YouSaid · the spoken record

Power

lines on the record: 1,841
first: 2013-08-06
most recent: 2019-07-09
sittings or episodes: 165
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

“We continue to wish that Office well as it strengthens its ability to provide concrete and meaningful capacity-building initiatives and further research and support to the Council in tackling this problem.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“Just as criminals can learn from each other, so too we must learn from the criminal networks and share our understanding. The United Nations can play a vital role in that endeavour, bringing together the expertise and those of us in the international community who are like-minded in order to adopt such an approach. We must do so in full respect for all the international agreements and Security Council resolutions that have been adopted by this body, including those that fully implement the relevant human rights standards. However, we encourage greater coordination in responding to transnational threats. We recall that this is a central mandate of the Office of Counter-Terrorism, and the United Kingdom was very pleased to play a strong role in supporting its creation.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“Last year, the United Kingdom also published a serious organized crime strategy that emphasized the importance of enhancing our approach across a number of pillars - not only law enforcement but also in the upstream prevention space that many representatives have talked about today. Governments alone cannot tackle such challenges. Public-private partnerships, bringing together the private sector, civil society and Government actors, are critical to ensuring that all relevant parties are aware of the threats and can access the necessary resources in order to counter them. As the Russian and Chinese Ambassadors both said very strongly, the international community must pool efforts at an international level in order to maximize its advantage.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“In relation to terrorism, we have also stressed many times in the Council the importance of a broad preventive approach that strengthens the capacities to ensure that legal and criminal justice responses are in full compliance with international law and human rights obligations. One way to do that has been to support the preventing and countering violent extremism national action plans, which foster a coordinated response to terrorist crimes and in whose development the Office of Counter-Terrorism and many others have been closely involved in supporting Member States. In the United Kingdom our approach is guided by annual strategic assessments of the threat that serious organized crime poses to our security and prosperity.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“Moreover, when criminal organizations seek to undermine Governments and governance, they can affect the resources available to address terrorism and violent extremism. At the same time, criminal groups can profit from the instability and insecurity generated by terrorism and conflict, creating strong vested interests in fuelling those dynamics and perpetuating the suffering in such contexts. With regard to prevention, we believe that we must adopt a broad approach that can stop the problem at its source by identifying and supporting those at risk of engaging in criminality, building the highest levels of defence and resilience among vulnerable people, communities, businesses and systems. Addressing the socioeconomic and governance-related drivers of criminality are just as vital as relentlessly tackling the organized criminal networks.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“States and the international community must tackle terrorism and organized crime by focusing on strengthening policing and investigative responses, upholding the rule of law and international human rights law and tackling the conditions that allow terrorism and organized crime to flourish. We agree with the representative of South Africa on the link between organized crime and terrorism being context-specific. But we know that criminality can create an enabling environment for terrorist groups to secure the recruits and resources they need for their operations, as many speakers have mentioned today, including the very worrying example of terrorist recruitment in our prisons.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“We see that the links between terrorist groups and criminal activity vary by region and cover a broad range of relationships, from the tactical to the strategic, thereby requiring individual responses in each situation. The United Kingdom views terrorism primarily as a criminal enterprise, thereby necessitating a civilian policing response. It therefore follows that the response must closely resemble the same means we use to tackle organized crime. That is why this debate is so important and the further research that we are calling for is very much needed.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“Can I start by thanking you, Mr. President, for organizing this debate. I also congratulate you on your assumption of the presidency of the Security Council this month. I would also like to join colleagues in welcoming Ambassador De Riviere to the Security Council and bidding a fond farewell to Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu. Like others, we had not realized that today was to be his last appearance at the Council. I know my Ambassador would want me to express, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, our appreciation for his partnership and his contribution to the work of the Council. The United Kingdom believes that the most important element of the link between organized crime and terrorism lies not in the groups themselves, but in the response from Governments.”
2019-07-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8569 (2019) · source
“Obviously, again and as we have often said in the Council, there are far too many inaccuracies in the Syrian representative's statement to go into any detail, but since he mentioned us I wanted to speak in reply to remind him that we were given the floor to speak on a point of order yesterday (see S/PV.8561) to object to his persistent naming of humanitarian workers as terrorists, which we find disrespectful to the Council. Furthermore, I would point out that the length of his intervention and remarks today further undermine his disrespect for the Council. The meeting rose at 12.40 pm.”
