Top pick: Laos expresses sadness over death of foreign tourists due to suspected methanol posinoning
26 May 2015
Addressing a gathering of people hailing from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, Sudan and Syria, Ban recalled his time as a child during the Korean War when he fled, along with his family, into the hills surrounding his village.
“As we climbed in the rain, I looked back on the only world I knew: where I had played, where I had gone to school, where I had lived with my family; all of it was in flames. Our lives went up in smoke,” he remembered.
He said, “Despite the hardships, despite the darkness, I came through it. Today, I carry a simple message: The world is with you, and I am with you.”
The Secretary-General drew attention to the recent tragedies in the Mediterranean and in Southeast Asia where thousands of migrants and refugees have perished after falling victim to human trafficking as they sought better lives elsewhere.
According to the UN, in the Mediterranean alone, the 1,800 deaths in the first month of the year represent a 20-fold increase over the same period last year – and at this pace, between 10,000 and 20,000 migrants would perish by autumn.