Ban, Kim announce joint visit to Sahel next week to reaffirm political, financial support

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Friday announced jointly that they will team up once again and travel next week to the Sahel region of Africa to reaffirm the two institutions' political and financial support. They will be joined on the trip by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank, and other African and European officials. Addressing a press conference here, along with President Kim via video link from Washington D.C., Ban said the officials will visit Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad. Ban and Kim travelled together for the first time to the African Great Lakes region last May in support of a new peace framework aimed at tackling the roots of long-running conflict and under-development. "The Sahel is one of the most impoverished and fragile places on the planet. At this time last year, Mali was in crisis. Since then, our collective efforts have helped not only improve the political and security situation in Mali but also address some of the broader challenges in the Sahel," Ban told the press conference. "The time is ripe to build on these gains," he added. He said the crisis in Mali has underscored "the need to do more than fight fires in the region," calling for a regional approach, as the "challenges in the region respect no borders - neither should our solutions. "We are convinced that the cycle of crises in the Sahel can be broken. The region can move from fragility to sustainability... Our message on this critical visit and around the world is that peace and development must go hand-in-hand," he said. On the influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon, Ban said it does not represent a financial burden only on the Lebanese Government, but also political and social threats, insisting that the conflict in Syria is at the top of the UN agenda and that only a political solution is the way out.