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

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“We continue to believe that achieving a two-State solution through negotiations remains the best path forward, not only for resolving many of the issues in Gaza but also for Israel's security, Palestinian aspirations and security, and regional stability. We continue to look to the Israeli Government and the Palestinians to demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to a two-State solution. Only then can trust be rebuilt and a cycle of escalation avoided in the future. In conclusion, on Monday the Council unanimously adopted resolution 2231 (2015), endorsing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“UNRWA officials say 4 and we have heard the same thing again today - that if the shortfall is not met they will be forced to close its more than 700 schools, which serve some 500,000 students, nearly half of them in Gaza. Countries concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza must follow through on their commitments to the people who live there, and do their part to fill UNRWA's significant budget deficit. The United States has disbursed 95 per cent of the $400 million we pledged at the Cairo conference, and we provided more than $398 million to UNRWA in 2014, more than any other bilateral donor. Of course, it has to be said that addressing Gaza's immediate humanitarian needs deals with the symptoms of conflict but not the root causes.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“And after two months of consultations with stakeholders, the Special Envoy ofthe Secretary-General, Staffan de Mistura, continues to work diligently to create a path towards a resolution of Syria's crisis. His efforts deserve the Council's full support. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, we risk falling into a similar pattern, especially with regard to rebuilding Gaza. Only 28 per cent of the funds pledged for Gaza's recovery at the Cairo conference in October have been disbursed. That means that around $2.5 billion that was committed to assisting the people of Gaza nine months ago has not materialized. As has been said, we are seeing a similarly profound gap in funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which currently has a more than $100 million shortfall.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“For example, while it is important to call on Syria's neighbours to keep their borders open to the Syrians fleeing violence and persecution 4 thousands of whom are trapped at the border and struggling to survive - we also have a responsibility to help those neighbouring countries shoulder the immense costs of hosting massive refugee populations. We must condemn every use of chemical weapons in Syria, but also develop a way of identifying those who perpetrate, organize, sponsor or otherwise have a hand in such attacks, as the proposed joint investigative mechanism of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons would do, so that those responsible can one day be held accountable.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“The humanitarian crisis is also fuelled by the terror of violent extremist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which in May released a video of children executing 25 soldiers in Palmyra, and which, just last week, posted footage of a child decapitating a Syrian army captain. A 14-year-old Yazidi boy who was abducted by ISIL and forced into one of their so-called cub training camps, designed to indoctrinate children as young as 4 or 5 years old, said that he and more than 100 other child recruits were given dolls on which to practice beheadings. In Dayr az Zawr, ISIL recently beheaded women for the first time, for the alleged crime of sorcery. We must do more than name these challenges and call for them to be addressed. Instead, it is on us to come up with solutions that are pragmatic, principled and effective.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“A doctor who leads a makeshift 12-bed clinic in Idlib province described the horror that followed air strikes on a nearby town on 4 June. More than 130 wounded, many of them children, arrived within hours. The doctor said, "Bodies were everywhere 4 on the tables, in the hallways, on the floor. The floor was full of blood. Medical staff and volunteers picked their way between the wounded, doing what they could." Overwhelmed and able to provide only basic treatment, the clinic had to turn away 50 people. The doctor said, "The only choice we have is to replenish our supplies, gather our hopes and prepare for the next tragedy".”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“It is fuelled by the widespread atrocities of a regime, seemingly unsatisfied by the carnage wrought by its barrel bombs and use of chemical weapons, that is now dropping entire Dumpsters filled with explosives on neighbourhoods, and that did not even suspend its bombings on the celebratory holiday of Eid Al-Fitr. As one resident of Aleppo told a reporter, "Here, Eid means Assad's bombs". According to recent reporting, when residents fled an upsurge in fighting in the city of Dar'a in late June, the regime expanded its aerial bombing to target the open fields and villages where civilians took shelter. At least four hospitals in the villages where civilians fled were hit by aerial bombs, including one strike that reportedly killed five children in a hospital in the village of Taibeh.