By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 10 -- The military contractorDynCorp, charged with child sex abuse while working with the UN in Bosnia in 1999, has just been selected by the US State Department to work for $46.8 million with the UN in Haiti.
The timing is, to put it mildly, ironic and Balkanized. DynCorp was exposed by, and retaliated against,whistleblower Kathryn Bolkovac, recently interviewed at the UN by Inner City Press.
On both April 8 and April 9, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson about the continuing lack of whistleblower protections at the UN, exemplified by the recent case of James Wasserstrom who was retaliated against for exposing corruption at the UN in Kosovo.
In another Balkan connection, Wednesday the President of the General Assembly, former Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic, hosted a debate on international tribunals including that for the Former Yugoslavia. Inner City Press photo here.
As the meeting began, the Permanent Representative of Croatia told Inner City Press that the US Mission to the UN had informed him the night before that it would boycott Jeremic's debate
But why is the US State Department using DynCorp for Haiti, where the UN mission MINUSTAH is already embroiled in multiple sexual abuse scandals, including by Uruguay peacekeepers against a Haitian boy and the repatriation of peacekeepers from Sri Lanka? We'll have more on this. Watch this site.
