President John Dramani Mahama has called for urgent action to end the war in Gaza.
He also urged member nations to extend space to the refugees from Sudan.
Speaking on September 25 at the United Nations General Assembly, President Mahama rejected arguments that a two-state solution is needed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I say contrary to the claims of some, a two-state solution would not be a reward for Hamas. It will rather be a reprieve for the hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children and people who are facing collective punishment and forced starvation for no reason other than the fact that they are Palestinians,” he said.
He criticized the UN and its member states for what he described as years of evasion and reluctance to confront the truth about the war in Gaza.
“For nearly two years, and for the fear of reprisals, we here in this General Assembly have been playing hide and seek with language to find the right words to help us avoid or excuse what we all know is taking place in Gaza,” Mahama noted.
Using an analogy, he added, “Here is the thing, it doesn’t matter what you call it. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, well then it must be a duck.”
Mahama then stressed, “The crimes in Gaza must stop. The crimes in Gaza must stop.”
Turning to Sudan, President Mahama warned that the conflict there has created what the UN itself has described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
“12 million people have had to flee their homes. When we speak of migration we refer to these 12 million Sudanese refugees,” he said.
“We as a global community should be willing to assist in much the same way that many member nations readily assisted new refugees coming out of Ukraine.”
Mahama further condemned what he described as double standards in global migration discourse.
“Let’s dispense with the euphemisms and dog whistles. It is not a mystery that when leaders of western nations complain of their migration problems, they are often referring to immigrants from the global south,” he argued.
The former president stressed that many of these migrants are climate refugees, and warned against discrimination.
“Madam President, we cannot normalize cruelty, we cannot normalize hatred, we cannot normalize xenophobia,” he concluded.o