2019-06-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8567 (2019) · source
“For the record, then, the answer is that we should trust the information from Russian intelligence about strikes on rebel-held territory, but when the information is provided by independent experts of the United Nations, we should not trust it. The meeting rose at 5.30 pm.”
2019-06-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8553 (2019) · source
“So the question that my Ambassador asked, as to how it came about that those hospitals and medical facilities found themselves under attack, remains a legitimate one. We further find it slightly astonishing that the Russian Ambassador was surprised that the number of hospitals had increased during the civil war. We think that this is a natural consequence of the attacks that have been taking place on civilians and was the reason why the mechanism was created in the first place. To reiterate the point, we will answer the questions posed to us, but will they answer questions posed to them?”
2019-06-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8553 (2019) · source
“My Ambassador has apologized for the fact that she had to leave the meeting and has asked me just to make a couple of final points on the substance of the issue at hand today, as opposed to some of the extraneous points that have been brought up by some speakers. My points refer back to the strikes on the hospitals. The Russian Ambassador asked a question about the difference between hospitals that were attacked in Syrian Government-controlled territory and those attacked in rebel-held territory. The difference is that in the rebel-held territory in Idlib, the Russians were supplied with information about those medical facilities through the de-confliction mechanism we have been discussing today.”
2019-06-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8553 (2019) · source
“Make sure that those principles in the United Nations Charter light up. Do not let them go dark for the people who count on us. I wish the Council all the best in the months and years ahead, and I reiterate my thanks for the professionalism and friendship of its members.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“And we must keep working to make those principles real, because as I have tried to underscore so often, the lives of so many people depend on those principles being turned into practice. To the girl fleeing armed soldiers in South Sudan, making protection more than a promise in a mandate, means the difference between life and death. To the child in a besieged city in Syria, the prohibition on the bombing of schools and hospitals may mean the difference between life and death. To the man or woman in Uganda or North Korea, the idea that a person should not be locked up for who you love or what you believe might mean the difference between a life of freedom and a life ofimprisonment or harassment. So, as I leave, I urge the Council to keep pedaling and to not give up, especially when it seems hard.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“Let me conclude with an idea - fittingly, given the Swedish presidency, from a renowned Swedish author, Elin Wagner, who said that values and ideals are like those old-fashioned bicycle lights. They do not light up until and unless you start to pedal forward. That can be said for so much of the work we aspire to do on the Council, and it is true of all of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. Unless we pedal, they do not light up. The principles do not become real for real people out in the real wold. Problems do not get fixed, conflicts drag on, crushing poverty persists. Unless we pedal hard and pedal together, we do not make the impact that we seek. We do not make the impact that we, who are sent here by our citizens and people, are here to make.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“Looking ahead, as this deal is likely to be subjected to even greater scrutiny than it is at present, it is important for all of us - here and outside, in all of our nations - to remember that it is much harder to build up frameworks and institutions than to tear them down. The progress we have achieved, so far, depends on maintaining our collective determination to sustain the JCPOA. So, we, and each of the JCPOA participants need to stand by the commitments that we have made and work even harder to make sure that all States comply with their obligations under resolution 2231 (2015), and we need to remember that if negotiating an Iran nuclear deal was possible then we on the Council have it within our power to act decisively when other crises demand it.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“That also means every Member State needs to enforce the travel restrictions that remain in effect under resolution 2231 (2015). The Secretary-General's report (S/2016/1136) notes that both Major General Qasem Soleimani and Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi have travelled to Iraq and Syria, in defiance of the Council's decisions. That is and should be unacceptable to all of us. As we have said before, the strength of resolution 2231 (2015) comes from the commitment of Member States to enforcing it, and the United States calls on them to do so. It is clear that, with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the world today is better off than it was before. Even though there is a long way to go in countering Iran's destabilizing behaviour in the Middle East, any world where Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon is a safer world.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“Israel has also reported to the United Nations that Iran uses commercial flights to supply arms to Hizbullah. According to the Secretary-General's report, Iran did not even deny these allegations when the United Nations asked about them. These arms transfers should be deeply troubling to each member of the Council in part because Iran is clearly defying a resolution the Council unanimously supported. Therefore, even though Iran is living up to its nuclear commitments, we on the Council need to come together to push Iran to effectively implement the binding provisions of resolution 2231 (2016), especially restrictions that ban Iran's export of arms and related material and that ban all Member States from transferring to Iran advanced weapon systems, like missiles, tanks and combat aircraft.