Angola defends end to armed conflict at UN
Fri, 29 May 2020 15:35 - Updated Fri, 29 May 2020 08:47
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Photo: Joaquina Bento
New York - Angola defended Wednesday in New York the urgent promotion of conflict prevention and resolution based on dialogue, with the real objective of silencing weapons and creating conditions favourable to development.
In a speech in the UN Security Council's open debate on the "protection of civilians in armed conflicts", Angola's permanent representative to the UN in New York, Ambassador Maria de Jesus Ferreira," argued that armed conflicts cannot be allowed to undermine the common development agenda.
"Angola believes that prevention is the most effective tool to deal with potential conflict situations, states are primarily responsible for protecting their civilian population and the international community has a subsidiary but very important role to play in addressing the very serious problem of threats against civilians," she emphasized at the meeting, held in video conference.
She recalled that the world continues to experience prolonged conflicts that lead to economic and humanitarian crises requiring urgent and long-term solutions, warning that terrorism, violent extremism and proxy wars by outside powers continue to pose an existential threat to civilians.
The Angolan diplomat deplored the fact that, despite the establishment of a "robust normative structure by the UN Security Council and other international bodies, the protection of civilians and the strengthening of protection in peacekeeping missions do not translate into significant improvements (...) where conflicts are rampant".
In this regard, she cited the recent UN Secretary-General's report on the protection of civilians, which estimates that more than 20,000 of them were killed or injured in 2019, among children, women, the elderly, people with disabilities and humanitarian personnel, as a result of attacks involving improvised explosive devices, ground clashes and air strikes or other tactics.