By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 30 -- The UN's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Francis Deng on Tuesday issued a five paragraph admission and defense of his use of UN paid Genocide office “administrative assistant to help prepare the new sections” of a book he published in his own name.
When asked which countries his Prevention of Genocide office was looking into, Deng told Inner City Press he doesn't like to talk about particular countries. While those within it complain of a UN Genocide Prevention Office that is drifting under a manager who does little, the nitty-gritty problem even in the UN's unaccountable world is this use of UN resources for personal literary work.
Back on October 27, Inner City Press asked the Office of the Spokesperson for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “ I know Mr. Deng is the Special [Adviser] on prevention of genocide, but… I’ve heard from people that these books are written on UN time; that this is actually one of the things that he does in his UN office. And so, I just, I am unclear of what to make of the book, of the books that he produces. If they are created on UN time and with UN money, are they UN views?”
Spokesman Martin Nesirky protested, “that is not an established fact, Matthew. You shouldn’t then turn it into an established fact.”
After that, no answer was provided for more than a month, despite repeated re-inquiries by Inner City Press. Finally on November 30, Nesirky's deputy Farhan Haq announced that “we also have available in our office a response by Under-Secretary-General Francis Deng... he makes clear that the books that have come out since he joined the UN were written when he was, for successive years, a Fellow at the US Institute for Peace, the Library of Congress and MIT, and were in the pipeline for publication.”
But that's only part of what Deng's statement said. In fact, even Deng had to admit that his most recent book, published in August 2010, “I requested the support of my administrative assistant to help prepare the new section.”
This is precisely the complaint that was brought to Inner City Press: that Deng made his UN-paid administrative staff work on his book.
His “New Sudan in the Making” volume has a chapter by “Eltigani Seisi M. Ateem” -- the former UN staff member at the Economic Commission on Africa who was drafted, including by joint UN - African Union mediator Bassole, to lead the Darfur “Astroturf rebel” group the Liberation and Justice Movement. (Astroturf, the artificial surface in the now demolished Houston Astrodome, means fake grassroots.)
Even a month after the question was asked, neither Deng nor the UN Spokespeople to whom the question was directed can explain why for work produced with UN resources on UN time, the copyright does not remain with the UN, and the work become attributable to the UN?
Instead, Deng says that he asked Ban Ki-moon's Chef de Cabinet Vijay Nambiar is this use of UN resources was okay, and was told “yes.” Then, four weeks after the question was publicly raised, Deng “met with the Director of the Ethics Office on 23 November to seek her advice on these matters. She assure me that she found no basis for concern.”
How could there be no basis for concern that a UN official makes his UN paid staff work on his personal book(s)?
Here's another one: the same sources say that Deng's family owns property in Abyei, which stands to be impacted by the Sudan referenda process in which the UN is playing a role. When Inner City Press asked about this, it was directed to a vague financial disclosure form which merely says that Deng owns a house in Sudan. The same Ethics Office oversees these absurdly vague disclosures. What is there position on this other blatant conflict of interest? Watch this site.
