UN official praises new website that engages Chinese public

Jan Eliasson, deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Liu Baodong, vice minister of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry, with the new website's QR code, April 9, 2015. [Photo by Mao Jing/chinadaily.com.cn]

A new Chinese-language United Nations website has been launched 20 years after the original version went online.

With web technology and user behavior having dramatically changed over the years, an upgrade was deemed due.

Jan Eliasson, deputy Secretary-General of the UN attended the launch in Beijing on Thursday during his second official visit to China.

Eliasson said using words is the place to start in solving conflicts. He said the website in Chinese "will enable the UN to reach hundreds of millions of people across China"and "Chinese people can now be more engaged in the global online conversation about world affairs and global efforts to achieve peace, development and human rights."

"People usually only see the mid-conflict. It is the job of the UN to act in the early stages, to prevent conflict and to take action. We should not leave after a war is over because people could still suffer war's trauma".

Eliasson commended China's contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, as the final detachment of infantry arrived in South Sudan. He also commented on the country's long-term support for Africa's development and assistance in fighting the Ebola virus.

He particularly appreciated China's efforts during the evacuation mission in Yemen. China has helped evacuate 279 foreigners as well as 629 Chinese nationals since late March.

Concerned about the worsening humanitarian situation in Yemen, Eliasson said the war-torn country poses one of the biggest dangers in the world, with religion, ethnicity and factional divides used to inflame conflicts.

He appealed for a common base, hoping that the division between Shiites and Sunnis will disappear, that Buddhism and Islam can coexist and that no ethnicity will ever go through the disaster the Jews once suffered.

Eliasson proposed multiple countries working in concert on a given issue, to solve international problems.

He said that multilateralism is the international formula in line with international interests. It will be best if regional conflicts can be solved by multilateralism. "We need not only military actions, but political ones,"he added.