Tanzania: Has President Magufuli forgotten Nyerere’s lessons?

By Nick Westcott

 

Nick Westcott is the Director of the Royal African Society. He has been involved with Africa for over 40 years as both an academic and diplomat with the UK government. 

 

August 22, 2019

 

https://africanarguments.org/2019/08/22/tanzania-magufuli-nyerere-forgotten-lessons/

 

The president seems to be repeating the mistakes of Tanzania’s independence leader rather than learning from his legacy.

I visited Tanzania last month for the first time in five years and for the first time since John Magufuli was elected president in 2015. I have been visiting the country regularly since 1976, living there for a year as a student in 1979 and for three years as a diplomat in 1993-6. I have followed its fortunes through the decades with close interest, meeting all its presidents (except the incumbent) at one time or another.
While I was there on this occasion, the journalist and African Arguments contributor Erick Kabendera was disappeared: that is, he was picked up by police and kept incommunicado for several days until he suddenly re-appeared in court and was improbably charged with economic crimes and tax evasion. This is not a lone incident: since 2015 it has become common for independent journalists to face harassment and even death, and for the government to obstruct news or even the publication of standard national statistics it dislikes. It is worrying both many Tanzanians and many of Tanzania’s friends overseas.
[I had to flee my home Tanzania for doing journalism. I was lucky.]
It is worth asking where this new trend has come from. Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has been a beacon of the liberation struggle in Africa and of peaceful political stability. The country’s moral and political compass was set very firmly by its first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, whose picture still hangs on many government, hotel and shop walls alongside President Magufuli. All Nyerere’s successors have appealed to and pledged to uphold his legacy.

Nyerere’s legacy

So what is that legacy? Nyerere was relatively unusual among African presidents in that he left a substantial body of writings that set out his political thinking and which enable us to see its evolution. While sometimes intolerant of criticism, he tended to respond with argument rather than force. Nyerere’s thinking changed over time, his ideas adapting in the light of experience, but some elements remained unchanged: a powerful moral tone; an intolerance of corruption; a central role for the state but with a real accountability to the people; and, above all, the value of unity at the national level, in the union with Zanzibar, and across Africa as a whole.
Nyerere started as an unabashed African socialist. Capitalism and colonialism had gone hand-in-hand and destroyed many traditional communal values. These needed to be restored and Nyerere justified Tanzania’s one-party state as necessary for building national unity and avoiding political divisions. He also advocated ujamaa villagisation as a path to economic and social modernisation.
Over time, though, the president came to see the drawbacks of both policies. Although the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) had robust internal competition and accountability, any single party that remains in power continually tends to become complacent and corrupt. The target tends to become climbing to the top of the party tree and reaping the benefits along the way rather than serving the people. Meanwhile, villagisation and state production proved socially disruptive and financially disastrous. Economically, Nyerere’s prescription just did not work.
In response, Nyerere did two things. Firstly, he put in place succession arrangements that allowed him to step back from running the government. Although he retained oversight as CCM chairman, he stepped down as president in 1985 and allowed his successors to liberalise both politics and the economy. In the 1990s, multi-party politics was re-introduced, a number of loss-making parastatals that were draining the government’s resources were privatised, and the country began to encourage outside investors. Nyerere’s personal interventions became increasingly rare, limited largely to upholding the sanctity and importance of the political union with Zanzibar and working for peace in neighbouring Burundi.
Nyerere’s legacy was to value unity but recognise diversity, not overstay his welcome, and be guided by principles but adapt his policies in the light of experience.
[Is Tanzania discarding Nyerere’s freedom-fighting legacy?]

Fulfilling or negating Nyerere’s legacy?

