The United Nations on Friday said that it had called for “safe zones” and “days for halting” conflict as part of its effort to push for greater safety for the civilian population during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka, and that however those concepts “did not work”.
Farhan Haq, Associate Spokesperson for the Secretary-General stated that the UN did in fact “call for corridors for peace; places where essentially combat could be halted in order to allow for people to flee from the fighting.”
“…..yes, we did try to call for places where people could be safe,” he said, responding to a question during the daily press briefing.
Haq, however, pointed out that “many of those concepts did not work out or be implemented” in the way the UN would have wanted them to be.
“There was a proposal, as you know, there were proposals both for safe zones as well as for days when the fighting would be halted. As you know, many of those concepts did not work out or be implemented the way that we had wanted them to be, but I’d just refer you to the statements which were part of our effort to push for greater safety for the civilian population,” he said.
