By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 2 – This coming week, the UN Security Council was to have had no meetings as it traveled to the capital of this month's president, Addis Ababa. But late on Friday a meeting was added for Tuesday, September 5, about Mali. Noblesse oblige.
Also on Tuesday, a two-day meeting about the New Urban Agenda, or the end of UN HABITAT as we know it, begins in the ECOSOC Chamber. (Inner City Press either can't cover it or can only do so with a UN minder, due to ongoing censorship for covering the UN bribery scandal of former President of the General Assembly John Ashe and Ng Lap Seng.) In related news, incomding President of the General Assembly Miroslav Lajcak is slated to be taken on Thursday for his introduction to (some) media to the private clubhouse the UN gives to its UN Censorship Alliance, UNCA. This group, formally the United Nations Correspondents Association, took funding from Ng Lap Seng's South South News and provided the venue for Ng's photos with Ban Ki-moon; it has yet to be addressed. Lajcak gave a good initial answer on l'affaire Ashe, when Inner City Press asked. We'll see.
Monday is a holiday in the US, but in Geneva there will be a briefing by the Commission of inquiry on Burundi: Fatsah Ouguergouz, President of the UN Commission of inquiry on Burundi; Françoise Hampson, member of the Commission and Reine Alapini Gansou, member of the Commission. On September 1, the new president of the Security Council told Inner City Press that Burundi cannot be compared to, for example, the Central African Republic, because it has “strong state institutions.” Video here.
On Tuesday Geneva will hear from Catherine Marchi-Uhel, Head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism; on Wednesday from the Syria Panel, now sans Carla Ponte. In New York, the new Under Secretary General of OCHA has arrived; the new USG of the Department of Public Information has apparently not. Yet.
Without irony, the UN will on Thursday hold a meeting, by UNOAC, on #fakenews. Coming soon: UN General Assembly High Level Week, UNspun by Inner City Press. And so it goes - contact us with more (encrypted email matthewrlee [at] protonmail.com), and watch this site.
