by Admin | Dec 13, 2016 | World Leaders in AIWS Award Updates
The Secretary-General
Message to Boston Global Forum
Loeb House, Harvard University, Cambridge, 12 December 2016
It is a pleasure to greet the Boston Global Forum. I thank Governor Michael Dukakis for his long-standing support of the United Nations and his engagement across the international agenda. I am grateful to the Boston Global Forum for honouring me with its World Leader for Peace, Security and Development Award, which I accept on behalf of the talented and dedicated staff of the United Nations.
It has been a privilege to serve as Secretary-General. My decade in office has been a time of turmoil and challenge. We have seen protracted conflicts, growing inequality, rising extremism and xenophobia, and the largest numbers of refugees and displaced persons since the Second World War.
At the same time, we have opened up new horizons for progress. The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development shows that countries can overcome their divisions to act for the common good. The Paris Agreement on climate change entered into force last month – a true landmark in humankind’s efforts to address the defining threat of our time.
Our challenge is to build on these and other gains, and deepen the partnerships we have built among world leaders, the business community and civil society. One can easily be overwhelmed by the latest terrorist attack, extreme storm or outbreak of disease. But even amidst these crises, I continue to see — and believe in — the transformative power of collective action. Let us continue to work together in that spirit. Thank you again for this recognition and for your continued support of the United Nations.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 8, 2016 | News
The emblem of North Korea.
North Korea has predictably called U.S. sanctions against North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and other senior Kim regime officials for human-rights abuses a “declaration of war”. Pyongyang said the announcement of sanctions was a “hideous crime”.
It’s hard to believe that it took so long, but the United States imposed its first sanctions targeting any individual North Koreans for rights abuses on July 6. The assets of Kim and 10 other high-level people and five government ministries and departments within U.S. jurisdiction are now blocked.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, hopes that China will urge its ally North Korea to cooperate internationally on human rights, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said July 7 in New York. Such hopes have been expressed many times before with no effect.
For a longer article on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | Initiative
A 54-page report entitled “Taking Sides,’’ compiled by the Syria Campaign, an advocacy group opposed to the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, denounces the United Nations for allegedly taking the side of the Assad regime in the Syrian Civil War. It is signed by more than 50 Syrian civil-society organizations and uses interviews with current and former U.N. officials as well as Syrians in besieged areas and humanitarian workers.
The report says that the U.N. abandoned its neutrality by yielding to the demands of Assad’s regime, including letting it veto aid deliveries to rebel-held areas besieged by Assad’s forces.
The report accuses the UN of prioritizing its cooperation with the Syrian government “at all costs,” allowing the diversion of billions of dollars of international aid to one side of the conflict and thus killing civilians in besieged areas that have been denied access to food and medicine.
The report urges U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to set “red lines’’ for its humanitarian operations in Syria or withdraw its cooperation with the Assad government. The report’s writers assert that the organization’s failures have tarnished its legacy and let the regime use starvation as a weapon.
“There has been a systematic failure in the U.N.-led response,” said Roger Hearn, the former head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency office in Damascus, who ran the organization during the first year of the conflict, which started in 2011.
For more information, please hit this link.
