United Nations Security Council, The North Korean Threat and Power Vacuum Prevention, The Plurinational State of Bolivia
The Korean War was effectively ended in July 1953. But the underlying conflict, the fundamental difference in ideologies between North and South Korea, has anything but abated. The North, initially backed by the USSR, maintains a collectivized, national economy. The South follows a capitalistic model that has enabled the cultivation of a prosperous economy. Economic disparity has only grown since the armistice. By 1993, the North Korean GDP was about one-fifteenth that of South Korea.
While the South enjoys a high standard of living with a life expectancy of 82.5 years, the north has anything but. Life expectancy at birth is 70.7 years and famines are common. While the proportion of children under the age of five years underweight in the South is .7%, the North boasts a stunning 15.2%. The enormous disparity between the two countries illustrates the complete failure on the part of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to maintain an effective state.
Despite this failure, the ruling regime of Kim Jong Un is resolute. There are no independent media corporations, allowing the state to maintain a firm grasp on all information the public consumes. The United States is routinely demonized by the regime, allowing for continued antagonistic actions free from civic unrest. All consequences of sanctions are blamed on the United States to ensure continued support of the state nuclear program. After eight waves of sanctions, the missile tests continue and so do the famines.
The Plurinational State of Bolivia will fully support any and all resolutions to the effect of curtailing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
United Nations Security Council, Yemen’s Civil War, The Plurinational State of Bolivia
On Saturday, December 18 of 2010, in Tunisia, the Arab Spring began. The Tunisian people rose up seemingly out of the blue. After decades of oppression, it was the country’s youth who rose up, optimistic but unemployed, yearning for a better future, and armed with enough social media to create organized dissent as the world had never seen before. After Tunisia came Egypt, then Libya, and then, in 2012, Yemen. The movement was growing, drunk on success, fueled by a new empowered and inspired youth.
But then came the question all had been putting off, the one that divided instead of united. If not President Saleh, then who should control the government?
Without a clear, united answer, chaos ensued. Various rebel groups fought the lingering remnants of Saleh’s regime as well as his replacement, his deputy, the new President Hadi. With the country torn up by Civil War, the door was opened to a resurgence of extremism. The terrorist groups Al-Qaeda and the new ISIS gained a foothold. More violence ensued.
Six years after President Saleh handed off power to now-President Hadi, the optimistic youth that set off this Civil War is unrecognizable. Many of them have donned machine guns, others suicide vests. Indeed, the Yemen that overthrew its corrupt president is unrecognizable. Yemen has always been poor, even in 2009 ranking 140 out of 182 on the UNDP’s Human Development Scale, but it has not always been marred, pockmarked with gaping holes instead of buildings, layered in the rubble of bombs past. But where did these bombs come from?
The United States.
The United States, among other countries, has been supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons with which to fight off the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel groups. The Houthi rebel groups are the main rebel groups of the Yemeni youth, currently fighting to overthrow President Hadi, who has aligned himself with this Saudi Arabian-led coalition in the hopes of securing Yemen from its youth in exchange for Yemen’s oil. The underlying issues of this proxy war fought between the United States-backed Saudi Arabia and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel groups are complex, but mostly center around the age-old battle between Sunni and Shia Islam. Saudi Arabia, and the other Middle Eastern members of its coalition, like the United Arab Emirates, are aligned with Sunni Islam, while Iran and the Houthi rebels practice Shia Islam.
Yemen, meanwhile, according to a United Nations report from experts, “as a state has all but ceased to exist.” One in three Yemeni people are victims of famine, while a million suffer in one of the largest-ever cholera outbreaks.
The Plurinational State of Bolivia is familiar with conflict paid for in the blood of people, in the currency of poverty, disease, and gravestones. The Plurinational State of Bolivia is even more familiar with conflicts managed not by politicians elected by the suffering people, but by those who do not even speak the same language, politicians who meander throughout air-conditioned halls managing the conflicts of other countries like puppermasters, counting casualties only by the number of votes it will secure them.
The Plurinational State of Bolivia is, in short, not supportive of the way a civil war has devolved into a world war played out mostly in Yemen. The Plurinational State of Bolivia will support sanctions to curtail the involvement of western countries like the United States, as well as humanitarian aid to help the people of Yemen, and the introduction of peacekeepers to ensure said aid is received by the impoverished Yemenis.
The Plurinational State of Bolivia would further like to express its opinion that terrorism is born in these moments, when a helpless people are subjected to violence by the means of advanced missiles they know can come only from outside their hemisphere. Not interceding to keep these missiles out would be not only irresponsible to the Yemeni people, but to Bolivia’s vast history and experience with the damages done by interfering foreign powers.