TIRANA, June 2 /ATA/ – By Maela Marini/ Prime Minister Edi Rama delivered the keynote address on Thursday in the open debate of the UN Security Council on international accountability, which has been put on the agenda by Albania as one of the priorities of our country’s program in this council.
Rama stated from the UN headquarters that crimes should not go unpunished.
He stressed that “Albania has been and will continue to be at the forefront of efforts to deliver justice and deter further crimes in the future.”
“This Council or more broadly the UN membership are no stranger to differences in opinion, disagreements over divisions. They are part of life, including international life, but they are amplified if we focus only on the present moment, the politics of the day, and close interests. Yet at the core of these clear arguments lie the fundamental values that still exist and are the ones that bring this international community together. These values represent the moral link that makes the international community a community where the total amount is always greater than the individual parts. These values and norms are enshrined in what we commonly call international law. They show their true meaning and their real power in times of difficulties, crises, conflicts, and wars, ” said Rama.
“As we know, it has not been easy to get to this point. Tens of millions of people had to die before we could discover and accept the basic tenets of international law. States have established extensive legal bodies to regulate their conduct and have voluntarily committed to respect them. “Millions more have been sacrificed for us, to accept our collective responsibility to abide by to the rules and to be held to account when we are not able or when we do not have the will to respect them,” Rama continued.
The Prime Minister said that “yet again our basic values enshrined in the growing corpus of international law, humanitarian law and criminal law continue to be systematically and grossly violated.”
“All serious violations of international law must be treated with the same level of fairness and determination because they are part of the same problem. As for the wise words of Martin Luther King, injustice somewhere is a threat to justice everywhere. As we speak we reiterate the need for upholding common values and norms we are all aware that both are under enormous stress. “We know that when we fail to stand up firmly and assume our collective responsibility, when we fail to uphold the right to truth, justice, effective remedy and reparation, our institutions become weaker and public trust fades away, ” said Rama.
“We are then left with frustration and impatience about the lack of progress, about the absence of delivery and with perpetrators looming large. War crimes, crimes against humanity, we have seen how they destabilize states, jeopardize whole regions, threaten peace and security,” said Rama.
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