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“Just a quarter of the 2015 United Nations appeal for Syria has been funded - one quarter, for the greatest humanitarian crisis in a generation. The shortfall has immediate and profound consequences for Syrians in need. As a result of the funding gap, the World Food Programme has been forced to cut its food assistance for more than 5.5 million Syrians, and 750,000 Syrian refugee children are not in school. The shortfall also has considerable repercussions for Syria's neighbours, which have shown immense generosity and compassion in taking in millions of Syrians, and whose Governments and communities are left to fill in the gaps when the international community fails to step up. As we have said all along, this humanitarian crisis is man-made.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“The longer those conflicts drag on, the greater the humanitarian consequences that must be addressed, and the deepening humanitarian crises exacerbate the conditions in which enmity and violence thrive, making it even harder to reach those durable political solutions. That has been the pattern in Syria. This month we cross the calamitous threshold of 4 million refugees from the conflict, making Syria the largest refugee crisis in a quarter-century. Another 7.6 million Syrians have been displaced within the country's borders, and approximately half of all Syrians, 12.2 million people, need humanitarian assistance. Yet the international community is not just failing to keep pace with the urgent needs of this population, we are falling further and further behind.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“I thank Foreign Minister McCully for convening this meeting, and Special Coordinator Mladenov for his informative briefing and for all his essential work. When the Security Council convenes every three months for an open debate on the Middle East, our discussion inevitably returns to a similar set of themes. They are the gut-wrenching and ever-growing humanitarian catastrophe in Syria; the urgent need to breathe new life into the efforts to achieve a two- State solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the importance of finding political solutions to those profound challenges, which have an impact far beyond the borders of any one country, or even the region.”
2015-07-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7490 (2015) · source
“How many more girls worldwide would be in classrooms? How many more warlords and dictators worldwide would be behind bars? It is humbling to imagine how much more we could achieve. It should motivate us to do far more.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“But let us just think for one moment how much more effective the Council would be if we were to bring the same approach to tackling other threats to international peace and security today: rigourous enforcement; a willingness to be relentless in our pursuit of tough, principled diplomacy, even when the odds seem stacked against us; a commitment not just to resolutions but to their full implementation; and a willingness to overcome divisions to strengthen our collective security. If we did all that, we can only imagine what we might be able to achieve to mitigate the horrific suffering in Syria today, and what progress the United Nations could make were we to bring the same political will to advancing the human rights of the world's most vulnerable people as we have to cutting off Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“If Iran seizes that opportunity; if it abides by the commitments that it agreed to in this deal, as it did throughout the period of the Joint Comprehensive Plan ofAction negotiations; if it builds upon the mutual respect and diligence that its negotiators demonstrated in Lausanne and Vienna; and if it demonstrates a willingness to respect the international standards upon which our collective security rests, then it will find the international community and the United States willing to provide a path out of isolation and towards greater engagement. We hope that Iran's Government will choose that path, not only because it would make the United States, its allies and the world more secure - which it will - but also because it will more fully empower the Iranian people, whose potential all of us should wish to see unlocked.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“Although we do not see that unity enough here at the United Nations, the countries of the United Nations did largely unite behind the cause of preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran, and it was the persistent multilateral pressure that came out of this unity, combined with a critical openness to seeking a diplomatic solution that gave the P-5+l and EU negotiators the leverage they needed to get the deal that would advance our collective security. In conclusion, the only proper measure of this deal and all of the tireless efforts that went into it will be its implementation. This deal gives Iran an opportunity to prove to the world that it intends to pursue a nuclear programme solely for peaceful purposes.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“The fourth and final lesson we can learn from the process that led us here today is that when our nations truly unite to confront global crises, our impact grows exponentially. The founders of the United Nations understood that concept intrinsically and enshrined it in the Charter, which calls on each of us "to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security". In the twenty-first century, it is now an axiom that our nations can do more to advance peace, justice and human dignity by working together than any single country can achieve on its own, and that, indeed, only when we act as united nations can we address the world's most intractable problems.