United Nations, Jan 11
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on the international community to provide more political attention and resources to the world body as it faces an overflowing plate of conflicts and disasters.
"The situations in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic have gone from bad to worse," he said in his first news conference of the new year Friday.
Ban highlighted not only the immediate need to end the fighting in those countries but also the larger imperatives of 2014 in the run-up to reaching the UN's anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and achieving a global accord to counter climate change.
The year 2015 is the deadline for attaining both targets.
Ban stressed that the UN was doing its utmost to ease the suffering and provide life-saving aid in all three strife-torn countries, staying and delivering assistance wherever it could even as people continued to flee their homes and countries.
"These are avoidable tragedies in which millions of civilians are paying an unconscionable price," he said.
"I am especially alarmed by the spread of sectarian animosity, and by the dangerous regional and global spillover effects. Years of development are at stake. A generation of young people is at risk."
According to him, UN personnel were all showing tremendous courage and professionalism in all the three countries “but humanitarian assistance, vital as it is, can be only part of our response”.
"The international community must pull together to help these countries find the path of peace,” he added.
On Syria, Ban called for an immediate end to all violence, including the government's use of barrel bombs and other heavy weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately.
By:IANS