YouSaid · the spoken record

Mutaboba

lines on the record: 320
first: 1999-08-25
most recent: 2012-07-26
sittings or episodes: 25
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Unless this Council takes appropriate action to disarm these genocidal forces, there is a risk that the fragile peace will be jeopardized by these unpunished forces, at the expense of civilians who it is our duty to protect. If this cycle of impunity is tackled by all of us, and if it is broken by addressing the real root causes of the rampant problems in the region, then we may see a better future for civilians and soldiers alike. But we have to work hard to make sure that no one and nothing holds us back.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Before I conclude, my delegation wishes to strongly welcome the Secretary General's report and this Council's presidential statement of 12 February this year. We hope the world can be offered better chances of enjoying life through appropriate and timely decisions. The refugee crisis in the Great Lakes region and the ongoing crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo stemmed from bad leadership, but also from lack of action to address the culture of impunity. I would like to remind the Council yet again of the existence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of active, armed renegade forces, though the Lusaka ceasefire agreement urged their dismantling, disarming, repatriation and rehabilitation.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Had the same cameras and humanitarian assistance facilities followed the returnees home, the world would not feel ashamed of truly learning a lesson from the Rwanda experience. This lesson does not seem to have been learned by many, unfortunately, and we deplore that. Nevertheless, it is never too late. The Rwandan experience has proven that with political will and commitment, the task of separating combatants from bona fide refugees can be done - even by the so- called weakest cockroaches on Earth. The major lesson to be learned is that this is even more feasible when serious screening to distinguish between those who really merit refugee status and those who do not is done early enough. We cannot allow innocent civilians to be left to themselves due to our lack of consistent policies and timid, unclear positions.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“However, this time such complicity and idleness could not be tolerated and left to be nurtured. The Rwandan Government, its army and its people collectively refused to be victimized by another genocide and decided to do the job themselves. We rescued our people, civilians and soldiers alike, from the grip of the architects of the 1994 genocide, some of whom are still active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the Council's responsibility to deal with those criminals. As a result, in late December 1996, it took less than one week for Rwanda to cease being depicted by the world community as a refugee-producing factory. Over 800,000 Rwandans had been successfully repatriated after the Rwandese Patriotic Army dismantled the Rwandan refugee camps.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“In the following two years, United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organizations continued to feed and support the so-called refugee camps that were the military bases from which those who had perpetrated genocide pursued a murderous terrorist campaign, targeting survivors of the 1994 genocide and those in the local population who refused to collaborate with them. The attackers were armed and the victims were civilians. Faced with no alternatives and noticing the lack of political will by the international community to dismantle the camps that had, against the Council's resolutions, become the biggest depots of sophisticated weapons supplied by some of those who had failed to stop the genocide and who chose to close one eye and watch with the other, the Rwandan people had once again been left to their own fate.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Tanzanian authorities, with our many thanks, did their best to disarm those who were armed, but the authorities of the former Zaire and the humanitarian bodies - including, unfortunately, United Nations bodies - failed to do so, thus leaving innocent civilians to their own fate. This has to be avoided in the future. However, the Rwandan Government at that time warned on many occasions that unless the broader international community was able to regain political and military control over the camps, it would be helping the Rwandan genocidal forces to come and finish the job they had started in 1994.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“They and former Rwandese Government forces possessed arms, and this marked the beginning of many cross-border attacks by militia members who were unlawfully enjoying refugee status and humanitarian assistance. Civilians were threatened, attacked and killed for expressing the wish to return to Rwanda. The militia carried out summary executions and other acts of physical violence in broad daylight. Most of the administrative leaders of the former Rwandan genocidal regime had fled with their administrative apparatus to Zaire and Tanzania, where they could easily control the camps.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“The classic contemporary example of this dilemma was observed in the Rwandan refugee camps in what was then eastern Zaire and is now the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) faced the historic problem of separating combatants from bona fide refugees. The Security Council and the then Mobutu Government, which was host country to the Rwandan refugees and militias, denied the UNHCR that option. As a result, the key architects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide kept control of the bulk of the Rwandan refugees and were relied upon by humanitarian agencies for the distribution of humanitarian assistance to the civilians who were really in need. The ever-free militia resorted openly to intimidation and force to stop refugees willing to return home.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Civilians were targeted by politicians and their soldiers or militias on the basis of who they were and where they were born. They were used by Government forces and authorities as human shields during the liberation war as far back as 1990 and until 1994. When our troops stopped the genocide in July 1994, the same evil forces crossed into the former Zaire and into Tanzania. Members will remember how heavily armed they were and remain. My delegation would like to remind the world that efforts to reconcile the interdependent but often quarrelsome imperatives of assistance and protection to refugees and displaced people offer a vivid example of the need to retain neutrality, apply principles, respect local views, and devise new policy formulas to deal with unprecedented challenges.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“May I, first of all, join other speakers in congratulating you, Mr. President, for leading this Council through its fruitful deliberations. I would also like to extend my congratulations to your predecessor, the representative of Namibia. Thank you for giving us the floor to address the Council for a second time this year on a topic of great importance to us. As much as we were worried about child soldiers or children in armed conflicts at the time of the last open debate, civilians as a whole should be given even greater attention in armed conflicts so as to minimize social, physical and psychological casualties. Rwanda is yet another example of a place where innocent civilians were victims of armed conflict in different forms from the early 1960s until very recently.”