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“However, recognizing this progress on Iran's nuclear issues should not distract the Council from Iran's other actions that continue to destabilize the Middle East in ways that affect a lot of issues on the Council's agenda. This is after all a regime that repeatedly threatens Israel and that continues to violate the human rights of its own people. Under Secretary- General Feltman has informed the Council about reports of Iranian non-compliance with the remaining arms transfer and travel restrictions in resolution 2231 (2016). These reports include new information about interdictions of arms exported from Iran, transfers Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has openly boasted about in his public speeches even as resolution 2231 (2016) prohibits these shipments.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“For our part, the United States has fully implemented its commitments to lift nuclear-related sanctions as specified in the JCPOA. In the Council, the mechanisms that we created to support the JCPOA are working as intended. When States want to pursue the nuclear-related activities permitted under the JCPOA that require the Council's approval, the Council is ready to consider their request. Reporting is also happening with the appropriate division of labour with the Secretary-General reporting on the restrictions that apply to Iran under resolution 2231 (2016) while the Joint Commission monitors implementation of the J CPOA.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“It has now been a year and a half since the JCPOA was concluded and one year since what we call implementation day, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified that Iran had completed the nuclear-related commitments required for sanctions relief. What we know after all this time is that the JCPOA is working. All ofthe deal's participants are keeping their commitments. Consider what that means, what the deal has achieved. Iran's plutonium reactor core at Arak is now filled with concrete. The IAEA has confirmed that Iran has dismantled two- thirds of its centrifuges and shipped out 98 per cent of its enriched uranium. What is left of Iran's uranium stockpile is under continuous watch to make sure that it stays within the limits that the JCPOA put in place.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“But in these and so many other instances we achieved something together that none of us could have come close to achieving alone. While, of course, there are other threats to which we have invested similar time and energy and sweat, but have not been able to find solutions or consensus - the Syria war and the quest for Middle East peace being the two most obvious examples - is there anybody here who would have rather that we not have tried? Of course, there is not. I am proud to have served a President who believes in the power of principled diplomacy, not out of a naive belief that we will always succeed, but rather because of a clear-eyed empirical assessment that our security often necessitates collective action and that while at times diplomacy may not be enough, there is never a time when it is not needed.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“Reaching this deal - the JCPOA - like so many ofthe collective achievements of which we are most proud, including the global response to the Ebola outbreak, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals - required gruelling, at times exasperating negotiations and countless hours invested by diplomats, technical experts and even many of us at this table. There were times in each of these efforts when we thought we would not be able to reach an agreement, that the differences were just too great, the suspicions too deep, when we wanted to give up, walk away and go home to spend more time with our families who are far easier to get along with than our foreign counterparts in negotiations.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“This lessons applies not only when dealing with the threat of nuclear non-proliferation, but also to other threats to international peace and security, from genocide to terrorism and violations of other States' territorial integrity. But beyond showing how effective sanctions can be, the JCPOA also shows the life and death importance of diplomacy - hard-nosed diplomacy. The United Nations was created as the premier venue for diplomacy. As Winston Churchill once put it, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war".”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“They cannot be treated as an end in themselves and sanctions almost never provide instant gratification of the kind that the news cycle seems to demand. It took almost nine years from when the Council first imposed sanctions on Iran and multiple rounds of new sanctions after that before the P5+1 and Iran were able to conclude the JCPOA. However, sanctions were an absolutely essential tool to bring Iran to the table and to keep Iran negotiating until we reach the diplomatic outcome that we sought, one that has significantly enhanced our collective security. We never would have reached this goal without uniting to impose sanctions and without working to ensure that our resolutions were enforced.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“An issue where the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union were able to all come together - first to impose powerful sanctions against Iran, including in 2010 after receiving information that Iran was building a covert enrichment facility and then to have the courage and the creativity to negotiate a deal - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which cut off Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon and verified Iran's compliance through the most extensive inspection regime ever developed for nuclear programme. I take note, as I depart, that some on the Council are expressing what seems to be a growing scepticism about the efficacy of sanctions. It is more than reasonable to raise questions. Sanctions are not suited to every crisis. They alone are never a panacea.