President Barack Obama painted a dark picture Tuesday of a world divided between those who want to cooperate with global partners and those who want to retreat into division and isolationism. “Regrettably Obama’s heartfelt call for more compassionate action stands in stark contrast to the polices of some rich countries who are proposing higher walls and more punitive border controls”. “Developed countries need to do much more”. This includes a refugee appeal from South Sudan which is funded at 19 percent, while Yemen and Syria’s regional refugee response plans are funded at 22 and 49 percent.
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“The bitter truth is that this summit was called because we have been largely failing…it is shameful the victims of abominable crimes should be made to suffer further by our failures to give them protection”, he continued. “We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration or we can retreat into a world sharply divided and ultimately in conflict along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion”.
“If we were to turn refugees back, we would be reinforcing terrorist propaganda that nations like my own are somehow opposed to Islam”. We did not see the [European migrant] crisis really until a year ago.
“The President’s commitment to ensuring that the United States plays a leading role on this issue is not shared by a lot of people in Congress, including by a lot of people in the Republican majority in Congress”, Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.
The key driver of the modern crisis has been Syria’s long-running civil war, though large numbers have also fled instability in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reading Obama’s lengthy speech after the fact, I felt his pain in wanting to take credit for the progress he believes he has made as leader of the free world instead of responding to the discouraging news that dominates the headlines. He also conferred with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang about North Korea’s most recent nuclear test. “At the same time, there’s also a great deal of unease”. However, the words of the US President, even if they may have strong influence on many states, sound quite void as his incumbency is soon coming to an end. “Last year I think we were at 70,000”, he noted, referring to number of refugees the United States accepted from around the world.
“As a friend of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, it pains me that this past decade has been ten years lost to peace”, Ban said.
For all of those achievements, global unease remains – some of it connected to American political developments. Obama has used his United Nations addresses in the past to confront domestic anxieties, including during his reelection battle with Mitt Romney in 2012 and later when racial tensions prompted protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
This year’s United Nations gathering has played out against the harrowing backdrop of the deepening civil war in Syria and the renewed failure of USA and Russian diplomatic efforts to stem the violence for any meaningful period of time.
“The increasing skepticism of our worldwide order can be found in the most advanced democracies”.
Obama, who in his address at the General Assembly urged to do more, promised that the over 50 nations taking part in the summit will double the number of refugees welcomed from war zones, welcoming 360,000 this year.
“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.
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As the world efforts to contend with a mounting refugee crisis that has displaced more people than the new obligations come. “We must finally get ahead in tackling this crisis”, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
