By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/unsc4somalia072109.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 21, updated -- The day after Al Shabaab in Somalia attacked and targeted for expulsion three UN system agencies, specifically excluding other UN agencies from the ban, the UN put out a statement on July 21 that 'the Secretary General condemns the looting yesterday of UN offices in Somalia [which] target the whole gamut of UN peace and humanitarian operations in Somalia."
While the UN and Ban Ki-moon might wish the statement were true, it is dubious. Al Shabaab, as they did in earlier attacks on the UN Development Program, picked a particular part and approach of the UN system. UNDP was the middle man for unnamed, largely European and former colonialist funders of the armed forces, with questionable human rights records, which defended the Transitional Federal Government..
By contrast, as Inner City Press asked and wrote about last week, the UN World Food Program recently met with Al Shabaab, seemingly connected to WFP staying in the country.
UNDP will say, as its paid defenders have, that it takes sides in this civil war and chooses the TFG because it is entity the UN helped set up. But with so many of its parliamentarians not even living in Somalia, the TFG's credibility is questionable. And UNDP insiders tell Inner City Press that UNDP's reason for siding with the TFG is not unrelated to the fact that UNDP had make fees as middleman on funding to the TFG, while Al Shabaab is not getting, or even asking, for international aid.
Perhaps there are legitimate reasons why one part of the UN system -- in this case, UNDP, Ould Abdallah's UNPOS and Department of Safety and Security -- takes sides in a civil war and get thrown out of the country, while another part (WFP, UNICEF and others) speaks with both sides and stays in. A debate on these two approaches might be helpful. Instead, the UN rushes out a blurry statement which is inaccurate on its face, and expects that nothing will be said.
It is time for UNDP and its no longer so new Executive Director Helen Clark to come and take Press questions. There are been developments with regard to UNDP's involvement in diamond mining in Zimbabwe, and over-compensation of consultants. Written questions put to UNDP have been pending for months. Watch this site.