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“I offer a special thanks to my truly remarkable team at the United States Mission who works tirelessly to try to make the world better. It has been an honour to work with all of them. I am fortunate today to be able to deliver my last set of remarks on an issue that shows just how much we can achieve by using the tools in our toolbox at the Security Council.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“While we, who have the privilege of sitting around this table, may get the attention, we also know that our work would not be possible without the people sitting behind us and in the booths above us and many others in our Governments who never even get to join us in the Chamber: the teams of diplomats and foreign service officers at our respective missions, the officials in our capitals and embassies abroad who feed into our work, as well as the staff at the United Nations who make these meetings possible - from the Security Council Affairs Division to the inexhaustible interpreters, to the staff from across the United Nations who brief the Council, write the reports that we consume and provide information from the field often at great risk to themselves.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“The failures of the Council to respond to the mass atrocities in Syria and South Sudan are glaring and indeed haunting, but I know from working with every single individual at this table that we have achieved much more than we would have had it not been for their creativity and their individual will to find a way forward on tough issues. Diplomacy is about people in two respects. We diplomats must help people who are suffering the horrific costs of conflict, but we diplomats are people and when the Council functions, it is often because individuals in this Chamber have lobbied their capitals for a change in instructions or for flexibility in the cause of peace.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“First, above all, I want to give thanks to President Obama for giving me this opportunity and I want to thank my fellow diplomats in the Chamber for their friendship, their camaraderie and their dedication, all of which they have shown in spades over the past three and a half years towards me and towards the subjects that we work on together. Of course, we may not always agree. Indeed, we have at times disagreed quite pointedly, but it has been the privilege of my life to be able to work with each of them. We have not achieved nearly as much as I would have liked.”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“I thank you, Mr. President, from the bottom of my heart for your comments at the opening of today's meetings, which really moved me. When I play them later for my children, it will move them too. I thank Under-Secretary-General Feltman, Ambassador Cardi, Ambassador Vale de Almeida for their briefings and for all their work on this important topic. I know that the United States Mission looks forward to working with Ambassador Cardi in his new role as the Council's facilitator for the implementation ofresolution 2231 (2015). I agree with the sentiment that he expressed in Italian in terms of saying "Goodbye, but we will see you soon". This will be my final meeting in the Security Council, I think, so I would like to start by saying "thank you".”
2017-01-18 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7865 (2017) · source
“Most of them have, unfortunately, already died". A 31-year-old mother in Cameroon named Dayo told an aid worker that she was sometimes so hungry that she was losing her senses. Dayo said, "When somebody spoke to me, I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman". Or finally, Awa Mudu, stranded in another IDP camp, was interviewed coming back from a nearby forest, carrying some leaves to eat. As Awa said, "The leaves are not enough to live on, but that is all we have." The Council can help give the people of the Lake Chad basin, people like Awa, more to live on. But we must do far more.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“Let us demand that the United Nations and its partners have access to the millions of people who so badly need food, water and medicine, and let us look for other ways to have the United Nations play a positive role, such as helping to reintegrate the victims of Boko Haram's violence - too many of whom, as we have heard, carry a stigma when they are freed or manage to escape. Or, after discussing on Tuesday the importance of sustaining peace (see S/PV.7857), let us work on rebuilding institutions in that region. The need could not be more urgent. In an interview last week, a Me'decins sans frontieres doctor talked about what it was like to visit camps in Borno, Nigeria. She said, "when I go to the field, I am used to being surrounded by a lot of kids, but in Borno, the kids, especially children under five, were missing.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“What we are discussing today is a transnational, counter- terrorism challenge involving one of the world's most dangerous terrorist groups, and the region's desperate humanitarian needs are the result of that group's monstrous actions. The situation in the Lake Chad basin region presents therefore the textbook definition of a threat to international peace and security. It is what the Council is on this Earth to address. Let us do it then; let us see the crisis for ourselves.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“The Government and the United Nations will need to work together on expediting aid delivery. It is a logistic and operational question that needs to be resolved soon. Donors have to do far more. As we have heard, the Lake Chad basin region has become the site of one of the world's greatest overlooked crises, and I think that we see it in the modest level of interest in today's meeting. The United Nations 2016 humanitarian appeal ended up just half-funded. The States Members of the United Nations need to move quickly to donate the $1 billion that the United Nations has requested for this year. Let me conclude with a final suggestion, and that is, once again, to reinforce my claim that far more Security Council involvement is needed.