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Thursday 12 Nov 2015 - 11:21 Makkah mean time-30-1-1437
UN chief Ban Ki-moon (Pic: UN News Center)
New York (IINA) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called on European leaders and the world at large to stand true to the values of human rights and respect the dignity of people fleeing conflict and poverty in Syria and elsewhere, UN News Center reported.
“The current policies are clearly not adequate,” Ban stressed in an opinion piece published in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro on the mass influx of refugees and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and African countries into Europe.
He warned that sealing borders, criminalization and detention will not resolve any problems, calling on countries instead to provide more safe and legal avenues for migrants and refugees to enter, more resettlement opportunities, better local integration options and greater investments in chronically underfunded relief operations.
Recalling his recent visits to refugees in camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and other host countries, Ban wrote that a six-year-old boy caught his eye because he himself was a refugee in his native Korea at that age: “I was forced to flee my own home during the Korean War.”
“Like millions of Europeans and others who pieced back together shattered lives following the end of the Second World War, today’s arrivals want what all people want: safety, stability and a better future for their loved ones.”
The UN chief concluded by quoting children he met at the Tenda di Abramo centre in Rome who “sang of how they had travelled from different continents, concluding their performance with a message for the world: “But what difference does it make? We are all humanity.”
AB/IINA
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