UN Secretary-General assesses island’s challenges

Ban Ki-moon has urged Malagasy parliamentarians to end the corruption that has weakened their society. A report on the allAfrica site notes that the UN Secretary-General last week launched a report on the cost of hunger in the island nation. ‘Your elections last year represented an important milestone that ended five years of political crisis,’ Ban said in an address to the joint congress of both the Senate and the National Assembly of Madagascar. ‘You can end the corruption. You can help fight the illegal trafficking of natural treasures. In this way, you can be fully accountable to the voters,’ he stressed, according to the report. It says he also called for an end to all rights violations, ‘including mob justice and extrajudicial killings’ and applauded the country for abolishing the death penalty.

Full report on the allAfrica site