for public health.
In today’s world, data technology is developing at a much faster pace than legislation. We install tracing applications on our phones to follow our children and Bluetooth sensors on persons with diabetes send constant information of glucose levels to our mobile phones. All this improves our lives at so many levels, but it also comes with several risks.
What if malicious people hack the glucose sensors and mess up their data, or what if tracing apps are hacked, putting children at risk? At the same time as we monitor our bodies, who owns the data? Can insurance companies buy this data and deprive people of the right to insurance based on this data?
These are, of course, worst-case scenarios, and many application developers are focusing very hard on ensuring privacy and safety. We need to improve our own technology literacy and understanding to develop legislation that ensures that such technology is only used to the benefit of all.
I would also encourage this Assembly and national governments to continue their work to prevent algorithm discrimination. It should be a topic of the next report.
Thank you for this future report.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:39:35
Thank you.
I must now interrupt the list of speakers.
The speeches of members on the speakers list who have been present during the debate but have not been able to speak may be given to the table office for publication in the official report. I remind colleagues that type-written texts must be submitted electronically, no later than four hours after the list of speakers is interrupted.
I call Mr BAKER, rapporteur, to reply to the debate.
You have 3 minutes.
Thank you very much for all of the debates that I've listened to carefully.
It's clear this report was one of extreme importance. There is universal agreement around the chamber about the importance when so many important points have been mentioned, such as trust, the right for people to have a private life, that their freedoms and their privacy is respected, and that people must have confidence in the data that is collected is used appropriately.
It was for exactly this reason that this report was put together. It's exactly this reason why we've debated this incredibly important topic and shone a light on so many matters that have been brought here this morning.
This report doesn't profess to have all of the answers, but to shine a light on all of the important points that have been raised this morning.
I want to thank everybody who has contributed to it. It's very rare, I think these days, in politics where people all agree on one topic. But it's very clear this morning that every contribution shares those same values here.
With that in mind, thank you very much, Madam President.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:41:27
Thank you.
Does the Chairperson of the Committee, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, wish to speak?
You have 3 minutes.
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
12:41:38
These little things, you know, are following us every day.
We spend with smartphones probably more time than we spend with our families and friends.
Of course, modern technologies can bring a lot of good, especially in the medical sphere. I can say for sure, I'm coming from a doctor's family, and, really, modern technology does do a lot of good. But of course, we need to understand that data protection is also very much important. Also, from the debates as well, it's my own opinion that we must always not forget about common sense. Common sense says that people need to trust technology to use it. To solve these, technology would give what those who thought it would be good to implement the results needed.
As the Chairwoman of the Committee, I would like to say that the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media has shown us with today's reports that Europe must be better prepared to deal with future emergencies also by improving the performance of digital tools, such as contact-tracing applications.
The key message of the report by Mr BAKER is that a greater amount of detailed data is needed by the scientific community for research purposes and health impact assessments.
While securing their appropriate safeguards and legal requirements following from the European Convention on Human Rights or Convention 108+.
It is also extremely important to keep the public well informed about public health interventions, in particular regarding the impact and effectiveness of new digital technology, including via parliamentary hearing and public information campaigns with a view to rising citizens' awareness, building citizens' trust and strengthening the effectiveness of new technology.
The report also encourages the European Union to continue developing co-generated solutions at European and international levels, including beyond the European Union, to promote safe international travel and global control of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as future threats to public health.
As parliamentarians, we should make good use of these recommendations and make sure that our governments are better prepared to include digital public health technologies as part of comprehensive national epidemiological strategy articulated in different tools, balancing all interests at stake, and based on an appropriate evaluation of its real impact and effectiveness.
I would like to thank for very good co‑operation from Mr BAKER, our rapporteur, and Mr VARDANYAN, our rapporteur for opinion.
We indeed had a very good discussion. Our Committee and Mr VARDANYAN have agreed on a number of sub-amendments intended to clarify the proposed amendments. These were unanimously backed by our Committee, and I encourage you to vote in favour of this resolution.
Thank you.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
President,
Most of us would like the pandemic to remain in the rearview mirror. But we may not, not just yet, act as if it had not happened and that life is back to normal. We must review the actions taken by the governments all over Europe and assess the effects they had on the spread of the virus and the effects on the rule of law. Especially looking into basic human rights. Which is exactly why this report is important and why I am so glad we are discussing this issue today.
The report underlines the threats contact tracing applications might impose to the right to private life. I have often discussed this issue with people in my life to which they often reply “why should I not comply? What have I got to hide?”
And that is exactly the view of this matter that I fear the most. Regular citizens are not fazed by the intervention of the government into their personal daily life, routines and travels.
The general usage of smartphones and applications that process incredible amounts of personal data has become a daily habit and therefore we might have become careless.
These apps may threaten human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the fact that people are generally not concerned by this issue, makes me worried.
I understand this may be a unique problem in Iceland. This issue might be entirely different in other states, where less trust in government has had an impact on the usage of these contact tracing apps, as is apparent in the report.
