Prime Minister Edi Rama chaired Friday the first meeting of the United Nations Security Council under the Presidency of Albania in an open debate on international accountability that was put on agenda of today’s meeting by Albania as one of the key priorities of Albania’s Presidency of UNSC.

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Mr. President, Excellency, let me start by thanking the United States Ambassador, Mrs. Linda Thomas Greenfield, and her team for the excellent way in which they conducted the work of the Security Council during the month of May. 

I would also like to thank the President of the International Court of Justice, Joan E. Donoghue, and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right, Michelle Bachelet, and the Oxford University professor Dapo Akande, for the important information provided.

Colleagues, differences in opinions, disagreements and divisions are not unusual in this Council or in the wider UN membership. They are part of life, including the international life as well. But they are magnified if we focus only on the here and the now, on the everyday politics and concerns for short-term goals and narrow interests.

Yet, underneath such obvious arguments, fundamental values still exist and it is them that make the international community get together.

These values represent the moral bonds that render the International Community a community, where the sum is always more than its individual parts.

Such values and norms are sanctions on what we commonly call the international law.

They reveal a true meaning and real power in times of difficulty, of crisis, of conflicts and wars.

As we know, they haven’t come easy. Tens of millions of people have had to die before we could discover and accept basic principles of the international law.

States have created vast body of law to regulate their behaviour and have voluntarily committed to abide by it. Millions more have been sacrificed for us to accept our collective responsibility to abide by the rules and hold ourselves to account, when we are unable or unwilling to respect them. 

Yet, our basic values enshrined on a growing body of the international law, humanitarian law, international human rights law and the international criminal law, continue to be systematically and grossly violated.

Distinguished delegates, 

All serious violations of the international law must be treated with the same level of fairness and determination, because they are part of the same problem. 

As per the wise words by Martin Luther King “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As we speak and reiterate the need for upholding our shared 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, the right to justice and the right to an effective remedy and reparation, our institutions grow weaker and public trust fades away.

We are then left with frustration and impatience about lack of progress, about absence of delivery and with the perpetrators looming large.

War crimes, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of the human rights undermine the very fabric of entire societies. We have seen how they destabilize states jeopardise whole regions, threatening the international peace and security. The case of the 11-year conflict in Syria is a tragic example. 

In failing to hold Syrian regime accountable for the crimes it has committed against its own people, we may have encouraged atrocities elsewhere.

But failure to address all the violations everywhere should not be a reason to not act anywhere. This brings me to the ongoing tragic Russian aggression on Ukraine.

This reprehensible act has violated everything this Council stands for; the values, the norms, the law and the respect we owe each other as responsible members of the same community of nations. An unprovoked, an unjustified and totally illegal war has caused pain to the entire Ukrainian nation, it has challenged the European security, has shaken the world economy and, by exacerbating food security, is causing undue pain to millions of people worldwide.

Horrible crimes are being uncovered every day. This calls for accountability.

Crimes should not and must not go unpunished. Albania has been and will continue to be at the forefront of the efforts to deliver justice and deter further and future crimes.

Colleagues, we must demonstrate actions and not only words. We need to say now more than ever “never again”. With our actions and not our words, we owe it to the millions of victims of genocide in Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur. We owe it to all of those that have weathered atrocities, massacres and crimes against humanity. We owe it to the countless silent faces that are often invisible, victims of the unforgivable sexual crimes such as the 20,000 women brutally violated in the face ethnic cleansing in Kosovo 1998-‘99.

We owe it to the broken faces of the millions of children that have been deprived of their future by aggressors. It is why it is of utmost importance for us all to firmly and continually resist any and all attempts to deny or give any sense of context to these odious crimes. Glorification of the criminals and denial of genocide are direct calls for violence. These calls must be condemned unequivocally.

To strengthen what we have achieved and build new tools to address new challenges. We owe it to our children. We owe it to the children of the world. Accountability breeds responsibility. Responsibility leads to actions. Action reinforces justice and justice contributes to peace. Without strong and effective accountability, our shared norms and values will wither away. We must not let the violations become the norm. Perpetrators should not have a place in our world, but only in theirs, behind the bars, just like it happened for Slobodan Milosevic, for Charles Taylor and for their likes, those who put themselves not just about the laws, but also outside the very basic law of humanity. We must make impunity history.

Justice, this indispensable companion of truth must prevail in the name of our shared humanity.