By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 19 -- The UN routinely fails at stopping conflict, even at stopping rape. But it continues to be counted on to at least do some counting. It issues reports, to the Security Council and to the public, about how many security patrols its mission in Darfur UNAMID conducted, or how many ceasefire violations occurred across a border.
In Sudan, however, the UN is hitting new lows. Earlier this month covering the Security Council's trip through the country, Inner City Press exposed how UN Humanitarian Coordinator Georg Charpentier was downplaying and even covering up the destruction of villages in Jebel Marra like Soro, and the blockade of Internally Displaced Persons' camps like the one being disassembled in Kalma.
Now back in New York, Inner City Press on October 19 asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's acting Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq to confirm or deny reports of increased aerial bombardment in Jebel Marra, and a stream of IDPs to the camps in Shangil Tobaya and Tawila.
While from the former, the Security Council was blocked from visiting by the government, the latter has a Rwandan battalion of UNAMID peacekeepers.
Haq responded with an old statement from Charpentier about Soro, how hard it is to know. But, Inner City Press asked, can't the UN count the number of new IDPs arriving, at least at the camps in which it has peacekeepers? Haq did not answer this simple question of fact. Video here.
To many, it appears that the UN, or at least its UNAMID mission under Ibrahim Gambari, is trying to help cover up the Omar al Bashir regime's renewed push of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
Meanwhile Gambari's counterpart at the UN Mission in (South) Sudan, Haile Menkerios, was caught in a misstatement of fact, according to reporters who cover him.
In an October 18 press conference, Menkerios told Xinhua -- reportedly one of the media organizations whose Sudanese staff was thrown off the UN Security Council plane by UNMIS in Juba -- that his Mission hasn't investigated troop build ups on the border of North and South Sudan because there were only “in the press.”
But senior southern army officer Mat Paul said “U.N. officials were not owning up to their lack of access. 'This year, the build-up of SAF (northern army) started in June in South Kordofan and other areas and we've been raising this several times with the U.N.' said Paul, who is the SPLA's representative in the joint north-south ceasefire monitoring commission (CJMC) chaired by the United Nations. 'They...just keep quiet so there is no monitoring,' he said.”
UNMIS “lies,” according to local reporters, to cover up that it has given in to Khartoum's blockage of access to monitor troop build ups. UNAMID in Darfur simply refuses to even count incoming IDPs. Both are (mis?) run by Ban Ki-moon's Department of Peacekeeping Operations, although Gambari often freelances.
At what point has the UN become complicit?
Footnote: UNAMID's Ibrahim Gambari's planned turn over to the al Bashir regime of five supporters of Fur rebel Abdel Wahid Nur may, it was argued Tuesday at the UN, violate the spirit and even letter of Article 3 of the Convention against Torture. Inner City Press asked the chairman of the Committee Against Torture Claudio Grossman if the obligation not to hand anyone over to a government accused of torture applied to the UN and UNAMID. Video here.
He replied that no one should make such a turn over, and that arguments can be made about the applicability of the law to the UN (and by implication Gambari). Watch this site.
