Mr Obama warned that the forces of globalisation have exposed “deep fault lines” across the globe, calling for a “course correction” to ensure that nations and their peoples do not retreat into a more sharply divided world.
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“I believe we can not allow ourselves to stop here”.
The 72 year-old South Korean’s term as Secretary General ends on December the 31st. “I believe refugees can make us stronger”, he said.
“We see too many governments muzzling journalists and quashing dissent and censoring the flow of information”, he said. He acknowledged “deep fault lines in the existing global order” where “basic security, basic order has broken down” in the Middle East with “terrorist networks using social media to prey upon the minds of our youth, endangering open societies and spurring anger against innocent immigrants and Muslims”.
“Powerful nations contest the constraints placed on them by global law.
I’m sure President Obama will do so (today) as well”. The president peppered his speech with subtle references to Trump, his calls for building a wall on the Mexican border and his denigration of Muslims and immigrants.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined those who called for a solution in Syria, but his main focus was an exiled cleric in the U.S., Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan and his government accuse of fomenting the failed July coup.
Obama called the global refugee crisis a “test of our common humanity” during an an address at a summit on refugees during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in NY.
Obama spoke for about 45 minutes.
United States President Barack Obama addresses the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters.
Ban Ki-moon used his final address to the General Assembly to unleash his outrage at leaders who have been supporting the five-year-long conflict in Syria. “I urge you to bring the Paris Agreementinto force this year”.
The administration has yet to release a country-by-country breakdown of the 110,000 refugee figure.
Tensions continued on Monday when a strike, which witnesses say came from the air, hit an aid convoy at Urum al-Kubra, destroying 18 United Nations lorries and killing about 20 civilians.
“If we were to turn refugees away simply due to their background or religion or, for example, because they are Muslim, then we would be reinforcing terrorist propaganda that nations such as my own are opposed to Islam”, Obama said.
“The humanitarians delivering lifesaving aid were heroes”, he added. “They are victims. They’re families who want to be safe and to work, be good citizens and contribute to their country… who are interested in assimilating and contributing to the society in which they find themselves”. He cited the rise of “people power” with mobile phones that now blanket the world, reductions in poverty, political transitions in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, and the cease-fire agreement in Colombia. “After so much violence and misrule, the future of Syria should not rest on the fate of a single man”, Ban said of Syria’s Assad.
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He expressed regret for sexual abuse by United Nations peacekeepers in Central African Republic and an outbreak of cholera in Haiti.