Like his predecessors, President Magufuli puts great emphasis on respecting Nyerere’s legacy. Selected at least in part for his well-known personal probity, he entered office breathing fire and fury against corruption in the state machine. His dramatic interventions appeared to shake state utilities out of their torpor and corrupt practices. He developed and delivered some basic infrastructure, including roads and energy. All of this was overdue.
But in other respects, Magufuli’s administration seems stuck in the early Nyerere-ite mode of suspicion, even hostility, to international capitalism and open markets even within its region. It has returned to preaching a narrow view of self-reliance similar to that which led the country to near bankruptcy in the early-1980s. In political terms, Magufuli seems have adopted an intolerance of criticism and opposition that Nyerere abandoned in his later years. CCM seems increasingly frightened of democracy, fearing that given a free choice and facts the people just might choose someone else.
To constrain the opposition and harass the free press will in the end destroy democracy and even the CCM itself. We have seen elsewhere political leaders deciding they should be the sole arbiter of decisions and stay on in charge long after their sell-by-date, presiding over ever-more corrupt and incompetent governments and leading their countries to wrack and ruin. In almost all cases, it does not end well. The same can apply to parties as to individual leaders.
Tanzania is a country of huge potential. It is rich in land, material resources and people. To make the best use of them for the benefit of its citizens, it must also be rich in wisdom as well as morals. As everywhere, these resources are best developed by a fruitful, harmonious and respectful cooperation between insiders and outsiders. There is competition, but it is best complemented by collaboration.
Tanzania has benefited greatly from regular political succession in its leadership, but it would be a betrayal, not a fulfilment, of Nyerere’s legacy to refuse the Tanzanian people a free and informed choice about the party and policies they want. Mwalimu would probably be angry as well as sad to think his successors had learnt the wrong lessons he was trying to teach them – that they preferred a closed to an open society and were looking to the past rather than the future.

This article was also published on the Royal African Society website.

Tanzania’s gamble: Anatomy of a totally novel coronavirus response

By Ben Taylor

 

Ben Taylor is a consultant with Twaweza, a civil society organisation promoting citizen voice and civic space in East Africa, and Editor of the journal Tanzanian Affairs. He writes here in a personal capacity.

 

May 7, 2020

 

https://africanarguments.org/2020/05/07/tanzania-gamble-anatomy-totally-novel-coronavirus-response/

In contrast to most leaders, Magufuli’s main strategies are to limit information, treat fear as the main threat, and keep the economy running.

 

Chapter One of Tanzania’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic came to an end in late April. The second half of that month had seen the number of confirmed cases rise to 480, up sharply from the 32 in mid-month. As I wrote at the time, the chance for early containment looked like it had already passed us by.
President John Magufuli had opted not to listen to the global scientific advice. Instead, he had put his trust – and the lives of millions – in the hands of God. And in some odd (and potentially dangerous) “scientific” thinking of his own. And in the belief, shared by some experts, that locking down cities such as Dar es Salaam might do more harm than good.
That was Chapter One. Chapter Two is now being written. And it is being written in the dark.

Are cases really much higher or…lower?

We no longer have any reliable estimates of the number of cases or deaths from COVID-19. According to the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Tanzania has conducted just 652 tests (as of 7 May). This compares to over 26,000 tests conducted in Kenya and nearly 45,000 in Uganda. Tanzania’s number is so low it almost defies belief. Have more tests been done but the results not released? Or is this the true figure, in which case is it the result of staggering incompetence or shocking indifference to the potential suffering of millions?
For some years now, statistics and the media have been a highly charged political battleground in Tanzania. Controlling the narrative means silencing facts that contradict the official line. Someone suggests economic growth may not be as strong as the government claims? Charge them with sedition. Someone publishes data showing political leaders are not as popular as they once were? Strip them of their passport.
The COVID-19 numbers are no different. The government is giving updates only every week or so, and sometimes the new data doesn’t even include basic figures such as the number of new cases and deaths. In such a vacuum, widespread reports of night-time burials and people dying with coronavirus-like symptoms take on more than anecdotal credibility. Many understandably question whether the true number of cases and deaths is substantially higher than the official figures.
On the other hand, even President Magufuli seems to distrust the official numbers – though in the opposite direction. In a speech on 3 May, he accused unnamed imperialist foreign powers of sabotaging the national response by providing ineffective testing kits or buying off laboratory employees. He said he had sent “samples” from a pawpaw and goat for testing, with some producing positive results. Heads rolled at the national health laboratory.
In the same speech, the president also suggested international media organisations – the BBC was not named, but the implication was clear – have been deliberately spreading scare stories to undermine Tanzania while ignoring the extent of the outbreak in their home countries. He called this “another form of warfare”. (Incidentally, he had previously wondered aloud whether masks and disinfectant sprays might have been deliberately contaminated with the coronavirus.)
In short, nobody believes the official figures and nobody know how many cases we have. That ship has sailed. Local community transmission has been going on for weeks. We have no meaningful lockdown. And the process of testing, contact tracing and isolation can no longer cope. The true numbers could be anywhere between one thousand and one hundred thousand. Even within the Ministry of Health, in quiet corridors well away from both political bosses and media scrutiny, nobody really knows.

