UNITED NATIONS, April 5 -- Past the UN's stated deadline to have its headquarters building empty for gut rehabilitation, the last working day before Easter found UN offices and staff left behind on the 17th and 18th floors, with journalists threatened with destruction of their files down below.
Despite Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's professed focus on climate change, his advisory office on the matter remains languishing in room 1831. On April 1, Inner City Press asked, does Ban climate advisor "Janos Pasztor still work here?"" Yes, was the answer.
A floor below, the nepotism plagued "Umoja" office, of the UN's $300 million plus Enterprise Resource Planning project has also been left behind in the building. On the elevator, a staff member told Inner City Press that his Sanctions unit of the Department of Political Affairs is also still in the building.
Later at an ostensibly final retirement party held in the old Delegates' Lounge, sources told Inner City Press that the contractor Skanska is moving people into floors like 15 and even 2, into higher quality offices than those of seemingly senior UN staff. "Something weird is going on here," one long time and well-placed staffer said.
And indeed it is weird. As several revelers noted, while UN staff and diplomats have been banned since Christmas 2009 from the Delegates' Lounge -- a cement floored facsimile of which has belatedly been opened by a single window in the Temporary North Lawn Building dubbed by some Bantanamo -- an official of the UN Capital Master Plan told as Inner City Press source the old Lounge will remain untouched through at least September 2010.
It will be used for luncheons and events during the General Debate, and also until then, he said, "only for USGs and ASGs" - that is, high UN officials.
This same official is involved in the threats to journalists and their files. Not only is the whistleblower free zone established to monitor the press -- the real Bantanamo, some say -- a form of retaliation, now the false deadline to destroy all that is in the former journalists' offices is as well, some say.
Long time denizens of the Delegates' Lounge, including several member states' Permanent Representatives, have asked Inner City Press why the UN made its supposedly replacement Delegates' Lounge so drab, with the prices raised. Others say it better than nothing, a attitude of decreased expectations more and more prevalent in this UN. Watch this site.
