UN failed to prevent 'ethnic slaughter in Sri Lanka' – Barack Obama
The United Nations failed to “prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka” said former US president Barack Obama in his memoir, ‘A Promised Land’, reflecting on his time at the White House.
“I read the U.N.’s 1945 founding charter and was struck by how its mission matched my mother’s optimism,” wrote Obama, reflecting on his early conversations as a child about the global body. “Needless to say, the U.N. hadn’t always lived up to these lofty intentions.”
“In the middle of the Cold War, the chances of reaching any consensus had been slim, which is why the U.N. had stood idle as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary or U.S. planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside. Even after the Cold War, divisions within the Security Council continued to hamstring the U.N.’s ability to tackle problems. Its member states lacked either the means or the collective will to reconstruct failing states like Somalia, or prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka.”
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