By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 21 -- When the Gaza field director of UNICEF Pernille Ironside took questions at the UN on August 21, Inner City Press asked her when a Board of Inquiry into the destruction of UN premises like the UNRWA schools will begin. Video here.
Ironside said that will be up to the Secretariat of Ban Ki-moon and UNRWA. Earlier this week Robert Serry told Inner City Press the same thing. But where is the Board of Inquiry? On the one conducted in 2009, Inner City Press reported on how Ban Ki-moon allowed himself to be lobbied and blunted in his cover letter recommendations in the report, later shown in detail by a cable published by Wikileaks.
Does that explain the delay?
Inner City Press also asked Ironside about her statement in her recent Reddit Ask Me Anything that “Gaza's economy has been severely depressed, particularly since the closure of the informal tunnel system with Egypt in July 2013.” Ironside said Gazans are well educated and eager to work, but precluded from doing so; she said the negotiators should take this into account.
Ironside said she previously served the UN in Goma in Eastern Congo, and more recently in Yemen. With the Houthis now in Sana'a, that's something we'd like to hear more about.
The moderator on August 21 began by giving out the first question to Ironside without set-aside, but then allowed the first question to be taken or “reclaimed” by the UN Correspondents Association, a group whose Executive Board tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN.
There have been no reforms; if anything UNCA, now the UN's Censorship Alliance, more aggressively demands the first question at such briefings, and then usually offers up a softball question of the type the UN likes. Then the same media takes a second question. This is something the Free UN Coalition for Access will continue to oppose -- the UN should not promote hierarchy, censorship, set-asides. Watch this site.
