"[Question: What surprised him most about his U.N. post?] I think I knew there would be strong pushback from governments, but I didn’t anticipate the degree of human suffering, the feeling of inadequacy. I could give speeches, do reports and press conferences, but it was not equal to the need to alleviate the suffering... You see the severest degradation. Bombs hit schools, hospitals, marketplaces, and law seems not to matter at all. All rules of war were cast aside... It seems President Trump is drawn by authoritarian leadership that shows little respect for human rights. This feeds the perspective that the U.S. doesn’t care. When he attacks the U.S. media as ‘enemies of the people,’ two days later [an autocrat like] Cambodia’s Hun Sen uses the same language... It’s not like we gave a pass to the Obama administration, but we were able to talk to the U.S. administration under Obama. This doesn’t apply to the Trump administration."
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Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein in interview: Former UN human rights chief on Trump, populism, and complacency toward war crimes, Philly.com Trudy Rubin (28 March 2019)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/United_Nations
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United Nations
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