Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/untrip2may1srilanka052309.html
SRI LANKA, May 23, modified May 26 at NGO request -- As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his top humanitarian official John Holmes are whisked via military helicopter to government selected camps for Internally Displaced People and a mere fly-over the beach-front Zone of Death, minutes of a meeting earlier in the week in New York between Holmes and non-governmental organizations show that Holmes did not favor the trip.
The minutes also show that some of the NGOs, including convener Crisis Action, plan to "phase out" their work on Sri Lanka. Doubts about the UN's and international community's including civil society's commitment to those who suffer in Sri Lanka, Tamils and others, can only grow.
Before the phase out, and after the Government of Sri Lanka barred NGOs and the UN from using any vehicles to service IDPs in the large camps of Menic (or Manik) Farms in north Sri Lanka, a joint statement calling for access was issued May 21 by a group of NGOs including Oxfam, ASB/Solidar, Acted, Danish Refugee Council, ZOA Refugee Care, Forut, UMCOR, Relief International, Handicap International, Save the Children, Welthungerhilfe, CARE, World Vision Medical Teams International.
Further below the radar, there are Tamil NGOs which face dissolution or not working in Sri Lanka.
Before the 24 hour trip to Sri Lanka, Holmes met with a hand-picked group of NGOs in New York. Afterwards an internal summary was issued, which attendees leaked to Inner City Press, ostensibly disturbed by the approach taken at the meeting and by the UN. The memo began, "please find below notes from yesterday's meeting with John Holmes. Let me now if you have any questions. This is true especially in light of some of us (Crisis Action included) phasing out our Sri Lanka work very soon."
There followed a summary of what John Holmes told NGOs behind closed doors, which even filing from Sri Lanka we'll run in full:
John Holmes
Timing of the trip is "tricky," point is not to "join the celebrations"; will have to be careful. [In-house, JH had objected to the trip, as many of you know];
Trip will be de facto a 12-hr day; he cannot extend;
Plan is to go to camps; overfly conflict zone, depending on weather conditions; meet President and other high-level officials; speak to press; hopefully meet with civil society (not certain that would happen);
It's "pretty clear there's nobody in the conflict zone, other than soldiers." UN has flown over, nothing to be seen from helicopter. Still, possible to have bodies/people in hiding;
On overcrowding in camps: NGOs/UN has to be clear about what we want. Do we want to move them to another camp or not? Clearly we want quick returns but in the meantime...
Have not heard anything about [threat of] suspension of humanitarian activities; just got off the phone with UN in SL; ICRC had raised possibility but backed down;
On disappearances: not clear how many are sinister. Known that hard-line cadres are given over to police and are sent to rehabilitation centres. Reasonably clear that GoSL will try to make sure remaining LTTE top leadership won't make it out alive;
LTTE lower cadres are not really separated from civilians, all enter camps together, which is not necessarily a good thing, because all are then viewed as suspects;
Will be pretty hard to get UN political presence in country; govt very resistant, uses "home-grown solution" language very deliberately;
On the doctors: they are in detention but are 'healthy' and 'ok, as far as one can be ok in detention' ;
On UNSC: we have not focused on that, happy to brief if requested;
The strategy is still to keep on with high-level visits, but will see how this will happen;
On numbers: we have no idea how many have died in the last three days. Generally, hard to verify numbers, so have been using "some
thousands."
[Later on, an OCHA staffer advised NGOs to press the issue of MoUs, also to create more space for the pro-active Holmes.]
...There is no real push-back to the exclusion of vehicles from the IDP camps. The minutes say that ICRC (the Red Cross) "backed down." While some UN sources have told Inner City Press that UN staff are threatening a de facto boycott, Holmes told the Press on the plane ride to Sri Lanka that this is not the case, that access and work continues.
It appears that the Secretariat may not even push to have Ban Ki-moon briefing the Security Council upon his return to New York. Then again, in April Ban Ki-moon was only in New York three times, for a total of five days. A lot is being "phased out."
Inner City Press will be accompanying Ban and Holmes on their whirlwind tour May 23 and will report on it in real time to the degree possible given the host country's control of the tour and the lack of internet access. Watch this site.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/untrip2may1srilanka052309.html
