By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 10 -- As the UN under Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gets pushed to the margins of issues like Israel - Palestine, the nuclear "files" on Iran and North Korea, and even on the Central African Republic, out in the world there is mounting criticism of the UN.
Even in CAR, the UN defers to forces with undue influence on the country for year, notably former colonial power France; the UN's humanitarian response has been slammed by Doctors Without Borders.
In places where the UN actually is relevant, just for example, many in Haiti remain outraged at the UN bringing cholera then refusing to even accept court papers.
The UN's inaction and worse as tens of thousands were slaughtered in 2009, now sanitized into the "Rights Up Front agenda, has not led to any accountability. One of the perpetrators became an adviser to the UN and to Ban -- on Peacekeeping.
Ban's UN, including in the way it manages the mostly compliant media, manages to keep such questions out, or at least keep them away from Ban Ki-moon.
On January 10 Ban Ki-moon held his beginning of the year press conference. He brought up "Rights Up Front," twice -- but none of the questions taken were on it. Rather, Ban's acting deputy spokesman automatically gave the first of only eight questions to the United Nations Correspondents Association, a group which became in Ban's time the UN's Censorship Alliance, seeking to get the investigative Press expelled citing its reporting on Sri Lanka and conflict of interest at the UN.
(Haq gave a question to a state media which took the lead in asking for the "review" of Inner City Press' accreditation, click here for that request and e-mail saying Reuters, AFPand, yes, "UNCA" supported it. There have been no reforms since; the Free UN Coalition for Access has been formed.Reuters went on to file a bad faith Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint to ban access to a similar communication to the UN from Google's search, click here for that.)
In Ban's January 10 press conference there followed a series of predictable questions on Syria. Amazingly, the entire continents of Latin America (much less the UN's impunity for bringing cholera to Haiti) and even Asia, did not come up in the questions that Haq selected.
Haq appears to view his job as making Ban, or perhaps the wider UN, look good. While that's one way to view the spokesperson's role, at least twice Haq has mis- or under-spoken then not gone back to correct it. He told Inner City Press in a briefing that the UN *does* screen deploying peacekeepers for cholera.
Haq never corrected it, but when Inner City Press raised it a second time having found that this was false, Haq acknowledged that what he'd said was not, in fact, the case. But the false claim or assurance remains, even on January 10, 2013, online for example here. This is the UN.
Even this week, after Haq declined to confirm UN layoff letters Inner City Press asked about, having seen, only when Inner City Press asked again the next day did Haq read out a statement about Ban's "digital" UN. Then in yesterday'sclosed door Town Hall meeting, Ban was described as "heartbroken" as he signed the layoff ordered on December 31. Secret heartbreak, apparently.
While there are many UN staff working hard, the UN will not improve while it shields itself from questions and buys the compliant media. Even this morning, many in the Great Lakes are looking for the UN to explain and take action on the photographed and videoed participation of UN vehicles in Goma celebrations of the false rumor of Rwanda's Paul Kagame's death.
The UN should have to answer these question -- but the UN won't even take the questions. Watch this site.
