By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 20 -- In the UN Security Council, even an event as seemingly benign as a day for youth to show videos about world problems is subject to backroom arguments and vetoes.
For the US sponsored youth day on December 21, the US Mission to the UN last week presented Council members with four videos to be screened. Three were essentially vetoed, multiple sources tell Inner City Press.
A video by a German youth about nuclear weapons was vetoed by France, which even argued that the video wasn't by a youth.
African members shot down a video about the Lord's Resistance Army, arguing that the portrayal of an African woman and children in front of a hut made them look “too poor.” That video has been replaced by one from Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A Serbian youth's video about natural resources was shot down. An argument made by the vetoers was that some issues are not on the agenda of the Security Council, and that to show these videos would be an encroachment of the rights of non Council members.
Austria, which is bringing three youths to the December 21 event during which they will stay at Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting's residence, reportedly asked why a video submitted by an Austrian about children and armed conflict wasn't selected. Inner City Press is informed that this will, at least, by in montage assembled by the US Mission.
A Yemeni youth's video on water, initially selected, was vetoed. The three videos, the official story goes, are now linked to from Ambassador Susan Rice's Twitter account. Inner City Press has been asked, in a separate story, to “give the children voice.” Watch this site.
Footnote: earlier, based on which children's parent could afford to fly them to the December 21 event, Inner City Press dubbed it the "Rich Kids' Summit," then the "Summit of Kids from Rich Countries."Now it's said that at least the Chinese government is flying some kids in, and that New York City students form the Children's Zone in Harlem and schools in Brooklyn and Queens (not the Bronx or Staten Island) that the US Mission has not named on the eve of the event, will be there -- as will we.