It is crucial that the use of disease surveillance by governments must be transparent and most importantly, that it adheres to fundamental freedoms. We must ensure that the technological solutions we invent to make our lives easier are not used by governments to compile data on citizens.
We are eternally playing catch up with technology. Our laws appear inflexible, outdated and old-fashioned in the face of a sudden need for diverse technological solutions in our societies.
We must continue to look into and investigate the actions taken by governments during the pandemic. To ensure that the rule of law is protected. To ensure fundamental human rights are not violated.
(Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2)
Already in the 19th century, Tocqueville wondered about the relentless expansion of the democratic regimes of his time in the collection and recording of data on citizens.
As a phenomenon of government action limiting individual freedom, it has grown in the 20th and 21st centuries with the new technologies, which have proved to be a useful instrument to reinforce that action.
This has given rise to extensive national and international legislation on data protection, sometimes excessive in the "Inter privatos" sphere in terms of governmental sanctioning powers (e.g. very high financial penalties for untruthful information on the amount of a civil debt).
At the same time, the use of new technologies by individuals has allowed the healthy increase of spaces for the exercise of ideological, expression and communication freedoms, which, surprisingly, has given rise to a reaction of willingness to repress and/or censor them by governments and powerful private companies (e.g.censorship of President Trump's Twitter account).
All this highlights a paradoxical situation: the expansion of the use of new technologies by governments and, simultaneously, the intention to censor this use by individuals when it is contrary to the political purposes of the governments in power.
Technology is neither good nor bad in itself. It is the moral or immoral use made of it. And it is immoral that the governments of the day, on purely political grounds, can determine what is morally a good or bad use.
The rapport expresses the need to seek a balance between the use of technologies by governments and private life. The former should take into account the general interest or common good, not ideological political purposes. Therefore, the rapport approach seems to us to be correct and well-considered.
Finally, the control of the use of technologies should be progressively entrusted more to the courts and less to the so-called regulatory agencies, whose role has been very disappointing up to now.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:44:46
Thank you.
The debate is closed.
Now we move to the amendments.
The Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media has presented a draft resolution to which ten amendments and five sub-amendments have been tabled.
I remind you the speeches on amendments are limited to 30 seconds.
I understand that the Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media wishes to propose to the Assembly that Amendments 1, 2, 3, 4 and 10 to the draft resolution, which were unanimously approved by the Committee, should be declared as agreed by the Assembly.
Is that so, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK?
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
12:45:21
Yes, that is correct.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:45:23
Does anyone object?
If so, please ask for the floor by raising your hand.
We have an objection.
On behalf of the Group of the Unified European Left, we oppose Amendment A because it reduces the scope of the resolution, thus we propose a separate discussion involving Amendment A.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:45:54
Now we will go to Amendment 1.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 1. You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:46:07
Actually, these amendments were agreed between me – we have discussed it in the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, we have discussed it in the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media, and I do believe that these amendments should be approved as sub-amended.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:46:24
Yes, I understand you. But we had an objection, so I needed to do so. You understand.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
I don't see.
The Committee unanimously approved Amendment 1.
I shall now put the amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
I call for the result to be displayed.
The vote is closed.
So Amendment 1 is agreed.
We now move to Amendment 2.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support the amendment.
You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:47:27
Once again, this amendment has been discussed in the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, it was discussed in the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media. We have full understanding from the rapporteurs. I am in favour of this amendment.
Actually, it is just mentioning and stressing the role of the European Court of Human Rights at the Commission of Human Rights on this issue, and it is quite important.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:47:52
Thank you.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
The Committee unanimously approved Amendment 2.
I shall now put the amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 2 is agreed.
We now move to Amendment 3.
The amendment was unanimously approved by the Committee, but I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 3 because we have a procedure to follow.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:48:44
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Amendment 3 is actually trying to provide a holistic approach between activities and reports of our Committee approved during Covid-19. It is actually a continuation interconnected with the contact-tracing applications. The Committee is in favour, and we have consensus also with the rapporteurs.
I am in favour of this amendment.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:49:10
Thank you.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
The Committee unanimously approved Amendment 3.
I shall now put the amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 3 is agreed.
We now move to Amendment 4.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 4.
You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:49:51
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Amendment 4 is rather of a technical nature. It is intended to emphasise the right to private life. That is why we are in favour of this amendment.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:50:06
Thank you.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
The Committee unanimously approved Amendment 4.
I shall now put the amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 4 is agreed.
Now we move to Amendment 5 and sub-amendment.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 5.
You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:50:46
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Since we are addressing data protection issues, this amendment is quite necessary to emphasise that data protection should have the necessary duration.
We have supported this amendment. I would just like to say just to go ahead with it. The sub-amendment proposed by the rapporteur was also supported.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:51:14
Thank you.
Does anyone else wish to support?
I call Mr BAKER, rapporteur, to support the sub-amendments.
You have the floor.
We are in support of the sub-amendment.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:51:29
Thank you.
Does anyone else wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
What is the opinion of the mover of the amendment on the sub-amendment?
