UNITED NATIONS, April 17 -- UN representation in Africa is riddled with abuse of power. Beyond the misconduct of Alan Doss in the Congo, confirmed this week by the Office of Internal Oversight Services, Inner City Press has learned that Michael Schulenburg, the Secretary-General's Executive Representative in Sierra Leone, has been formally accused of physically abusing a staff member.
Sources from various parts of the UN system have brought this to Inner City Press' attention, as another example of the UN's abuse of Africa. But what will be done?
On April 16, the Security Council canceled its already devalued trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It had been shortened from a week to four days, with the Rwanda and Uganda legs cut off.
Then, with the volcano in Iceland as excuse, it was canceled in full. Later that day a Moroccan diplomat laughed that he was already to get a flight to Central Africa via Casablanca "like that," he said, snapping his fingers.
To be fair, at least one Security Council member is nevertheless making his way to Africa. Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, the chairman of the Somalia Sanctions committee, has embarked on a two week, six country tour to "raise consciousness" about the sanctions on Somalia.
A visa to Asmara, Eritrea was not easy to obtain. Accompanying him are experts from the U.S., UK and elsewhere. Whether the vaunted "humanitarian window" to allow the resumption of food aid to southern Somalia can be opened remains to be seen.
The country most responsible for the freeze on funding to the World Food Program in Somalia, the United States, is said by a number of diplomats to have been most responsible for the shortening and devaluing of the Council's Africa trip, in order to focus and to be seen to focus on nuclear sanctions on Iran.
Sensitive to press coverage of these priorities, and of Ambassador Susan Rice's decision to skip even the shortened Africa trip, press staff of the US Mission emerged onto 45th Street on April 14, where the press corps staked out a meeting about Iran, and fed reporters cookies.
Not information, mind you, but pastries. "This never happened under the Republicans," one reporter quipped. The remark could be taken any number of ways.