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“That means that Governments must facilitate access for humanitarian organizations, and I cannot stress access enough. The Nigerian Government must work with the United Nations and regional Governments to develop options for delivering aid to more areas, even near the front lines. Although we know that the military operations must continue, humanitarian organizations are ready. They work in war zones all the time, but they need permission to move in. In some cases, security is still fragile, so the aid groups can reach communities only with the help of armed convoys that must be coordinated with the Nigerian military. Unfortunately, coordinating aid with the availability of armed convoys is now turning into a serious bottleneck, a serious impediment.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“What more can the Council do? In order to defeat Boko Haram, the international community has to generally devote far more resources to supporting a more effective, regionally led military response. Here too, there are positive signs. Together, Nigeria, the Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin are slowly but steadily improving regional military coordination. Boko Haram controls a small fraction of the territory it had back in 2015. The military operations of those countries deserve our collective support, and the United States is dispatching advisers, sharing intelligence and providing training, equipment and logistic support to our partners. But there is no separating the imperative of defeating Boko Haram from the need to address the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the region.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“Part of what is causing some of the access issues is a concern about the rampant insecurity, a concern about Boko Haram, and that is a very legitimate concern and something that preoccupies the humanitarian aid workers in the region as well. But it is essential for the aid groups, the United Nations and the Government to expeditiously develop a plan for improving access. Nearly every time the humanitarian agencies acquire access to a new location that had previously been off-limits, the needs encountered prove far worse that had been imagined before. For example, when United Nations agencies and other non-governmental organizations arrived in the town of Rann in Borno state on 22 December, just a couple of weeks ago, aid workers discovered around 400 fresh graves of people who had just died of hunger and untreated illness.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“It is definitely the case that there are many in the Nigerian Government - and I know that we will hear from our Nigerian colleagues - who are working tirelessly to save lives. On the other hand, we continue to see reports, including this week, of some who dispute the magnitude of the crisis and state that humanitarian agencies are exaggerating the statistics. Some have even maligned the role of the United Nations in delivering lifesaving assistance. It is extremely important that United Nations officials be able to get in there and visit people in need so that they can ascertain in an impartial way what the needs are.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“Those are the people now dying because assistance is not getting through fast enough. I would urge the Council to witness that situation up close, travel to the region to see the crisis and meet the families, speak to men who have seen their wives and daughters dragged off into the bush, women who have watched their sons gunned down before them. We must be emboldened by their pain. There should be more people here in the Security Council Chamber for today's discussion. This kind of thing is not run of the mill. It is an extreme crisis, and we have to draw more coverage to it. I think that a trip could help to achieve that. But we also have to bring a greater sense of urgency to our deliberations.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“I have seen many refugee camps over the course of my career, but meeting those who fled from Boko Haram was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Virtually every individual whom I met described for me either a close relative who had been slaughtered by Boko Haram or an experience where they had had a child who was literally grabbed from their arms - an infant child, daughter or son. The marauders just came in and stole their child. Many of us here are parents and can well imagine how a parent must feel remembering the clutching and the cries of their child as they were taken by such savages. In the wake of crimes like that, those broken, shattered families are too frequently stuck in squalid IDP camps, with virtually no services, no health care and no education.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“Because that area remains so insecure, owing to Boko Haram, 76 per cent of the IDPs fear going back to their homes, where they could plant crops and take care of themselves and their families. Across the entire Lake Chad basin region, 5.1 million people are food-insecure, which includes 455,000 with what the United Nations system and others call severe acute malnutrition. In plain English, severe acute malnutrition means that if those 450,000 kids do not get food rations and emergency nutrition interventions quickly, one out of five of those 450,000 will likely die. Statistics alone cannot convey the human cost of the crisis or the extent of the brutality that drives it. Last spring, I visited refugees camps in the region - in Cameroon and Nigeria - to meet with victims of Boko Haram.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“The Chibok girls kidnapped more than 1,000 days ago from their school remain the most well-known example of Boko Haram's brutality, with 195 of the original 276 girls still in captivity to this day. They are among the thousands and thousands of people held by Boko Haram, as millions across the region live in fear that Boko Haram will capture them or their loved ones next. The deepening linkages between Boko Haram and the Islamic State are alarming and ominously suggest that such a clear and present threat to international peace and security may get worse. As the Council has heard, the statistics are grim. