UNITED NATIONS, May 19 -- The UN Mission in the Congo MONUC, whose embattled chief Alan Doss is resigning with a mere 12 days notice, faced a significant scaling back by the government, Security Council sources tell Inner City Press.
A member returning from the Council's trip to Kinshasa said the move is toward limiting the UN's protection of civilians mandate to only where its peacekeepers are stationed, and to symbolically renaming the mission from MONUC to MONUSCO. (Inner City Press suggests going one step further to MINISCULO.)
This same Council member said the fix is in for former French Ambassador to the UN Jean Maurice Ripert to replace Doss. Ripert is currently the New York based UN humanitarian coordinator for Pakistan. While there are fewer car bombs in the Kivus than in Pakistan, for civilians the Eastern Congo may be more dangerous. But not for high UN officials.
Inner City Press asked Ripert's replacement Gerard Araud, who led the Council's Congo trip, about each of the above. Araud said that the "name and format are on the table," but said that the UN would be able to intervene elsewhere in the Congo "if requested by the DRC authorities." Video here, from Minute 3:24.
NGOs indicate that "the level of brutality against women and girls is increasing with survivors describing being subjected to mutilation and torture, gang rape and abduction by armed groups" -- including the FARDC, and not limited to the Kivus. Since the government's own FARDC army is often accused of killing and raping civilians, it is difficult to minimize such a scaling back of mandate.
And the UN system has few other mechanisms in place. While US Ambassador Susan Rice, while speaking about Libya's election to the Human Rights Council, names as an accomplishing at the HRC since the US joined the saving of the special rapporteurs on the DR Congo, in fact that rapporteur was eliminated.
Minutes after questioning Araud, Inner City Press asked UN spokesman Martin Nesirky if MONUC had at least investigated charges that the government's FARDC killed more than dozen civilians after it retook the airport at Mbandaka last month. "I know MONUC has been looking into the assault on the airport," Nesirky said. Video here, from Minute 9:20.
But what about the DRC government's assault on civilians?
And if MONUSCO -- or MINISCULO -- has a protection of civilians mandate that is scaled back, even as Ambassador Araud described it, it could not protect civilians from army units, even rogue army units of the former CNDP of Bosco Ntaganda. Perhaps it should be called MON-BOSCO.
Inner City Press asked also Nesirky about Doss' presumptive misconduct, which it first reported, in telling the UN Development Program to show him "leeway" and give his daughter a job.
The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services has already preliminarily found wrongdoing. But, Inner City Press asked, if Ban Ki-moon does not rule before May 31, would the UN still have jurisdiction over Alan Doss, and would be the UN's recourse? Nesirky said the OIOS report and Doss' non public response are before the Secretary General and that "we have no further comment at this time." Video here, from Minute 10:12.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/drc1monusco051910.html
