By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 15 -- In a small conference room in Uruguay's Mission to the UN, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday announced a grant from his foundation to help Uruguay defend a lawsuit by Philip Morris against the country's no smoking laws.
Since it was across 48th Street from UN headquarters, Inner City Press asked about tobacco and the UN, in New York and in the field. The UN Global Compact, for example, does not bar from its membership tobacco and cigarette companies, despite claiming to stand for corporate social responsibility.
Global Compact chief George Kell has twice told Inner City Press that since tobacco is legal, the companies will not be barred.
Meanwhile on a trip last month to the UN's peacekeeping mission in Sudan, smoking was prevalent, despite what Uruguayan Permanent Representative Jose Luis Cancela on Monday told Inner City Press about the anti smoking resolution his country sponsored in the General Assembly. The problem, he said, is enforcement -- which is also true on health matters ranging from food safety to bedbugs.
“It's not for me to tell anyone else how to behave,” Bloomberg said without irony, adding, “It's very difficult to enforce.” He said life expectancy in New York has gone up by nineteen months in the past eight years, and that users of beaches and parks and not his Mayor's Office pushed to ban smoking even in those outdoors locales.
In the front row sat his sister Marjorie Tiven, New York City's liaison with the UN. While she played a role in forcing the UN to take note of local fire codes, nothing has yet been done as to food safety code.
Back on November 1, Inner City Press asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky:
Inner City Press: in New York now, the Health Department has a system under which the representing letter grades for health. They inspect restaurants and any other food facility. And apparently they have… they do inspect… I wasn’t aware of this, but they inspect the UNICEF cafeteria and the DC-One cafeteria, and both have received grades that would be B or in one case C. What I am wondering is whether the facility here in UN Headquarters, does the UN consider this to be outside of that system of health inspections, and if so what can it say about the… given, across the street what the grades are? And also, not to say that the two are related, but what interface has there been with the city government on this bedbug issue and what update can you provide as to the tests that you said last week were being performed in various locations, some here, some out, including one that was supposedly going to be done and or may soon be done on the 2nd floor? So it’s the food issue, and then the bedbug issue.
Spokesperson Nesirky: Well, on the second, I don’t have an update, and let’s see if we can get one. I don’t have an update. But I do know, as you yourself have said, you’ve been in direct touch with the relevant people from Facilities Management Service. I am sure that if you wanted to, you could do the same again. But for the benefit of others, of course, and for you as well, we’ll see if there is an update. On the first part, health inspections, I would defer to my colleagues who liaise with the city authorities. I don’t know the answer to that.
Inner City Press: Should I follow up with them or can you [inaudible]?
Spokesperson Nesirky: As I said, I will see what we can find out.
[The Spokesperson later added that Aramark said that the cafeteria at United Nations Headquarters was not being inspected.]
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