1999-09-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4046Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Humanitarianism has failed in most cases; the law of the land has been broken; international humanitarian law and United Nations conventions have been broken by those meant to protect them and apply them. Children have been victims of such malfeasance, and the world body should take measures now to ensure that we put children first to ensure a better future for all.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“My delegation strongly hopes that the Security Council can stand firm and do its duty to protect the peace and security of children, because we believe that to inculcate kids with the culture of peace is a guarantee that we can offer a better future to generations to come. To conclude, let me appeal to the Council to think of the most vulnerable group of kids in armed conflicts today: orphans. Not only do they experience the trauma of witnessing the death of their parents and relatives, but they also survive worse events. Some have been lucky enough to find foster families; others have not. The message is the same: as much as we need a world order, we should be aware of one important thing: that there will be no world after us if children are not taken care of. This is a task for all of us: to protect the rights of children.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“We wish to thank the United Nations agencies for their assistance to our Government in this exercise, especially the United Nations Children's Fund, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Population Fund, as well as many non- governmental organizations. We thank them all, and we hope that the wonderful efforts being made by many, including the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, will not be wasted so that we can reach a total ban on abusing children's rights.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Resolutions should bridge the gap and bring us to the people we ignore and yet wish to assist. Kids are coerced in various parts of the world and given weapons to kill other children and adults. They are promised a better life, mind you. But what kind of better life is this for such young memories after they have killed so many people? Those who liberate the land and the people feel proud of their job, but those who mass-kill their peers and adults will remain traumatized by what they did and saw. In any case, however, both groups of children need help. We call this fair justice. In Rwanda, those who fought have been demobilized and taken to schools where they can learn and acquire skills. Those who killed were taken to prisons but were later released to be rehabilitated and integrated into their society.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“It is the Council's duty to promise them a better future and guaranties that their own children will not be subjected to the same atrocities and mistreatment from adults. We have several thousand child heads of families and households in Rwanda, where only children are grouped in a house and called a family - but a family without a father, without a mother, without any living grown-up relative to look after them. The oldest, no matter how young she or he is, has become the head of the family ipso facto. Ambassador Olara Otunnu saw that on his trip to Rwanda and is thus a witness. Looking at those kids desperately pampering each other on the ground on the one hand and listening to intellectual debates like this one on the other shows how distant reality is from decision-makers and vice versa.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“We cannot tolerate seeing children being treated like objects of sexual perversion by deviant parents and relatives, by wealthy business people or peacekeepers who have money even to buy the virginity of small young girls at the price of a life trauma few of them can even talk about. Among the children we need to protect, many have suffered the injustices we referred to earlier. Many have suffered the harsh environment of war and the need to kill: to kill to save themselves and their future, or to kill because they have been told to do so. The resolution sought from the Council today can prevent more of these killings in the future. Many of these children have survived mine blasts and bear scars, with amputated legs and arms; they continue to live with such a traumatizing experience long after the war is gone.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“In armed conflicts, the most vulnerable people are civilians: elderly people, women and children. In Rwanda the magnitude of the suffering that children went through is simply difficult to describe. But the trauma they still manifest can indicate how much they suffer inside even when their rights have been recovered. It is the duty of the Council to ensure that this does not happen again - not just in Rwanda but anywhere else on the globe. The world around children should care more, because it is the same world of adults and leaders that drew them into these situations in the first place.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“It was the same children who had grown in an atmosphere of rampant injustice who were naturally mobilized and ready to be recruited as first-hand witnesses of that bad leadership and of those unjust policies that prevented people from enjoying their basic rights. Children who witness such a situation for long are potentially the ones to fight against injustices directed at them, but only when and if they are given the chance and the means to do so. These means differ from one country and one situation to another. We pay tribute to those who lose their lives defending their rights. Unfortunately, it is in the name of defending those rights that most such children have lost more of their rights, the main one being the right to be a child. To be recruited for a cause is one thing, and to fight a war is another.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Indeed, peace and security as well as wise resolutions are best reached when, as today, they are talked of in the open, with great transparency, thus engaging in the debate those who care and leaving the vote to those who represent us all. As everybody knows, Rwanda lived through unforgettable times of war from 1959 into the early 1990s: wars caused by bad leadership and politics of exclusion practised by successive regimes. The genocide that followed was a result of that bad leadership coupled with a lack of consistency in the decisions taken by many who had and have the power to prevent and/or stop it. The first victims of that bad leadership and politics of exclusion were innocent children who were not allowed access to education because of who they were and where they were born.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source
“Let me add my delegation's voice to those who spoke earlier to congratulate you, Sir, as you lead this Council's deliberations today and tonight, and let me tell you that we are as happy to see you in the chair tonight as we have been on several past occasions when we, as you know, have met in other gatherings of common interest. I would also like to pay tribute to Ambassador Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, for his endeavours and determination to promote better protection of children and their welfare. He has, and you have, our full support, and we wish you well. I also wish to state my delegation's hope of seeing this Council open its doors more frequently in the future to debates of this kind.”
1999-08-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4037Resumption1 (1999) · source