By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 7 -- After a UN meeting on "Civilian Capacities" from which civilians and the press were excluded on November 4, a detailed complaint about the endeavor and about the UN's engagement with civilians was made to Inner City Press by the Permanent Representative of Bangladesh, Abulkalam Abdul Momen.
Momen told Inner City Press that inside the meeting, in a UN conference room that was far less than half full, he had described a recent and troubling trip to a country on the UN's Peacebuilding agenda, without in the meeting naming the country.
He said he visited UN projects in the rural part of the country and found that civil society groups and even direct neighbors had never heard of the projects.
He met with the president of the country, who said he did not know how much the UN spent in his country, or how. He said there are almost no roads in the country, "fifty years after independence."
Inner City Press asked him, "Is it the Central African Republic?" After hesitating, Momen said yes.
What was this meeting [closed]? (c) MRLee
Inner City Press has previously spoken about CAR with the head of the UN's Peacebuilding configuration for the country, Belgium's Permanent Representative Jan Grauls, who painted a rosier picture of things in CAR's capital, Bangui.
"There's not even a hotel there," Momen said. He contrasted CAR with his country and its vibrant civil society. When Inner City Press said, "Even the indigenous," referring to a previous story about complaints that Bangladesh denies it has indigenous people even in the Hill Tracks and uses their land to train UN peacekeepers, Momen laughed. Yes, vibrant.
Because the meeting was closed, Inner City Press had to wait until it ended to ask the presenter, the UN's chief of Field Support Susana Malcorra, about Momen's critique.
Malcorra told Inner City Press, that's why we had the meeting. She said, we have to focus on the needs of a country, not only on what the UN is already ready to deliver. We have to align ourselves with the plans of governments, she said.
Inner City Press asked her, what about governments which are killing their own people. Malcorra said the meeting was focus on "post-conflict" situations. But are those already without attacks on civilians? Now even in UN post conflict post child Liberia, political opponents are being shot by police.
The UN might benefit from having such meetings open, rather than reflexively keeping them closed to the press and public and making critiques diplomatically, without naming names. Public money is being spent, and it should all be public. Watch this site.
