Jordan

The Secretary-General's report (S/2014/181) makes for grim reading, and very clearly there is much we, the Member States concerned, need to do. And in that context, when it comes to the presence of Syrian refugees in Jordan and their vulnerabilities, as alluded to in the report, even though we note that the principal refugee camp for Syrians falls under the supervision of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Jordanian Government accepts full responsibility for whatever may happen on its territory and is committed to ensuring the security of all refugees, especially women and children. Naturally, we condemn any attempt by any individual or individuals to exploit them. We also need help — much more help — and perhaps we will soon reach a stage at which other countries with real capacities may consider sharing the burden and accepting greater numbers of Syrian refugees than is presently the case.

Finally, I ask once again the painful question of whether we as a collective membership, bound together in this Organization by its Charter, actually have the credibility to offer strong opinions on this subject matter? Do we have the credibility when all of us have refused to undertake the complete range of actions necessary to ensure that sexual exploitation and abuse by our own peacekeepers — United Nations peacekeepers — is reduced to zero? Can we not be accused by others of hypocrisy when in this Chamber we rightly condemn all expressions of conflict-related sexual violence committed against women, girls and boys, and speak of them as criminal and intolerable — as we have done for 14 years now — while down the hall, only a few metres from here in the Sixth Committee, we do next to nothing, year in year out, on the draft convention on criminal accountability of United Nations officials and experts on mission — a draft that has been on the agenda of the Sixth Committee since 2007.

I do not wish to be misunderstood: if we had done everything we should have done over the past nine years to ensure the total elimination of this abominable practice by our own peacekeepers, and they still occurred, then we could accept that there was little more we can do. But we, as Member States, have not done everything, and so we cannot make that claim. The United Nations is required to set an example before our publics as an Organization that will without question pay special attention to the most vulnerable and defenceless of protected persons in war, with first a guaranteed protection provided by ourselves, from ourselves, and then from others. What must we therefore do? We must adopt the convention on criminal accountability as soon as possible. We must make the United Nations a co-examiner of the facts, even when the allegations involve United Nations military personnel. We must be more transparent with regard to the severity and nature of the crimes being committed by United Nations peacekeepers. We believe that the OIOS takes too long in establishing the facts, which then must be prepared by the criminal jurisdiction concerned in order for them to become admissible in courts of law. Perhaps, as it was originally suggested, another slim but effective investigative capacity needs to be considered.