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will grant the IAEA access when it needs it and where it needs it, including 24/7 containment and surveillance of Iran's declared nuclear facilities. Inspectors will have access to the entire supply chain that supports Iran's peaceful nuclear programme, from mining and milling to conversion, enrichment, fuel manufacturing, nuclear reactors and spent fuel. If the terms of the deal are not followed, all sanctions that have been suspended can be snapped back into place, and if the United States or any other participant in the Plan of Action believes that Iran is violating its commitments, we can trigger a process in the Security Council that will reinstate the United Nations sanctions.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“As President Obama has pointed out, "that is precisely why we are taking this step - because an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would be far more destabilizing and far more dangerous to our friends and to the world". So while this deal does not address many of our profound concerns, if implemented it would make the world safer and more secure. Yet while reaching this deal matters, our work is far from finished. In the months and even years ahead, the international community must apply the same rigour to ensuring compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as we did to drafting and negotiating it. This is my third point - implementation is everything. And that is precisely why so many verification measures have been built into this deal.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“And this deal will in no way diminish the United States outrage over the unjust detention of United States citizens by the Government of Iran. Let me use this occasion to call once again on Iran to immediately release all unjustly detained Americans: Saeed Abedini, imprisoned for his religious beliefs; Amir Hekmati, falsely accused of espionage; and Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post correspondent who just a year ago was covering the nuclear negotiations. I also call on Iran to help locate Robert Levinson, who has been missing from Iran since 2007. No family should be forced to endure the anguish that the Abedini, Hekmati, Rezaian and Levinson families feel, and we will not rest until they are home where they belong. But denying Iran a nuclear weapon is important not in spite of these other destabilizing actions, but rather because of them.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“Sometimes, as bother the Charter of the United Nations and history make clear, the use of force is required, but we all have a responsibility to work aggressively in diplomatic channels to try to secure our objectives peacefully. This nuclear deal does not change our profound concern about human rights violations committed by the Iranian Government or about the instability Iran fuels beyond its nuclear programmes - from its support for terrorist proxies to its repeated threats against Israel to its other destabilizing activities in the region. That is why the United States will continue to invest in the security of our allies in the region and why we will maintain our own sanctions related to Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic-missiles programme and its human rights violations.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“And when a credible opening emerged for negotiations, that is exactly what the United States and the other members of the P-5+l - the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China - and the EU did. There were many occasions over these past two years of grueling negotiations when any party could have walked away. The distances just seemed too great, the history between us searing and the resulting mistrust defining. But the United States and our partners knew that we had a responsibility to try to overcome these obstacles and resolve the crisis peacefully. One only has to spend a week in the Security Council - any week - and hear accounts of the bloodshed and heartbreak in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Darfur, Mali, Libya or any other conflict-ridden part of the world to be reminded of the consequences of war.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“The second lesson is one that was most eloquently articulated more than 50 years ago by President John F. Kennedy and echoed last week by President Obama: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate". Given the devastating human toll of war, we have a responsibility to test diplomacy. In 2010, when then-United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice spoke in the Chamber after the Council strengthened sanctions on Iran, she cited the ways in which Iran had violated its commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its obligations under prior Security Council resolutions. Yet she also said: "The United States reaffirms our commitment to engage in robust, principled and creative diplomacy. We will remain ready to continue diplomacy with Iran and its leaders" (S/PV6335, p.5).”