By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 20 -- Ban Ki-moon's finally General Debate speech was a model of hypocrisy.
He confined his too-late apology on Haiti cholera to the portion of his speech in broken French, along with sexual abuse. He seemed to take on the Security Council veto, but then focused on smaller countries breaking consensus.
Ban did not mention the UN bribery scandal during his tenure, much less his promotion of his own son in law to the top UN job in Kenya without recusing himself, or his and his head of Communications Cristina Gallach's censorship of the investigative Press which has raised these issues. NYT here, petition here.
With the UN primed for Barack Obama's final General Assembly speech as US President, the UN's decay in the last eight (really, ten) years comes to the fore.
While many will focus on inaction in Syria, which allows the UN Secretariat to blame “the member states,” what about the UN killing more than 10,000 people with cholera in Haiti, then citing immunity?
What about the increasing bursts of rape and sexual abuse by peacekeepers, even as the US Mission's Ambassador for “Reform” Isobel Coleman delivers praise to Ban Ki-moon's supposed “zero tolerance” policy -- while Ban's head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous has publicly linked the rapes to “R&R”? Video here.
How about Ban's own increasing nepotism -- promoting his own son in law Siddharth Chatterjee to the top UN job in Kenya without recusal -- and the Ng Lap Seng / John Ashe UN bribery case? What has the Obama administration done or even said about any of these?
The US continues to support the Saudi-led Coalition's airstrikes on Yemen; Ban took the Saudi-led Coalition off the UN's Children and Armed Conflict annex.
This undermines other UN human rights lists -- but Ban is leaving the UN (coyly running for president of South Korea, and using the UN to do so), as Obama leaves.
There is lip service to multi-lateralism, but while Ban Ki-moon has actively harmed the UN, the Obama administration has done nothing. Who will they choose to come after Ban? Watch this site.
