Ban Ki-moon

Ban Ki-moon

UN Chief's spokesman

4/14/2015

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday was asked the following question, and gave the following reply:

Question: Thank you, Mr. Dujarric. On the Pope's statement yesterday about genocide in Armenia, I've noticed I could only find the one UN reference to this. In 1985, the special rapporteur wrote a report saying it was genocide. Am I wrong? Does the Secretary-General, has he a position? Has the General Assembly ever had a position on this?

Spokesman: Well, I don't… I think you'd have to scour through the General Assembly archives. I think the Secretary-General is very mindful that, on 24 April of this year, the Armenia nation and others around the world commemorate the centenary of the tragic events of 1915. He's also fully aware of the sensitivities related to the characterization of what happened in 1915, 100 years ago. The Secretary-General firmly believes that commemorating and remembering those tragic events of 1915 and continuing to cooperate with a view to establishing the facts about what happened should strengthen our collective determination to prevent similar atrocity crimes from ever happening in the future. And the UN, as you know, has sought to strengthen the capacity of the international community to prevent such atrocity crimes from ever occurring again.