By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 19 -- What is happening with the UN's budget?
On the evening of January 18 well placed UN whistleblowers told Inner City Press that the UN has now demanded $100 million in cuts from its departments, in many cases directly impacting the substantive work of the departments. There is little transparency of which department are being asked to cut what.
For weeks Inner City Press has asked, first for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's response to the end of what many called the most dysfunctional Budget Committee session ever, then for an answer to why the press corps' move-back to the UN's skyscraper has been delayed two months.
On the first question, Inner City Press was told to wait for Ban's "Town Hall" meeting with staff, which despite being closed-door it wrote about here.
On the latter question, the UN Department of Public Information has offered shifting answers, first that the normally sized construction crew at the UN has had to be shifted to damage from Hurricane Sandy in the third sub basement, then that the UN can't afford the now increased pay rates of construction workers in New York.
DPI, which on January 17 promised written answers to other questions which as of this writing on January 19 have yet to be provided, has grandly said that this is a legitimate story to follow. But follow how, without official UN answers? While in fairness there are trends going the other way, such as DPI's new "brown bag" briefing series, some now refer to a UN Department of PRIVATE Information.
But still some meetings remain open. On the morning of January 17 DPI's Maher Nasser, the addressee of a New York Civil Liberties Union letter which drew a purported private response from another DPI official who refuses to make public the response, sat before an audience of non-governmental organizations in a North Lawn conference room.
Nasser tried gamely to explain eliminating the post of the person who liaised with NGOs, moving the NGOs' office out of the UN main compound, and not having had a DPI-NGO conference in 2012, or apparently in 2013. There was significant push back, and there promises to be more.
Again, on the evening of January 18 well placed UN whistleblowers told Inner City Press that the UN has now demanded $100 million in cuts from its departments, in many cases to the substantive work of the departments. There is little transparency of which department are being asked to cut what.
But DPI's answers on the delay in the move-back of the press corp must be seen in this light. We'll have more on this: watch this site.