Four pillars of Magufuli’s approach

What else can we say about Chapter Two?
Well, the president has continued to infuse the national response with his own personal style. His pronouncements are watched keenly by the nation and followed closely by public servants. And those statements appear to be informed more by his own personal worldview than any input from scientists.
If the first strand of Magufuli’s approach is a tight control of information, the second is an emphasis on religious faith. Having previously argued the virus could not survive in the body of Jesus, the president again called for religious services to continue on 3 May. He concluded: “My fellow Tanzanians, stand firm. We have already won this war. God cannot abandon us, and our God loves us always.”
The third element of the president’s approach is to put a premium on the avoidance of fear. “Fear is a very bad thing,” he said. “There might well already be people in this situation who have been killed by fear. Let us put an end to fear. Let us defeat fear.” This is the logic that saw him criticise international media and young people online for scaremongering.
There is some truth in this perspective. Fear and stress bring genuine dangers. But the argument has limits. The point at which fear-avoidance means the government reports only on recoveries but not new cases or deaths, insists religious services should continue despite the risks of transmission, and asserts that God will protect us, it starts to look more like denial. And with potentially devastating consequences.
The fourth strand of Magufuli’s approach is a determination to keep the country and its economy going. Schools and universities have closed, sporting events remain suspended, and people are being encouraged to main distance from others and wear masks when out in public. But the president has strongly resisted calls to introduce any tighter lockdown measures. Instead, he has emphasised the importance of working hard, keeping the economy going strong, and maintaining a healthy supply of food and other goods.
This all adds up to something very different to the responses seen in other countries. Every context is different, of course, and the president has rightly warned against a copy-and-paste approach. But is Tanzania really so different? It is facing the same virus that has caused havoc and heartache elsewhere, and epidemiologists’ advice to Tanzania must surely be similar to that being offered in Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere.

Turning bullets into water

Only time will tell whether Magufuli’s gamble pays off. But we should be in no doubt that it is a huge gamble. The stakes are the lives and livelihoods of millions of Tanzanians. Two lessons from history illustrate this particularly keenly.
The first is the 1918 Spanish Flu. This pandemic hit Tanganyika hard and came hot on the heels of the First World War, which itself had had a devastating impact. There are no exact figures – sound familiar? – but it is estimated that half the country of 4.2 million people was infected and over 5% (over 200,000 people) died. At the same time in Zanzibar, authorities introduced stringent quarantine measures that limited the impact considerably.
The second may be even more relevant. In 1905, Kinjeketile Ngwale (also known as Bokero) persuaded his followers in southern parts of the country that a certain “medicine” – a mix of water, castor oil and millet seeds – would turn German bullets into water. Maybe he truly believed this. Maybe it was an attempt to inspire confidence and overcome fear. Either way, the gamble failed. The Maji-Maji Rebellion against German rule was a disaster. Once again, nobody knows the true death toll, but it is likely that tens thousands of soldiers were killed and as many as 250,000 civilians died of hunger. Kinjeketile was arrested and hanged in 1905, but the fighting continued. Later that year, Ngoni soldiers retreating from battle are reported to have thrown away their war medicine as they cried out “the maji is a lie!”
Suggestions that Tanzania has found a new Kinjeketile spread online this week.

From Anne Frank to Hello Kitty - Norihiro Kato

NYT - The Opinion Pages 

MARCH 12, 2014

TOKYO — In late February, officials from city libraries contacted the police after discovering that hundreds of copies of “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” had been defaced. Media reports included an awful picture: a torn photograph of the girl smiling in a mutilated book. No culprit has been identified, but the rash of vandalism seemed to begin around the time, in January, that a member of the ultranationalist group Zaitokukai marched in a rally with a Nazi flag over his shoulders.

The invocation of Nazi symbols by Japanese right-wingers is a new phenomenon. During the Cold War they focused their hatred on the U.S.S.R. and communism; now, they have shifted their attention to China, South Korea and, increasingly, the United States. Brandishing the flag of Japan’s wartime ally is a roundabout way for right-wingers to laud Japan’s imperialist past. Presumably, the defacement of those copies of Anne Frank’s diary was an expression of the same sentiment.

