By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/gmun1malaysia020410.html
UNITED NATIONS, February 4 -- As the UN promotes its upcoming Global Model United Nations, to be held in Malaysia, questions arose about previous corporate sponsorships of the event, and of some participants' travel. Inner City Press asked UN official Eric Falt about listed 2009 "sponsors" including Nestle and AIG affiliate C.V. Starr. Video here, from Minute 31:13.
Falt said he thought the deal with Nestle had fallen through, and hadn't heard of "the other" sponsor, AIG's C.V. Starr. Later he sent the following explanation:
With regard to Nestle, we had been in discussion with them last year to possibly sponsor students from developing countries who could not afford to attend the first conference in Geneva. In this end, this did not happen but the information relating to their expected sponsorship somehow remained on the website. As an admittedly late update, Nestle's name has now been removed from the website as a sponsor.
Since students are responsible for paying their own expenses (i.e., travel and accommodations), we encouraged them to seek their own funding from local enterprises. The names of other sponsors you mentioned who were also listed as “SPONSORS who provided financial assistance to Global Model UN Delegates” were provided to us by the students themselves. The United Nations did not have any direct connection with any of these sponsors. In any case, I would agree that this is potentially confusing and we have therefore removed this list of "secondary" sponsors from the website as well.
We're not sure that the solution to this "confusion" is to remove information about who is paying to fly delegates to the Global Model UN. If AIG (or Nestle) is paying, it should be known.
During the press conference, Mr. Falt said that the UN reviews potential corporate sponsor under rules promulgated by the UN Global Compact -- it's not "anything goes," he said. But the Global Compact has as a member, for example, PetroChina which is under fire for its engagement with the Al Bashir government of Sudan. If there are standards, what are they? And is the solution removing the names of sponsors, even "secondary" sponsors, from the UN's website?
Inner City Press also asked Malaysia's Ambassador about human rights complaints against his country for treatment of refugees, and crackdowns on free press. He graciously responded that these must be seen in the "context of the country itself... we have three major groups, and many smaller." He said that although Malaysia has not joined the Refugee convention, it still implements. But there are stories of mistreatment of asylum seekers, for example from Myanmar, here.
Will these type of issues -- UN engagement with corporations like Nestle, AIG or even PetroChina, and the host country's treatment of asylum seekers, for example from Myanmar -- be allowed to be debated at the 2010 Global Model UN? We'll see. Watch this site.
