“I promise you, we will all be better for it”, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said of welcoming refugees. “We are not as unified as we should be in pushing to make it stop”.
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That’s considered a blistering pace in the world of worldwide diplomacy, reflecting a sense of urgency in the fight against global warming and a desire to seal the deal before the Obama administration leaves office.
“And together, now, we have to open our hearts and do more to help refugees who are desperate for home”, Obama argued.
Obama, in an emotional event created to invoke empathy for the plight of refugees, called it a “crisis of epic proportions” that tested both the global order and the world’s humanity.
“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. Regardless of that, the U.S. president noted that there’s a dark side to social media, citing numerous examples of terrorist cells recruiting Western youth on social media. “Somebody loves them just as much”. “This is the paradox that defines our world today”, Obama added.
Like Ban, Obama said “there’s no ultimate military victory to be won” in the Syria conflict, instead “the hard work of diplomacy” is needed to end the violence.
Obama warned that if communities are not allowed to co-exist, the “embers of extremism will continue to burn” causing sufferings to countless human beings and export of extremism overseas. Obama’s aides have focused on how the US has a fraction of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than it had when Obama took office and how nations are finally poised to act in concert to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
The millions of refugees leaving war-torn Syria and other countries wracked by conflict have led to a backlash in some countries, including in the USA, where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has suggested banning Muslim immigrants. “We have to imagine what it would be like for our families for our children”.
Obama spoke for about 45 minutes.
Mr Obama’s long-standing differences with Russian president Vladimir Putin over his actions in Ukraine have accompanied intense disagreement over Syria’s future and a series of failed attempts by Russia and the U.S. to resolve the civil war there together.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon noted that post-war healing efforts have deepened in Sri Lanka. He leaves office after a decade at the end of this year. Each of us as leaders, each nation, can choose to reject those who appeal to our worst impulses and embrace those who appeal to our best.
Tensions continued on Monday when a strike, which witnesses say came from the air, hit an aid convoy at Urum al-Kubra, destroying 18 of 31 United Nations lorries and killing about 20 civilians.
“Just when we think it can not get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower”, Ban said in his last speech as leader of the organisation after a decade in the job, much of it preoccupied with Syria. “The humanitarians delivering life-saving aid were heroes”. Ban called the bombers “cowards”.
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The global chaos facing the leaders was made even starker in the past two days with the attacks in New York City and the deadly attack on a United Nations humanitarian convoy in Syria and the near collapse of a cease-fire in the war-ravaged country that has been repeatedly broken. 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.
