UN Security Council also failed in Sri Lanka response: UN Deputy Chief
Saturday, 21 December 2013 00:00
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It was not merely the UN Secretariat that had failed to protect civilians during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s war, but UN Member States, including the powerful Security Council, a top UN official said in New York yesterday.
Addressing a press briefing at the UN headquarters in New York, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Elisson who met with Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa last week said that the Charles Petrie report that had studied the UN response to the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka and determined there had been a “systematic failure” in the organisation’s response to the humanitarian crisis in the country, he was not merely referring to UN staff.
“When it comes to what happened in the last phase of the horrible conflict in Sri Lanka in 2009, I want to refer to reports that were made at that time and to Charles Petrie’s report. When he talked about systemic failure, he meant not only the Secretariat, but also Member States. There was a responsibility not least from the Security Council’s side,” the Deputy General Secretary told reporters.
He said the UN had decided to accept those observations made in the Petrie report.
Elisson said he would not go further into that because the UN saw as its major task the need to take the findings seriously.
“We saw as our major task to take this very seriously and to take it one step further and draw lessons from Sri Lanka, but also Rwanda reports, military reports of the past, and say ‘how can we be more concrete?’ and really, make a serious attempt to make sure that we send a message to Member States that we now have to increase the level of attention on situations that will arise in the future, out of this frustration of saying ‘never again’,” he explained.
Elisson noted that just the fact that the UN says “never again” and have done so a number of times shows that “we have failed, we continue to fail”.
He said the UN had not spent more time on Sri Lanka other than for the earlier reports on the country. “We have said we accept those reports and then: “what can we do to make sure that we do it better if it happens again?” he said.
Elisson was responding to a question about what the UN was actually learning from its systematic failure in Sri Lanka and why the UN continues to stay silent on ongoing violations in Sri Lanka. The reporter asked the UN Deputy General Secretary if there had been a discussion on these issues with Secretary Rajapaksa during his meeting. (DB)
