22 Aug 2014

UN failed to save ‘hundreds of thousands of lives’

In her final speech to the UN Security Council, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay says a focus on short-term interests stopped the group from preventing large scale human suffering.

In a stinging address to the 15-member body, Ms Pillay criticised the group’s indecision and failure to act.

“Short term geopolitical considerations and national interests, narrowly defined, have repeatedly taken precedence over intolerable human suffering and grave breaches of and long term threats to international peace and security,” she said.

“I firmly believe that greater responsiveness by this council would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”

It was her final briefing after six years in her role as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and she said that crises in Syria, Afghanistan, Central African
Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Gaza, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Ukraine “hammer home” the international community’s failure to prevent conflict.