News / Politics

World must be vigilant against future genocides: Iran UN envoy

Monday, 02 July 2018 11:16 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 04 July 2018 4:38 PM ]

Gholamali Khoshroo, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations (File photo)

Iran says the international community must be vigilant towards halting future mass killings and genocides.

Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations Gholamali Khoshroo made the remarks on Monday while addressing the UN General Assembly’s meeting on “Responsibility to Protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

"The Islamic Republic of Iran fully shares the sentiment that the international community must be vigilant not to let the horrors of mass killings and genocide of the past be repeated in the future. No one forgets how the inaction on the part of the United Nations in the face of tragic cases of genocide and crimes against humanity as well as outrageous acts of aggression in the last two decades led to the death, injury and displacement of millions of innocent people," he said.

Khoshroo further went on to criticize the UN Security Council for its lack of political will and action towards crimes against humanity.

"The authorization by the Security Council should not be understood as a carte blanch for committing new atrocities. It also goes without saying that the Security Council is not free to selectively opt for authorization of use of force in cases consistent with the will of its Member States and turn a blind eye on clear situations of mass atrocities as we have witnessed in the past and we are currently witnessing," he added.
"The Security Council is thus bound by well-established principles of international law and should respect sovereignty of States and their independence and action to prevent mass crime atrocities should be seen as a last resort and once all efforts to take effective measures at the national level have been exhausted," he added.

He further stressed that concept of responsibility to protect has become a political tool for interventionist policies to be used in a selective manner.

The UN envoy noted that the illegal use of force by certain states is an obvious example of the abuse of well-established rules and principles of international legislation.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran insists on the primacy of well-established principles of international law as enshrined by the UN Charter in all circumstances. We hope that any discussions on the issue will be done with an effort to prevent any future abuses of newly emerging concepts such as what we have witnessed in the past about some of the provisions of the UN Charter," he noted.

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