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“The first lesson we can learn from how this deal was secured is that it is not enough to agree to global norms, such as that against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Council and all the countries of the United Nations must actually take steps to enforce global norms. In 2006, in response to Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear-weapons programme, the Security Council put in place on the of toughest sanctions regimes in its history, which was complemented by robust sanctions imposed by the United States, several other countries and the European Union (EU). Faced with Iran's ongoing non-compliance, the United Nations tightened its sanctions in 2007, 2008 and 2010. The sanctions regime played a critical role in helping to lay the groundwork for the talks that would give rise to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“It is important today to step back from the Plan of Action to its larger lessons - lessons about enforcing global norms, the essential role of diplomacy, the need for ongoing vigilance and the absolute necessity of the unity of the Security Council; lessons that have implications both for ensuring implementation of the deal and for tackling other crises that confront us today. This year we mark 70 years since the founding of the United Nations, which its second Secretary- General, Dag Hammarskjold, famously said "was not created to bring us to heaven, but to save us from hell". In the wake of the devastating loss oflife in the Second World War and the immeasurable suffering it caused, representatives of nations around the world came together with an aim - to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“The deal will quadruple Iran's break-out time - the time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon - from the current estimate of two to three months to one year. It will also require Iran and all States to comply with legally binding restrictions on nuclear and conventional arms-related and ballistic missile-related activities. Ninety days from today, when our respective capitals and legislatures have had a chance to carefully review the deal's provisions, the commitments in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action should take effect. Sanctions relief will begin only when Iran verifiably completes the initial steps necessary to bring its nuclear programme in line with the deal.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“Today we have adopted resolution 2231 (2015), enshrining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed to six days ago in Vienna. By now, many are familiar with the basic tenets of the deal, which, if implemented, would cut off all pathways to fissile material for a nuclear weapon for the Islamic Republic of Iran, while putting in place a rigorous inspection and transparency regime for verifying Iran's compliance. The Plan of Action will cut the number of Iran's centrifuges by two thirds and prevent Iran from producing weapons- grade plutonium. Iran will also get rid of 98 per cent of its stockpile of enriched uranium, going from a quantity that could produce approximately 10 nuclear weapons to a fraction of what is needed for a single nuclear weapon.”
2015-07-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7488 (2015) · source
“There is no distracting from the core fact that 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed systematically because they were Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs under the leadership of Radovan Karadiic' and Ratko Mladic' - not by the Serbian people - and that those families are grieving today doubly, first and foremost because they lost their loved ones, and secondly because our collective effort to recognize and commemorate the genocide in Srebrenica was vetoed by Russia.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“In the spirit of this sober commemoration, I shall be very brief. First, I would say that every country and every people should grapple with their history, and grappling with that history is a prerequisite to reconciliation. We in this country are going through something like that right now after the events in Charleston with respect to the racial divisions that persist in our society. Every society should look back, but the Russian representative's intervention just now shows not only that Russia is prepared to deny the genocide, but also that, accompanying that denial, it simply wants to distract from that core fact.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“On recovering part of his own father, Nukic said, "Although he is not complete, I will bury him, and I will know where his grave is". He said he intends to keep searching for the remains of other victims for as long as he lives. We too must continue to search relentlessly for the full truth about Srebenica. The remains of more than 1,000 victims are still out there. They continue to haunt us, and we cannot rest until they are all found. Only by unearthing those truths and only by recognizing this genocide, the gravity of this genocide and how we outside failed to prevent it will we be able to help the region move beyond such a dark part of its history - help it walk towards greater reconciliation, which we all seek - and live up to the promise of preventing genocide in our time.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“The identification is important for victims' families, particularly those who never have been able to confirm what happened to their loved ones and who expect to find out that they were killed but have nothing tangible to prove it. The remains help give them a long overdue sense of closure. Thanks to Nukie, many bones got their names, as a staffer at the Institute has said. This year, partial remains of Nukie's father were finally found - though not by Nukie himself - in a mass grave. Nukie will bury his father on Saturday in Srebenica - one of 136 newly identified victims to be buried alongside the 6,241 victims already interred in a joint cemetery there. He will be joined by thousands of mourners who assemble each year to mark the genocide.