UN GATE / FEDERAL COURT, Nov 2 – Denmark's
own government website describes its August Security
Council presidency in explicit terms: "Denmark looks
forward to presiding over the Security Council's next
phase of this important process, reflecting our strong
engagement in promoting a transparent and inclusive
selection process conducted in close cooperation with the
General Assembly."
The same page cites "Denmark's longstanding
commitment to a more transparent, inclusive and effective
Security Council" as a defining priority of Ambassador
Christina Markus Lassen's month at the gavel.
Denmark's presidency is now ending, and
that specific promise was never tested where it mattered.
On August 1, the first day of Denmark's
month, Inner City Press wrote to Ambassador Lassen asking
for access to the Council's August 3 press briefing and
asking Denmark to raise, with the UN's Media Accreditation
and Liaison Unit, an eight-year-old, unexplained press
exclusion. Denmark did not respond. Through the month, UN
Web TV repeatedly failed to carry the Council's own
readouts following straw polls in the Secretary-General
selection — the same process Denmark's own website says it
is "strongly engaged" in making transparent.
Inner City Press on August 29, 2026 filed a
formal legal request with Denmark's Mission under the
Offentlighedsloven, Denmark's own Freedom of Information
law, asking directly what, if anything, Denmark did during
its presidency to act on either request.
On September 10, Denmark's Ministry of
Foreign Affairs responded to Inner City Press's formal
records request, saying it cannot meet the required
seven-working-day deadline under Section 36(2) of the
Offentlighedsloven and seeking to unilaterally extend its
response time by 14 working days. Inner City Press wrote
back, and on September 15, nearing their own unilaterally
claimed deadline to respond, they came back with more
pretext:
"Dear Matthew The
Ministry can inform you that your request for access to
documents is currently being processed. In connection with
searches of our case management systems and other relevant
records, we have identified a large number of documents
that may be relevant to your request. It is therefore
assessed that processing all the material that is relevant
in light of the current scope of your request for access
to documents would entail a disproportionate expenditure
of resources, cf. Section 9(2)(1) of the Danish Access to
Public Administration Files Act
(Offentlighedsloven). We therefore
suggest that you specify in greater detail the documents
and information in respect of which you are seeking access
and that you limit your request to a specific period of
time. Please provide this information no later than
Thursday, 17 September 2026.
Saeideh Ghiasvand DKJUR MINISTRY OF
FOREIGN AFFAIRS"
Inner City Press immediately responded to
Denmark's claim that its records request is too burdensome
to process — agreeing to narrow the date range to August
1, 2026 through the present, but only that, and only under
protest. The reply states plainly that the Ministry's
invocation of Section 9(2)(1)'s disproportionate-burden
provision appears to be "an apparently attempt to provide
us none of the responsive documents it says it has
identified," and that the narrowing covers "the categories
you are apparently trying to avoid" — Denmark's access to
UN Security Council proceedings, the Secretary-General
straw poll process, peacekeeper corruption and abuse, and
retaliation against UN whistleblowers, all four preserved
in full, with only the time window shortened.
Inner City Press has also made a
second, more pointed ask: since the Ministry's own letter
admits it has already searched its systems and found "a
large number of documents that may be relevant," Inner
City Press is now asking Denmark to produce, immediately,
simply the list or index of what it found — dates,
senders, recipients, general subject matter — without
waiting to review or release the documents themselves.
That index, unlike the underlying records, is not
something Denmark can plausibly claim is
disproportionately burdensome to compile, since the
Ministry's own letter confirms the search identifying
those documents has already been done. The Ministry
had until September 17 to respond — the same day as
another Security Council straw poll toward picking the
next Secretary-General.
It was not until October 13 that
Denmark finally responded - and provided not a single
document, despite the previoutst astsurance that the
request was being processed. The response is so lawless -
or rather, fake-legal - that we'll quote it at length, and
upload it here
and below:
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has
processed your request in accordance with the rules on the
right to access to documents under The Danish Access to
Public Administration Files Act (Offentlighedsloven) – the
‘Access to Public Administration Files Act’, hereafter.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has conducted a search in
the ministry’s records etc. for documents relevant to your
request. It follows from section 9(2)(1) of the Access to
Public Administration Files Act that a request for access
to documents may be refused if processing the request
would entail a disproportionate use of resources. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs considers that processing the
list of documents you have requested in your
above-mentioned e-mail of 15 September 2026, in addition
to the requested documents from 1 August 2026 through the
present, entails a disproportionate use of resources.
On this basis your request is refused pursuant to
section 9(2)(1) of the Access to Public Administration
Files Act.
This decision cannot be appealed to
any other administrative authority." [Emphasis added]
Update, November 2: Denmark’s Foreign Ministry has now refused to reconsider. In a letter on November 2 from Casper Sørensen, Head of Section in its legal unit (DKJUR), the Ministry said “no new information of significant importance has been provided, no new significant legal circumstances have arisen and no significant procedural errors have been committed,†and that it “does not intend to reconsider the decision of 13 October 2026.†It added that the list of documents Inner City Press asked for runs to 6 pages and covers a case file of over 1,100 pages, and that the narrowed request, limited to August 1, 2026 to the present, comes to about 280 pages. On that basis, it again cited section 9(2)(1) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act: “a disproportionate use of resources.â€
What the letter does not explain is why sending a 6-page list is disproportionate. The Ministry told Inner City Press on September 15 that it had already searched and found “a large number of documents that may be relevant.†The list is the product of that search. Its own letter now says the list is 6 pages. The Ministry also wrote that it “regrets that it did not grant a further extension of the 30 September 2026 deadline,†an acknowledgment by the Ministry itself that its handling of the deadline was a problem.
Inner City Press has replied in writing to the
Ministry, without prejudice to its original request and its
right to pursue the full period separately. It asks that the
6-page list be sent now, that the Ministry say what scope it
would treat as proportionate and give a breakdown of the
roughly 280 pages by category, and that the Ministry process
the request in stages, starting with Inner City Press’s own
correspondence to Denmark’s Mission. It also reserves the
right to complain to the Danish Parliamentary Ombudsman.
Denmark presided over the Security Council in August on a
promise of transparency in the Secretary-General selection.
It still has not shown what it did with that promise. Now
the same with Latvia and Ambassador Sanita
Pavļuta-Deslandes?
Watch this site.
Denmark is not a Council
veto-holder; as a non-permanent member, its vote counts
but does not carry a permanent member's weight. What it
did carry, for one month, was the gavel — and with it, the
specific, self-described responsibility to make this exact
selection process more transparent.
A government that put that commitment in writing, on its own website, has an opportunity, even after its presidency ends, to say what it actually did with it. Watch this site