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:51:47
Actually, Madam Chair, I agree with the sub-amendment and I already said in my speech that amendments are welcome with the sub-amendments.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:51:59
Yes, I understand, but I have a procedure to follow.
Sorry, you have to understand me.
The Committee is obviously in favour of the sub-amendment, so I shall now put the sub-amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be to be displayed.
The sub-amendment is agreed.
Now we come to the main Amendment No. 5 as amended.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
No one.
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
12:52:45
Unanimously in favour of the sub-amendment.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:52:48
Thank you.
I shall now put the amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 5 as amended is agreed.
Now we move to Amendment No. 6.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support the amendment.
You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:53:20
Madam Chair, this amendment is actually designed to emphasise rights of the child, and the children's rights, and right to children's privacy, and right to respect their personal data protection.
So we are in favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:53:41
Thank you.
I call Mr Duncan BAKER, the rapporteur, to support the sub-amendment.
We agree with the sub-amendment and the protection of children and have done some rewording for this sub-amendment and agree with the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:53:56
Thank you.
Does anyone else wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
What is the opinion of the mover of the amendment on the sub-amendment?
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:54:07
In favour. We just reword that sentence.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:54:12
Thank you.
The Committee is obviously in favour of the sub-amendment.
I shall now put the sub-amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
The sub-amendment is agreed.
We now move to the main Amendment 6 as amended.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
12:54:47
Unanimously in favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:54:48
I shall now put the amendment as amended to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed. Amendment 6 as amended is agreed.
Now we move to Amendment 7 and sub-amendment. I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 7. You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:55:23
Thank you, Madam Chair.
This amendment is actually designed to provide the necessary information, saying that during the data processing the consent should be freely given, specific and unambiguous and this was discussed in the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, it was discussed in the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media, we have a consensus from the rapporteur and I'm in favour of this amendment.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:55:49
Thank you.
I call Mr Duncan BAKER, the rapporteur, to support the sub-amendment.
We are in support.
We have just simplified some of the wording to avoid any repetition, and in total support with one another.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:56:07
Thank you.
Does anyone else wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
As I understand, Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN, you are in favour of the sub-amendment.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:56:18
In favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:56:19
Thank you.
The Committee is obviously in favour, so I shall now put the sub-amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
The sub-amendment is agreed.
Now we come to the main Amendment 7 as amended.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
12:56:53
Unanimously in favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:56:55
I shall now put the amendment as amended to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 7 as amended is agreed.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment No. 8.
You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:57:20
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like just to support Amendment No.10.
It is actually a message to the future. This kind of standards should also be used if we face a health crisis in the future.
Thank you. We are in favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:57:40
Thank you.
This is Amendment 8.
I call Mr Duncan BAKER, the rapporteur, to support the sub-amendment.
We are in total support.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:57:50
Thank you.
I understand that Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN supports, the Committee supports, the sub-amendment.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:57:57
We fully support the sub-amendment as it is just rephrasing of the amendment.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:58:01
Thank you.
I shall now put the sub-amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the results to be displayed.
The sub-Amendment is agreed.
Now we come to the main Amendment 8 as amended.
Does anyone wish to speak against the Amendment?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
12:58:33
Unanimously in favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:58:34
Thank you.
I shall now put the amendment as amended to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 8 as amended is agreed.
We now move to Amendment 9 and sub-amendment.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 9. You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
12:59:06
Madam Chair,
This amendment had been discussed and received the unanimous support in both Committees.
I'm in favour.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:59:15
I call Mr Duncan BAKER, the rapporteur, to support the sub-amendment.
We are in complete support.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
12:59:22
Thank you.
Does anyone else wish to speak against the sub-amendment?
I understand that the Committee agrees?
Thank you.
The Committee is obviously in favour of the sub-amendment.
I shall now put the sub-amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
The sub-amendment is agreed.
Now we come to the main Amendment 9 as amended.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
What is the opinion of the Committee?
Ukraine, ALDE, Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media
13:00:08
Unanimously in favour.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
13:00:10
I shall now put the amendment as amended to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the result to be displayed.
Amendment 9 as amended is agreed.
Now we move to the last amendment.
I call Mr Vladimir VARDANYAN to support Amendment 10. You have 30 seconds.
Armenia, EPP/CD, Rapporteur for opinion
13:00:39
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It is the same old story. This amendment was discussed duly in both Committees and gets the full support of both Committees. I am in favour.
Thank you.
Montenegro, NR, President of the Assembly
13:00:50
Thank you.
Does anyone wish to speak against the amendment?
The Committee unanimously approved Amendment 10. I shall now put the Amendment to the vote.
The vote is open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the results to be displayed.
Amendment 10 is agreed.
We will now proceed to vote on the draft resolution contained in Doc. 15648 as amended. A simple majority is required.
The vote is now open.
The vote is closed.
I call for the results to be displayed.
The draft resolution as amended in Doc. 15648 is adopted.
The Assembly will hold its next public sitting this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. with the agenda which was approved on Monday.
The sitting is adjourned.