In my view, it was also a symptom of something broader. Over the past few decades, Japan has developed a mechanism to avoid facing up to its wartime history: It has neutralized issues that are too painful to deal with by rendering them purely aesthetic, and harmless — by making them “cute.” But that strategy no longer seems to be working.

The word kawaii, meaning cute or adorable, became central to a certain strand of Japanese culture in the 1980s, as changes in the social and political climate stripped conventional father figures of the authority they had possessed until the 1960s. Cuteifying something was a way of making oneself its protector, rendering it powerless in a nonadversarial manner. One famous example took place in 1988, when high-school girls reportedly remarked that the dying Hirohito was kawaii, making a nonissue of his responsibility for the war. Hello Kitty, the white cat with a pink bow on her ear, is the ultimate embodiment of Japan’s cute culture: She has no background and no mouth. She represents the impulse to escape history and to stop talking about it.

A few years ago, I published an essay called “Goodbye Godzilla, Hello Kitty” in which I argued that Godzilla was a symbol of Japan’s war dead who were returning to vent their rage at having been forgotten. When he was first created in 1954, Godzilla was frightening: He rose from the sea and, following roughly the same path as the B-29s that had firebombed the city in 1945, destroyed a Tokyo that was only just being rebuilt. But over the course of 50 years and 28 films, Godzilla first became just another monster and then he was domesticated — cast as a comical, doting father. In a word, he was cuteified.

Japan has also cuteified Anne Frank.

In January, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an article exploring Anne Frank’s popularity in Japan. It drew on an interview with Alain Lewkowicz, a French journalist and the creator of an interactive iPad app called “Anne Frank in the Land of Manga,” a comic strip laden with photographs and interviews. Anne Frank’s story is unusually popular in Japan. But instead of being known for her denunciation of the Holocaust or the warning she offers against racism, Mr. Lewkowicz argues that, in Japan, Anne Frank “symbolizes the ultimate World War II victim” and that most Japanese see themselves that way, too, because of the American atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a victim, he contends, “never a perpetrator.”

Mr. Lewkowicz suggests that the Japanese can share this “kinship of victims” with European Jews because so many people, especially the young, are astonishingly ignorant of Japan’s actions during World War II. As Mr. Lewkowicz put it to Haaretz, they “don’t think of the countless Anne Franks their troops created in Korea and China during the same years.”

I find this argument persuasive. But there’s more going on here. Anne Frank’s reception in Japan is another instance of the cuteification of unresolved issues from the war. As the Haaretz article noted, Anne Frank’s diary became unusually popular in Japan not only through translations of the book itself but also through at least four manga versions and three animated films that tell the story of a girl every bit as cute as Hello Kitty.

Thus the recent defacement of all those copies of Anne Frank’s diary in Tokyo libraries may indicate that Japan’s culture of cuteness has reached the limits of its effectiveness.

The contradictions Japanese society has harbored since its defeat in World War II have grown too deep to ignore. A sense of nihilism is spreading as people finally realize that Japan’s dependence on the United States may never end and that reasonable political solutions to the country’s problems are not forthcoming. The reactionary policies of the administration of Shinzo Abe have exacerbated the sense that Japan’s democracy isn’t functioning. All the things we don’t want to see are suddenly forcing themselves into view.

If there is anything good to be said about that ugly bit of vandalism against Anne Frank’s diary, it’s that it might push Japanese society to say goodbye to all that cuteness and hello to the real history of Anne Frank and her countless sisters.

Norihiro Kato is a literary scholar and a professor at Waseda University. This article was translated by Michael Emmerich from the Japanese.

청와대, 통일대박 영어표현 "Bonanza"로 쓰기로

Translation by Journalist

South Korea's Underground Seat Fight

JAN. 29, 2014
Young-Ha Kim

BUSAN, South Korea — Last September, a 55-year-old man lit some scrap paper on fire and threw it into a Seoul subway car as he left the train. He had just been cursed at and kicked by senior citizens for sitting in a seat designated for “the elderly and the infirm.”

The man, whom we know only by his surname of Kim, was sentenced on Jan. 14 by a Seoul court to one year and six months in prison. One news article reporting the results of his trial garnered more than 1,000 comments in just one day, most of which were from sympathetic younger people complaining about being forced to give up their seats on the subway to senior citizens. Mr. Kim is hardly young, but his frustration resonated with the younger generations.

