By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 4 -- When UN deputy humanitarian chief Kyung-wha Kang took questions Wednesday after her trip to South Sudan, Inner City Press asked if the UN speaks with the David Yau Yau rebels, and about cross border aid into Southern Kordofan.
Kang quickly acknowledged that yes, for humanitarian access the UN speak with the Yau Yau rebels. This stands in contrast to UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos twicedeclining to answer Inner City Press' question whether the UN speaks for access in Syria with the Al Nusra Front or ISIS.
Amos said she would not speak about contacts with "specific groups." Kang did on Wednesday, correctly, about South Sudan. So why is Syria different? What is the UN's policy?
Since Amos has called for cross border aid into Syria from Turkey, Inner City Press asked Kang why the UN has not similarly called for cross border aid from South Sudan into Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan.
Kang did not answer this question except to say, twice, that even the promised polio vaccination campaign has yet to happen. The UN's last report in New York, through John Ging, was that the SPLM-North rebels had demanded a meeting which even the UN did not think was necessary.
Footnote: speaking of unnecessary, the first question to Kang was given to UNCA president Pamela Falk of CBS, who apparently did not have any humanitarian question to ask: she asked about child soldiers. Kang said that issue did not come up (understandably) on her trip.
This was followed by another UNCA "leader" calling Kang the successor to Children and Armed Conflict envoy Coomaraswamy and asking about child soldiers in Afghanistan. Do these questions for question's sake by UNCA "leaders" get written up or broadcast anywhere? Or is to just to try to keep their positions as censors? Watch this site.
