“Perhaps that’s our fate”, Obama said in his last speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
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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.
During the meeting that was held on the sidelines of the General Assembly 71st session at the UN Headquarters, Ban thanked US President for the strong and consistent support of the United States for the United Nations on many issues, in particular climate change.
Obama, who will leave office in January, spoke of progress during his eight-year tenure, including reducing extreme poverty, resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, opening relations with Cuba, and agreeing to an global deal on climate change.
Whether the 135 heads of state and government and more than 50 ministers are able to make any progress before the high-level meeting ends on September 26 remains to be seen. Still, he stuck faithfully to his insistence that diplomatic efforts and not military solutions are the key to resolving Syria’s war and other conflicts.
Trump has controversially proposed building a wall on the USA border with Mexico to keep out undocumented migrants.
“We must recognise that refugees are a symptom of larger failures – be it war, ethnic tensions or persecution”, he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who steps down on December 31, and U.S. President Barack Obama who will leave office in January, will be addressing the 193-member world body for the last time.
In a less-than-subtle jab at Donald Trump, the Republican running to replace him, Obama said, “The world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall and prevent (extremism) from affecting our own societies”.
The president was unabashed in his critique of Russian Federation as he laid out his diagnosis of the world’s ills.
At the heart of that approach, Mr Obama said, was the notion that the biggest conflicts were best solved when nations cooperated rather than tackling them individually.
Mr Trump has called for a drastic shift from what he has called Mr Obama’s “weak” foreign policy, pledging to limit immigration to the USA, torture terrorism suspects and reconsider United States alliances.
He said governing had become more hard as people lose faith in public institutions and tensions among nations spiral out of control more rapidly.
“This is the paradox that defines the world today”, Obama said, adding that the world could not afford to “dismiss these visions”.
Obama has also rallied businesses to help address the refugee crisis and met with business leaders just before the summit on Tuesday, who he said had made commitments worth more than $650 million to empower refugees.
National Security Advisor Susan Rice in June announced that the gathering – co-hosted along with the USA by Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, Jordan, Mexico, Sweden and the UN Secretary General – would seek an increase in funding of at least 30%, a doubling of permanent resettlement, and expanded access to education and work rights for refugees.
Obama has called a follow-up summit Tuesday afternoon to spur concrete pledges.
The UK has played a leading role in the fight against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, will host an worldwide conference on Somalia in 2017, and has championed the work the UN Secretary-General has led to develop a strategy for preventing violent extremism, she said.
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“Imagine what it would be like for our family, our children if the unspeakable happened to us?” he asked.