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are 1.64 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north-eastern Nigeria alone.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“If famines are man-made, that means that the solutions are man-made as well. To be clear, it is impossible to overstate the savagery of Boko Haram - the savagery of the group that has set in motion the events that have given rise to these conditions and the misery that they have caused around the Lake Chad basin. This is a terrorist group that forces mothers with infant children and girls as young as 9 years old to walk into markets and detonate suicide vests. Boko Haram fighters systematically enslave and rape women and girls in camps deep in the forest, force marriages and brainwash defenceless victims to get them to carry out more attacks. They forcibly conscript boys to fight in Boko Haram's ranks, and they hold those boys in captivity in virtual enslavement against their will.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“As many as 800,000 people are living just like the people of Bama last year, cut off from food aid; 800,000 people who are at acute risk - as we sit here - of literally starving to death. Famines, as we all know, are not natural occurrences. Famines are man-made. The fact that anyone could be experiencing famine conditions in the year 2017 should spur the Council to do everything it possibly can to ensure that food assistance reaches those who are starving. The world does not lack for food to send, but aid workers need more funding and they need greater security. And the Nigerian Government, at every level - federal, state, and local - must collaborate with United Nations humanitarian agencies and international non-governmental organizations to get aid out the door.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“In 2016, a famine likely happened on our watch - not in one of the places that dominates the Security Council's agenda, but in the Borno state of north-eastern Nigeria, in the area of Bama - a likely famine. Severe fighting kept humanitarian agencies from reaching Bama for nearly 18 months. When they were finally able to access the town and assess the situation, they found that at least 2,000 people in Bama had died from the effects of famine last year, mostly young children. The situation in Bama has since improved somewhat with the arrival of aid. But right now, across north- eastern Nigeria there are far more towns that are not getting food assistance, where people are experiencing the most extreme levels of hunger.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“I thank you so much, Mr. President, for convening this meeting. I also thank the briefers - Assistant Secretary-General Zerihoun; Under-Secretary-General O'Brien, who has led for so long on this issue and challenge; and, above all, Ms. Askira, for sharing the vital voice from the ground. I think what she described speaks to what the briefers have noted, which is the generosity of people, who have so little themselves, and how generous they have been in opening up their homes to these internally displaced persons. The fact that the vast majority ofthe displaced in Maiduguri live with other families who themselves are struggling to deal with this threat and to deal with very difficult socioeconomic conditions, really demonstrates tremendous goodness. Ms. Askira is an embodiment of that and I thank her.”
2017-01-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7861 (2017) · source
“We helped protect people from ethnic killings by deploying peacekeepers to the Central African Republic when a genocide seemed imminent. We helped set up a novel United Nations mission to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, after delivering a wake-up call by holding our first-ever emergency meeting on a public health crisis here in the Council. The point is that the Council is essential. It is an essential tool for promoting a more peaceful world. But we need to work far harder and dig deep within ourselves to make sure that we use the capabilities at our disposal to help those who need us.”
2017-01-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7857 (2017) · source
“Zaher Sahloul returned from eastern Aleppo to relay the pleas of the city's doctors that wounded children be allowed to be evacuated; or when Jackson Niamah, a Liberian health- care worker, briefed the Council (see S/PV.7268), at the height of the Ebola crisis, on the anguish of turning away infected patients and their children for a lack of supplies and beds. When we on the Council show leadership and put people at the centre of our decisions, the effect is powerful. It can change minds. We, as Council members, have helped keep people safe by adopting resolutions to cut off financing for terrorist organizations and to rally the world to stop the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. We helped enforce a rule against the use of chemical weapons when we adopted a resolution to dismantle the Al-Assad regime's stockpile of chemical weapons.”
2017-01-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7857 (2017) · source
“Incredibly, some Member States here in New York want even less access for representatives of civil society to come in and share different perspectives. They fight accreditation requests to the Non-Governmental Organization Committee of the Economic and Social Council in order to block non-governmental organizations from being part of United Nations deliberations. As Permanent Representative for the past three and a half years, I know that the Council's richest, most meaningful exchanges have come when we have heard from real people - when Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a Yazidi woman trafficked by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), implored the Council to take action because ISIL, in her words, was using rape "to ensure that women could never again lead a normal life" (S/PV. 7585, p. 6); or when Dr.”
2017-01-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7857 (2017) · source