UN’s Ban Ki-moon visits Ottawa, Glebe Collegiate
Students at Glebe Collegiate Institute learned some hard lessons Thursday about the Middle East from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who said the Syrian conflict has reached an “almost uncontrollable point” after more than five years of civil war.
The two leaders arrived at school 20 minutes late for their exceptional dissertation on world affairs, which meant the students stayed well past the 3 p.m. dismissal bell to hear the two answer questions from members of the Grade 11 world affairs class.
Three questions concentrated on the situation in the Middle East and the resulting refugee crisis, while another sought to understand how the leaders proposed to meet the commitments made in the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change without damaging the economy.
Ban told the more than 1,000 students gathered in the school’s century-old auditorium that he’s been deeply troubled by the “tragic, horrendous” civil war in Syria.
More than 450,000 people have been killed in the conflict, he said, while another 4.5 million have fled their homes and are refugees. The long war has fuelled extremism and has hastened the spread of terrorism throughout the region while leaving 11.5 million people in immediate need of humanitarian aid.
“The situation, the crisis, has spread and reached an almost uncontrollable point,” he said, even as the international community and the UN Security Council have been unable to agree on how to address the conflict.
Ban called for an immediate ceasefire and another Syrian peace conference while aid is delivered to the 11.5 million people whose lives have been imperilled by the war. Half a million people, he told the students, live in cities besieged by Assad government forces or those of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Ban’s description of the desperate state of the Syrian conflict comes only days after Trudeau announced Canada will halt airstrikes against ISIL later this month while it deploys more special forces to train Iraqi and Kurdish troops.
Grade 11 student Mathilde Raymond asked Trudeau what evidence he has that the government’s new strategy will be more effective than the old one.
Trudeau told the student audience that bringing stability to the Middle East requires an approach that addresses issues of defence and security, humanitarian aid, good governance and refugee support. He said the Canadian government has analyzed what it can do better than other nations, and has decided to take advantage of the country’s military experience in Afghanistan and its peacekeeping tradition.
“We realized that how Canada can best help our allies, best help as part of a coalition against ISIL, would be by beefing up our training support, strengthening our humanitarian support and our support for refugees,” he said.
What’s more, in answer to a question about how to combat Islamophobia, Trudeau said Canada needs to “underline to the world that the terrorist acts committed in the name of Islam are not Islam: It’s a twisted perversion of the Islamic faith.
“Indeed,” he said, “the well over one million Muslim Canadians in our country right now are proof that Islam is not incompatible with western, democratic values, with the kind of rights and freedoms we stand for. The more we can showcase that ISIL is wrong, that Islam is not incompatible with the kinds of values that free societies stand for, the more that threatens and undermines ... ISIL.”
Ban told the students that people under 25 represent half of the world’s population, and he urged students to demand that their leaders make their world “better for us. We believe that the future is yours, this world, this planet is yours.”
After the assembly, Raymond said she supports Trudeau’s decision to withdraw fighter jets from Syria even though she endorses the need for military action.
“People are dying, people are suffering a lot,” she said.