Just days after comparing the democratic state of Israel to the terrorist group Boko Haram, the UN's High Commissioner of Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein repeated the slanderous accusation, and added the Syrian mass murder of almost half a million people to his analogy. The High Commissioner was speaking at the UN "Human Rights" Council on March 4, 2016 at a session that was supposed to be about the rights of people with disabilities. In Zeid's words:
"This is the first time I will address the Council on the key issue of the rights of persons with disabilities...Today's very grim humanitarian landscape includes an almost unmanageable number of crises, with the UN struggling to meet the needs of simultaneous emergencies in Syria; Iraq; South Sudan; Yemen; Burundi and the Central African Republic; in the countries around Lake Chad which have suffered the attacks of Boko Haram; in the Democratic Republic of Congo; in Libya; in Mali; in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; in Somalia; in Sudan; and in Ukraine. Many of these are brutal internal conflicts that are characterised by shocking disregard for fundamental norms regarding the protection of civilians."