UN Chief admits failure to monitor Lankan situation

In his keynote address during the high level debate by world leaders in the General Assembly last Tuesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to "systemic failure" within the United Nations to effectively monitor the grave human rights violations during the final stages of the battle against the LTTE -- both by Government forces and the rebels.

This was also the subject of a question and answer at Friday's UN media briefing.

Question: I wanted to know about this report on the UN's actions and inactions in 2009 in Sri Lanka. I did notice that the Secretary-General, obviously, in his speech to the General Assembly, said that an internal review has identified systemic failure. But, I wanted to know if the report itself is going to be made public in any fashion.

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: Well, as you point out, the Secretary-General did, indeed, refer to this in his speech in the General Assembly. I think you can take that as a sign of how seriously he takes this whole process. He did refer, indeed, to the difficulties and failures within the UN system, but also within the international community as a whole. And that is something that we need to look at for the future.

And so, therefore, this report and the findings are clearly quite important. When we get to that point of coming out with details, I will be sure to let you know. But, we are not at that point yet. And, as you rightly point out, there is still, as far as I can figure it out, three days to go.