Ban spoke as the U.S., Russian Federation and more than a dozen other countries attempted to resurrect a week-old truce, and Washington and Moscow argued over who was responsible for an attack Monday on an aid convoy that killed some 20 civilians that the United Nations chief denounced as a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack”.
Advertisement
Obama said the more than 50 countries and worldwide organizations that participated in the summit had collectively increased their contributions to humanitarian groups and United Nations appeals this year by some $4.5 billion.
Standing before the United Nations for the last time as president, Barack Obama will reassure foreign leaders that the world is better equipped to tackle its challenges than at nearly any point in history despite a cascade of harrowing crises that seem devoid of viable solutions.
“Perhaps that’s our fate”, Obama said in his last speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
Obama missed his turn as the second speaker which promoted president of the General Assembly to call Chad’s leader, who was the next speaker on the list, to make his national statement.
“You have to know that today the European Union has a clear objective to restore order on its external borders”, European Council President Donald Tusk said in his remarks, signaling a growing sense that patience in Europe with the migrant flow is wearing thin. The White House said more than four dozen USA businesses had pledged $650 million, including Facebook, Twitter, MasterCard, Johnson & Johnson and yogurt maker Chobani.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power is already on record in assuring that the president also plans to address the North Korean issue during his speech.
Yet it will be hard for world leaders to look beyond the pressing problems that are shadowing this year’s United Nations confab.
British Prime Minister Theresa May said that a global response was needed against terrorists who are exploiting banking networks, targeting airlines and using social media “to spread an ideology that is recruiting people to their cause all over the world”.
The UN estimates that there are about bout 21.3 million refugees forced to flee due to armed conflict or persecution.
“We have to imagine what it would be like for our family, for our children”. “Somebody loves them just as much”.
“A quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, the world is by many measures less violent and more prosperous than ever before, and yet our societies are filled with uncertainty and unease and strife. As people lose trust in institutions, governing becomes more hard and tensions between nations become more quick to surface”.
Obama says the benefits of global integration need to be broadly shared.
On Monday the Syrian military declared the ceasefire over and 18 United Nations aid trucks were destroyed as they tried to bring relief to war-ravaged citizens near Aleppo.
A view of the dignitaries’ gallery at the opening of the general debate of the seventy-first session of the General Assembly. He said “in too many places, we see leaders rewriting constitutions, manipulating elections and taking other desperate steps to cling to power”.
With just three months to go before he steps down as United Nations chief, Ban also made a final plea to end the “madness” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and gave world leaders advice on good governance.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon holds up a smartphone as he addresses the 71st session of United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in Manhattan on September 20, 2016.
Advertisement
“I think the way the President will approach this is trying to apply what we have done that’s worked in the last eight years as a template for how we deal with other crises”, Rhodes said ahead of Obama’s speech.