The Seoul subway’s designated-seating section has become a curious backdrop of intergenerational conflict in South Korea. In the 40 years or so since full-scale industrialization began, the social divide between generations has widened. Senior citizens grew up during Japanese occupation and the Korean War, and lived through the era of breakneck economic growth that followed, building a modern country from the ground up in just a few decades, most of the time under a military dictatorship. Most younger South Koreans have come of age in a time of relative affluence and freedom, and like many younger people in East Asia, have gradually become more independent-minded than their elders and less attached to the traditional Confucian values that have been the basis of Korean society for centuries.

In recent years, South Korea’s economic woes have put strain on both groups, and frustrations are high. Older South Koreans are finding themselves financially unprepared for retirement, while younger people can’t find jobs. The Seoul subway is a rare place where the generations cross paths — and the intergenerational tensions are playing out in the crowded trains.

South Korea is one of the world’s most rapidly aging countries. It is expected to become an “aged society,” according to the United Nations’ definition of 14 percent of the population above age 65, in four years. South Korea also has the third lowest birthrate in the world.

The country’s elderly spent their lives assuming their children would care for them in old age and did little to prepare for retirement. But their children don’t appear to be fulfilling their end of the bargain — and now the elderly are not faring well economically. The relative poverty rate among senior citizens in South Korea is 49.3 percent, the highest of the industrialized countries. Public pensions tend to be small. And the suicide rate for senior citizens, surely an indicator of economic strain, is the highest among the industrialized countries, at about 80 for every 100,000 people.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s younger people are facing unemployment not seen since the early 1980s. More than half of the country’s college-educated youth in their 20s remains unemployed or has stopped searching for work.

The notoriously congested Seoul Metropolitan Subway, which opened in 1974 and covers a total of some 200 miles, transports an average of 7 million passengers per day, which is more than twice the daily average of London’s Tube. For years, “pushmen” were employed at busy stations to stuff hundreds of extra passengers into each train. In 2008, the subway switched to employing “cutmen” instead, who prevent people from boarding cars once they are full.

At both ends of each subway car, 12 seats are set aside for “the elderly and the infirm.” As the name suggests, these seats are intended for senior citizens as well as for the handicapped and pregnant women, but in practice they are mostly occupied by the elderly.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Subway authorities, there was a sharp increase in the number of complaints over the seats, from 252 in 2009 to 536 in 2011 (the latest year for which statistics are available). Anecdotal evidence suggests the trend has continued.

About two years ago, I had unintentionally sat in one of the elderly-designated seats on the subway and was checking my email when I looked up to meet the eyes of a scowling elderly man. I got up right away. He didn’t thank me, but continued to stare at me from across the train. There had been other free seats for him to use, but he pressured me to get up just to make the point that I shouldn’t have been sitting there.

All subway lines in South Korea are free for those over 65 years of age, so most elderly people use it whenever possible. There was a time when young people were happy to give up their seats for the elderly. And the elderly, fitting to tradition, have always assumed they had a right to a seat occupied by a younger person. But young people today are simply less deferential to their elders.

The fighting over seats mirrors a vast political gap outside the subway. A majority of older Koreans support President Park Geun-hye and the governing party, but the younger generation is strongly opposed to her leadership. Many older people feel nostalgia for the days of Park Chung-hee, the current president’s father, when they were more prosperous and the country was in the throes of exciting development.

For now, South Korea’s intergenerational conflict seems limited to the underground. But without a meaningful dialogue on how to help both our struggling elderly and disaffected young people, the tensions will find a way of rising to the surface.

Young-ha Kim is a novelist and short-story writer. This article was translated by Sora Kim-Russel from the Korean.