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“When the men and boys paused briefly at the top of a hill, tanks and guns opened fire. His father and brother were killed immediately, along with others. Nukie himself managed to escape, eventually finding his way to a refugee camp. In 1999, Nukie returned to Potocari and found his way back to that hill. He found bloodied clothes and shoes and three skeletons there, but none belonged to his family. Since then, he has spent every single day searching the woods around Srebenica for victims' remains. What began as a search for his father and brother has become a search for the remains of all victims. He has said that a day rarely goes by that he does not find some remains, which he reports to Bosnia's Missing Persons Institute, which then tests the bones' DNA against a network of survivors' DNA.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“At the hearings at the ICTY, perpetrators and victims alike testified to how heavy machinery had been brought in to dig up the earth in order to bury victims before the executions even occurred. As the victims - many of them blindfolded with their hands bound - were led to their death, they heard not only gunshots and cries, but also the roar of bulldozers digging the mass graves in which they would eventually be buried. In closing, I wouldjust like to tell one story. Ramiz Nukie nearly ended up in one of those mass graves. As Bosnian Serb forces approached Potocari in July 1995, he said goodbye to his wife and children and fled into the forest with his father, brother and thousands of other Bosnian men and boys. He shared his story recently with a reporter.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“If the mothers of the boys executed in Srebrenica - boys executed just because they were Bosnian Muslims - were present today, they would ask how anybody could abstain on their reality; but, far worse, they would ask how any country could use the privilege of permanent membership on the Council to negate entirely what has happened to them. The crime of genocide is the crime that the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was written and ratified to prevent and punish. The crime of genocide in Srebrenica is what the genocide Convention, which all of us have ratified, exists to prevent and punish. Reconciliation cannot be built by burying the dark parts of one's history, however unsettling they may be.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“Would anybody here dream of arguing that we should not mark the Rwandan genocide or, indeed, that we should deny it because a group of genocide deniers said it might undermine reconciliation or stability? Does Holocaust denial advance reconciliation, or do we all agree that recognition and remembrance are the key, critical ingredients to moving forward? Everyone here knows the answer to those questions, yet a number of countries today have chosen to remain neutral on genocide recognition by abstaining from supporting the draft resolution.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“The Council did everything in its power to get Russia on board with this simple draft resolution, which does not even name the perpetrators, but Russia had a red line. The draft resolution could not reference the genocide in Srebrenica; it could not reference a fact. Twenty years ago, the international community failed to protect the people taking refuge in Srebrenica, and the result was genocide. Today, because of Russia's refusal to call what happened in Srebrenica by its rightful name - genocide - the Council is again failing to live up to its responsibility. This is a veto of a well-established fact, documented by hundreds of thousands of pages of witness testimony, photographic evidence and physical forensic evidence of the kind I encountered on my walks. The Rwandan genocide, like the Srebrenica genocide, is an established fact.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“The refusal to acknowledge that genocide occurred is not only deeply hurtful to the victims and their families, who have already endured so much, but it is the very obstacle to reconciliation. Imagine being the mother of those five sons, killed in the Srebrenica genocide, and being told that a denial of the genocide would advance reconciliation. It is madness - a madness motivated by a similar negation of the Bosnian Muslim experience that helped fuel the slaughter at Srebenica in the first place. As long as the truth is denied - whether in the Council or in the region - there can be no meaningful reconciliation. Imagine if this were us - if those were our families. Would we reconcile when our experience was being denied? There is no stability in genocide denial.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“As we saw today, some political leaders and groups denied that genocide took place in Srebrenica or fail to wish to recognize it. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik last month called the genocide "the biggest sham of the twentieth century". We have heard such statements from Holocaust deniers and even, more recently, from Rwandan genocide deniers. Individuals who use such phrases humiliate themselves, and they embarrass and mislead those whom they claim to represent. Genocide happened in Srebenica. That is the conclusion reached by both the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice, based on mounds of evidence.