A rare positive

THE United Nations (UN) and its Secretary General are known for toeing the diplomatic line diligently but at the last General Assembly after a decade in office Ban Ki-moon shed his glib speak for startlingly forthright condemnation of multiple governments and their powerful backers. 

But does it merely underscore the massive challenges before the world? 

Both Ban and US President Barack Obama were making their final speeches at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. They did so against a backdrop of mounting bloodshed and a failing ceasefire in Syria, escalating attacks around the world by Islamic extremists and millions of people fleeing fighting and poverty. 

The UN chief, whose 10-year period at the helm of the unwieldy world body ends on 31 December, vented his pent-up frustration with uncharacteristic candour, telling the opening of the General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting that “powerful patrons” on both sides in the Syrian conflict -- which he did not identify -- “have blood on their hands”.

Ban spoke as the US, Russia 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 UN chief denounced as a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack”. Ban called the bombers “cowards”.

The Syrian conflict has killed as many as half a million people, contributed to Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II and allowed the Islamic State group to emerge as a global threat.

Obama, who stands down in January after eight years in office, acknowledged that the extremist and sectarian violence wreaking havoc in the Middle East and elsewhere “will not be quickly reversed”. Still, he stuck faithfully to his insistence that diplomatic efforts and not military solutions were the key to resolving Syria’s civil war and other conflicts.

He lamented that while the world had become a safer and more prosperous place by many measures, people have lost faith in public institutions amid frightening problems like terrorism and a devastating refugee crisis.

While there was no mention of the bitterly fought US presidential contest, this year’s General Assembly opens amid uncertainty over who will succeed Obama, and perhaps less crucially, who will succeed former South Korean diplomat Ban at the UN. 

Sri Lanka has the unique position of being one of the few bright spots in the world that was touched on by Ban, who described the country’s positive “deepening” of reconciliation. After decades of being on the wrong side of the global discourse, Sri Lanka has a rare moment in the limelight to put its best efforts before the international community. By providing answers to families of disappeared, returning land to its owners, revamping its structures and providing justice to the disenfranchised it has a chance to prove true change is possible. 

For hundreds upon thousands of Sri Lankans this is merely a bonus. It is the chance to achieve true peace and ensure that the devastation that is wrecking havoc throughout the rest of the world is never mirrored within these shores again.