The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, addressing the International Conference on genocide Prevention, today, reiterated that defending human rights was a global responsibility and called on governments to renew their commitment and political will towards preventing any mass atrocities from occurring again.
Ki-moon expressed dismay at the UN’s ‘actions and inactions at Srebrenica’ and added that the organisation had been working hard to “draw lessons from those failures.”
Outlining the UN’s latest initiative to prevent future massacres, the Secretary General spoke of the ‘Rights Up Front’ exercise which was created after the failing of UN officials to flag up atrocities in Sri Lanka, stating,
Expressing concern at the international community’s reluctance to act on pressing issues, Ki-moon said,
Ki-moon expressed dismay at the UN’s ‘actions and inactions at Srebrenica’ and added that the organisation had been working hard to “draw lessons from those failures.”
Outlining the UN’s latest initiative to prevent future massacres, the Secretary General spoke of the ‘Rights Up Front’ exercise which was created after the failing of UN officials to flag up atrocities in Sri Lanka, stating,
“The UN’s most recent initiative to prevent atrocity crimes is the Rights Up Front exercise. We learned from the case of Sri Lanka. It obliges those from within the organisation to be frank in telling Member States what they need to hear, rather than what they might want to hear about serious violations and emerging crisis situations.”
Expressing concern at the international community’s reluctance to act on pressing issues, Ki-moon said,
“The international community often proves reluctant to tact, at times even when atrocity crimes are happening. The reasons may vary, from competing definitions of national interest, to the complexities and risks of a given situation, to a perceived lack of capacity. All of us should be thinking about what more we can do about the atrocity crimes taking place before our eyes – and what more we can do, much earlier, to keep societies from splintering and descending into destruction and violence.”