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“We also commemorate Srebrenica to show our ongoing commitment to holding accountable the perpetrators of those atrocities. The perpetrators of the genocide in Srebrenica killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys and raped countless women and girls, in part because they felt confident that they would never be punished. That is why it is so important that all of the indicted masterminds and commanders of the genocide in Srebrenica - most notably Ratko Mladie and Radovan Karadzie - are now facing trial for their crimes in The Hague. That shows that the arm ofjustice is long and that abusive regimes - from the Al-Assad regime that gases its own people to the North Korean Government that works its people to death in gulags - will one day have to answer to their atrocities.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“We revisit so we can try to learn from our collective failure - and by ours, I mean the world's, the Security Council's and particularly that of Governments, including mine, that had the power to prevent what happened but did not. Bosnians believed that they would be protected by a United Nations flag and by the principles it stood for. They took refuge in a place literally called a safe area, yet when Bosnian Serb forces probed the United Nations willingness to protect civilians under its watch, the peacekeepers melted away and the Bosnian Serbs pressed ahead. First, they cut off fuel and other essential supplies; they then attacked the peacekeepers' outposts; and after that, they disarmed and humiliated the peacekeepers themselves. Promised NATO air strikes never materialized.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“Many children of those killed in Srebrenica were interspersed among those on the march. Most were teenage girls and young women who had grown up without fathers and brothers. Far fewer young men than women took part in the walk - a chilling result of the fact that so many young boys had been executed. Remains were still being dug up and mourned. One mother I met in Srebrenica was burying the fourth of her five sons at a mass grave site in the centre of town. She was still searching for the remains of her fifth. It is that mother's truth and pain that was vetoed by Russia today. Why should we continue to retrace victim's harrowing journey, or why, for that matter, do we continue to gather, whether it is here at the United Nations, or in Srebrenica, to mark this day and to retell these gut-wrenching accounts of the victims?”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“Subsequently, he discovered a pile of canes and another pile, of eyeglasses - the canes of the old men who had been executed for one reason: because they were Bosnian Muslim. Canes! In 2005 David and I joined the Bosnian families of those who had been massacred as they walked along the route that many of Srebrenica's Muslim men and boys had taken while fleeing the fallen safe area. The families were tracing their loved ones' journeys in reverse. Although it was 10 years since the genocide, all along the route we came across the human remains of the victims: scraps of clothing, shoes, discarded identification cards and even scattered bone fragments protruding from the earth. In 2010, when I led a United States presidential delegation to Srebrenica on behalf of President Obama, I retraced the final leg of that journey again.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“When I learned that Russia was planning to veto the Security Council draft resolution (S/2015/508) commemorating the genocide in Srebrenica, I confess I had a similar reaction: "No!" I said. "No!" Why would Russia vote to deny recognition of the Srebrenica genocide? Today's vote mattered. It mattered hugely to the families of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide. Russia's veto is heartbreaking for those families, and it is a further stain on the Council's record. I spent the tenth and the fifteenth anniversaries of the genocide in Srebrenica - there, in Srebrenica. In 2005 I met up with my former colleague journalist David Rohde, who is here with us today. In August 1995, days after the massacres, it was David who discovered a leg protruding from a mass grave site in the woods and fields ofNova Kasaba.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“I thank Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson and High Commissioner for Human Rights Al Hussein for their powerful briefings. I was a 24-year-old reporter in July 1995 living in Sarajevo when the Bosnian Serbs made their move on Srebrenica. I was there when, a few days after the Srebrenica safe area fell, a colleague first told me about reports of mass executions. "No!" was all I could say. "No!" Even having lived in a war zone and under siege, and even having seen innumerable atrocities, I could not bring myself to believe that Bosnian Serb forces would execute every Muslim man and boy in their custody. For all of the brutality of a horrific war, that was a singular horror. It was genocide, a fact now proven again and again by international tribunals.”
2015-07-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7481 (2015) · source
“Sadly, given the very high level of violence and the very large numbers of displaced persons, UNAMID's presence is needed now more than ever, and resolution 2228 (2015) makes it clear that any refinement of the mission will be based on conditions on the ground and progress towards achieving the clearly identified benchmarks, now laid out in the annex to the mandate in the resolution. We call upon the Government of the Sudan and all armed groups to cooperate fully with UNAMID as it seeks to carry out the difficult and critical work of protecting civilians in Darfur against the backdrop of a serious deterioration in the security situation on the ground.”
