By Matthew Russell Lee
ABU SHOUK IDP CAMP, DARFUR, October 8 -- Minutes after internally displaced women here told Inner City Press of being unable to feed their children due to cutbacks by the UN World Food Program, UN Humanitarian Coordinator Georg Charpentier told the Press that “there is no lack of food in Abu Shouk.”
Charpentier's evidence, as he presented it, was the presence of taxis in the IDP camp's market area. The standard he applied became clear when Inner City Press asked why it had taken him and the UN so long to speak out against Sudan's government's blockade of the Kalma IDP Camp.
Charpentier said that “there was no famine” in Kalma, and that therefore the warnings were “exaggerated.”
On question after question, Charpentier sounds suspiciously similar to the Wali of North Darfur, who earlier on Friday had harangued the UN Security Council members with statistics that various forms of crime have decreased 70 to 80%. It is one thing for a government to try to downplay its problems. But to have the UN humanitarian coordinator joining in the spin is problematic.
US Permanent Representative Susan Rice, who was on the trip, was previously informed by Inner City Press of problems with Charpentier's performance of his supposedly impartial humanitarian duties. Ambassador Rice said she would look into it while in Darfur -- but did she?
The UN Security Council members spent less than a quarter of an hour in the camp. Their intake was purely anecdotal. Inner City Press watched as one Ambassador used a UN translator to ask a Sudanese woman how long it had been since she'd been home. Oh you go ever six months, the Ambassador then said. No, the woman said, I said I still have some family members there, but I can't go due to safety.
Who really oversees the UN's missions and ostensibly humanitarian operations on the ground? This trip has made it clear at the Security Council is not overseeing even the peacekeeping missions it forms and send into the field. In the humanitarian sphere there may be even less oversight.
Kids in Abu Shouk IDP camp, malnutrition not shown due to UN, (c) MRLee
Inner City Press is widely told by people in Sudan that Charpentier has “gone native” and sides and shares documents with the Sudanese authorities. (Charpentier denies the latter, although a high placed UN official has already admitted that the government of Sudan has been shown UN documents before they are released.)
While Inner City Press was trying to report on the Council members' movements through the IDP camp, UN staff repeated told Inner City Press to “put the camera away,” that the “G.O.S.” or Government Of Sudan could come and seize the camera and even put Inner City Press in jail.
It emerged from the UN staff that this had happened not ago to a Japanese TV journalist. Why did the UN say nothing about this? Why did Georg Charpentier say nothing while the Government of Sudan blockaded the Kalma IDP camp? What will Susan Rice and the other Council members do to try to stop any of these trends? Watch this site.
