By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 8 -- At the UN Monday they debated how to measure the rule of law. What they couldn't measure was time.
The session left less than ten minutes for questions before a closed meeting of the North Korea sanctions committee was to start in the same airless room.
This allowed for only three questions or “interventions,” and even that caused protocol kerfuffles. A man with a statement from the Inter-Parliamentary Union was called on before an ambassador from Togo.
The UK's Deputy Permanent Representative Philip Parham whispered that the Togolese Ambassador should be given the floor. He was, and asked three detailed question which the moderator said had to be answered in three minutes.Photo here.
By then, Irene Khan had left, after Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson, as had an African Permanent Representative. No questions were allowed from the media. Inner City Press wonders, how can the UN measure anyone's rule of law when it so tersely dismissed legal claims for bringing cholera for Haiti?
When it has no whistleblower protections for peacekeepers?
When it raids, without notice or consent, the office of critical media, takes pictures which are then leaked to BuzzFeed.com as soon as they ask the UN about the raid? This is the rule of law?
An outside speaker, a professor, told a story about a scientist trying to measure the weight of the soul, bodies before and just after death. There was laughter. Remember: who brought cholera to Haiti? Rule of law indeed. Watch this site.