2015-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7475 (2015) · source
“The more than 2.5 million internally displaced people and the 4.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance today demand an urgent refocusing and recommitment to protecting the civilians threatened in Darfur and, as others have noted, to advancing peace. Today, we have unanimously renewed the peacekeeping mission sent to protect the people of Darfur from those who would do them harm. As we have reaffirmed in resolution 2228 (2015) adopted this morning, the Security Council has an enduring responsibility to evaluate our peacekeeping operations' performance. That includes considering when and how a mission should end. It is, of course, prudent for the Council to know what it means for the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) - or any peacekeeping mission - to have completed its mission.”
2015-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7475 (2015) · source
“Today, as a Council, we have recognized and recommitted to Darfur. We have done so as we face intensifying levels of conflict and a continuing and brutal campaign waged by the Government of the Sudan and its associated militia. We have done so against a backdrop of massive displacements and reports of horrific crimes such as mass rapes. Those living in Darfur continue to be subject to having their homes and communities burned to the ground and their livelihoods systematically disrupted. We have seen more violent displacement of people in Darfur this past year than in the 10 previous years. Ten years ago, however, Darfur enjoyed a perch at the top of the international peace and security agenda. Today, the suffering of the people of Darfur has become less visible. Our attention has been diverted.”
2015-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7475 (2015) · source
“Concretely, are there things that they are missing or steps that they think we could be taking to ensure this most basic care for the troops and police under their command?”
2015-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7464 (2015) · source
“It is not, to my knowledge, but it may be that information is circulated that we are not aware of. Could we think constructively and productively about procedural changes that might help us mobilize the will to overcome this challenge, which he eloquently described? I would also ask Under-Secretary-General Ladsous what is needed from Member States, what is needed within the Secretariat, what is needed in the missions to improve support to peacekeepers with regard to medical evacuations? This is an issue that, of course, every troop-contributing country and police-contributing country probably would like to have more assurance on before they deploy into harm's way. I would ask the same question of the Force Commanders, as they are dealing with the mechanics of medical evacuation in the field.”
2015-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7464 (2015) · source
“First, itwouldbe helpful to hear from General Yohannes, as we have about MINUSMA, what the biggest training gaps are among troops who arrive as part of UNMISS and within the Mission headquarters staff. What are the gaps that he would like to see filled? We would welcome any insight he has as to how we, as the Council, might help address these gaps. I should like also to know what General Finn's standard operating procedure is when a contingent comes to him and informs him that it has certain caveats on his operation. We heard his concerns about caveats, but when he receives that information, does he discuss this, then, with the contingent Commander? Does he inform Department of Peacekeeping Operations headquarters? Is this reported to the Security Council in any manner?”
2015-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7464 (2015) · source
“Finally, I would be remiss ifI did not address the recent terrible allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse being committed at the hands of international forces, including some United Nations peacekeepers. While the vast majority of peacekeepers serve honourably, and make, again, tremendous sacrifices, I must say unequivocally that this alleged conduct is unacceptable and that any personnel who commit such acts must be brought to justice by their national authorities. There is no room in United Nations peacekeeping or in any regional or national mission for those who would prey on the most vulnerable, whom they are there to protect. This should be a principle that all of us can rally around at the United Nations. Before I give up the floor, Ijust have a few questions for our briefers.”
2015-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7464 (2015) · source
“In emergencies, commanders need to know that orders will be carried out fully and without pushback. But even open caveats, which are made known to mission leadership from the start, are deeply concerning when they restrict the ability of contingents to undertake mission-critical tasks. Decisions on how peacekeepers respond to a threat or how to engage to protect civilians should be left to the Force Commander and mission leadership and carried out through the mission's chain of command, with full respect for the mission's mandate. Those unwilling to abide by the Force Commander's directives or to fulfil the mandate should not deploy.”
2015-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7464 (2015) · source