UNITED NATIONS, January 17 – When UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres held a "Global Town Hall Meeting" on January 17, the meeting was closed but Inner City Press came in early to stake it out: to stand in front and ask the attendees what they think of Guterres' performance. Unlike other correspondents at the UN, Inner City Press is required to have a minder to do such stakeouts on the UN's second floor - and on January 17 at the appointed hour, 8:45 am, there was no minder available. Periscope video here. Finally it was possible, after Guterres passed by and started his pitch. At his press conference the day before he twice said, "there were no budget cuts in relation to the regular budget of the United Nations." This is contrary to what Inner City Press found when it, as the only media present, covered the UN budget endgame through 2 am on Christmas Eve. It is also contradicted by this statement exclusively to Inner City Press from staff, edited to preserve anonymity: "What I feel the public or even the missions themselves don't understand, are the repercussions of the proposed cuts. The Fifth Committee members slashed the budget left and right, without thinking for one second what it actually meant. The first thing to go as a result, is one of your favorite topics: transparency. Based on what has been said internally, they are looking to cut down on multilingualism and language accessibility within DPI production, leaving English as a lingua franca (!). This means that missions interested in staying up to date on UN news and events will not be able to access information in their language, if that language is indeed French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian. Nor will the public. As you may imagine, this raises a serious issue in regards to transparency and multilingualism. The founding values of the UN were set in place in order to make the body a fair playing field for all. By making information available only in English, what message will that send? How will it affect the missions? How will the UN be able to forge a closer relationship with the public around the world? The bias will shift heavily in favor of developed countries, who will have the initial access to all information due to linguistic advantages. These talks on cuts are happening behind closed doors and only potentially affected employees are being informed. The missions and the public won't know until it's too late to do anything about it, unless somebody holds them accountable now.But now, you know. And I hope that disseminating this information and holding those in power at the higher echelons of DPI accountable, will help preserve access to information -- which is after all, a human right.We hope to see you there too." But the meeting was closed, and minder only belatedly available. We'll have more on this. The day before on January 16 when Guterres came to give his speech for 2018 to the UN General Assembly, the Press was blocked from staking it out by the censorship restricts he has in place. Periscope here, UNresponded to letter here. Once inside the Trusteeship Council Chamber, Guterres said he had 12 points. One was Myanmar, although he did not even mention the mandate on his to name an envoyto the country, which he has not done. Another was North Korea; he confirmed he will go to the opening ceremony of the PyeongChangOlympics. He lumped all of Africa into just one of his 12 points, despite the Continent being 60% of the UN Security Council's agenda. He did not mention Cameroon or other long time family ruled countries like Togo and Gabon that his envoys are propping up. His Deputy Amina J. Mohammed, who is in “her” Nigeria silent on the abductions there, was not present; her chief staff was, but as before, no response to emails or questions about the 4000 rosewood signature. Guterres hasn't even started an audit of the UN bribery indictmentsof Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio and regarding China Energy Fund Committee brought November 20 in the Southern District of New York. Guterres said he has zero tolerance for sexual harassment but has done none, and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric hasn't even answered Inner City Press on, the case of Frank La Rule at UNESCO. The UN like UNESCO claims it is for free speech and press freedom, but no answer on The Rappler; nor has DPI chief Alison Smale even answered Inner City Press' and the Free UN Coalition for Access' three petitions about even handed media access and content neutral rules, or thispetition. Guterres is slated to take, selected by Dujarric, questions at 12:45. Watch this site.