SG Ban Ki-moon Article: JFK left indelible imprint on me

UN Secretary-General: JFK left indelible imprint on me

USA Today (US)
22 November 2013
By Ban Ki-moon

Meeting the president as a youth led to my decision to choose a life of public service.
One of my great personal regrets is not having better preserved the autograph I received from President Kennedy when I had the overwhelming good fortune to meet him as a nameless teenager from a dusty village in Korea.
I was in the United States as part of an eye-opening tour organized by the Red Cross for a group of young people from around the world. It was more than a visit to a foreign country -- it was a pilgrimage to the land of possibility, a shining democracy that had helped to save my nation in its darkest hour.
President Kennedy's signature was quickly dispersed among the many fingerprints of my friends who grabbed at the glossy White House Bulletin and passed it around with such eagerness that by the time it returned to me no trace of his writing remained. But nothing could remove the imprint the American president made on my life. Meeting him was a turning point. His words that day on the South Lawn sparked my decision to become a diplomat and dedicate myself to public service.
As he looked out at our diverse group representing countries that were then on different sides of the Iron Curtain, President Kennedy reminded us that we could be friends even if our governments were not. And he said the words I chose to live by: "There are no national boundaries; there is only a question of whether we can extend a helping hand."
As I grew older and progressed through my career in national diplomatic service, that idea came into sharper focus, and I resolved to contribute to the global public good. As secretary-general of the United Nations, I try my best to serve the peoples of the world in whose name the organization's charter was adopted.
President Kennedy had great faith in the United Nations. His last speech to the General Assembly just weeks before his death reads like a primer for addressing the problems that still plague us today. He stressed the indivisibility of human rights. He opposed wasteful military spending. He called for racial and religious tolerance. He praised United Nations peacekeeping. And he insisted that we embrace peace not only on paper, but in our hearts. These are all values I defend along with a corps of dedicated United Nations staff members around the world.
In my own encounters with the world's young people, I try to deliver the message that JFK gave to me: Be a global citizen and love your country by serving the world.

Ban  Ki-moon is the Secretary-General of the United Nations

SG Ban Ki-moon Article: Welcoming America inspired my public service

Welcoming America inspired my public service

USA Today (US)
22 August 2012
By Ban Ki-moon

As secretary-general of the United Nations, I have more stamps in my passport than I can count, but there is none that I treasure as much as the first one.
"United States of America," it said. The date: August 1962. I was a wide-eyed 18-year-old from a rural village in war-shattered Korea. The American Red Cross had invited me to join 112 teenagers from 42 countries to travel across the United States visiting Red Cross chapters, meet each other and learn the value of service. It was an incredible privilege.
As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was overwhelmed by the warmth of the people. The wealth and plenty was a cultural shock to a very poor boy from devastated Korea. But what moved me most was the spirit of helping others I witnessed from small-town America to the capital.
We met President John F. Kennedy in the Rose Garden. He noted that we came from countries where the governments may not get along, but people do. He said he placed great hopes in us. It was at that moment that I resolved to embark on a life of public service. That journey that began 50 years ago continues to this day at the United Nations.
Half a century later, the importance of reaching out across boundaries to help others is more critical than ever. In this digital age, where people can connect with a click, everyone has the potential to make a difference.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to meet Beyoncé Knowles. She is well-known as a singer, actress and all-around superstar, but I met a global humanitarian lending her spotlight to the work of the United Nations. Her song, "I Was Here," is dedicated to World Humanitarian Day, an occasion to pay tribute to those who have given their lives for the cause and to support those who carry out vital, life-saving work around the world.
This year, we launched a campaign for people to take action. Across generations and continents, they replied with initiatives to help those in need.
Thanks to the immense power of social media, these acts of service were shared globally, inspiring countless others to carry out their own good deeds.
It was a clear reminder of the lesson I first learned 50 years ago and still live by today: Engaging in the world is the best path to a better future.
Individual acts of service may seem small, but each reverberates far beyond the people who are directly affected, generating a momentum that builds to protect our world.
At a time when extremists are exploiting national, racial and religious differences in new deadly ways, we must never forget the importance of our common humanity.
The United Nations is addressing global challenges such as insecurity, injustice and inequality. We succeed to the extent that this spirit of human solidarity is understood and practiced by governments and peoples. And we depend on our partners, such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, which share our common values and brave danger to uphold them.
In many cases, the Red Cross is the last hope in the most hazardous, conflict-stricken areas where even U.N. humanitarian workers cannot travel.
Today, the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are working together to bring aid to the suffering people of Syria.
In crisis spots around the world, we work together to save lives, protect human rights and promote dignity.
My own 50-year journey will come full circle this month as that original international group of Red Cross student leaders gathers together for a reunion. With all the changes we have experienced, President Kennedy's words to us remain as true as when we first heard them: "There are no national boundaries; there is only a question of whether we can extend a helping hand."

Ban  Ki-moon is the Secretary-General of the United Nations