Amid Ban's 1 Candidate Anointment, Global Model UN Had 10, Staff Union Charged With Just What Ban Does

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 11 -- With the UN Secretary General for the next five years about to be anointed with only one candidate and no competition, the ironies abound. Even the Global Model United Nations had ten candidates to lead its upcoming meeting in Incheon, South Korea.

At a June 10 briefing, Inner City Press asked the winner, Tatiana Makarova of the Russian Federation, about the competition. As written up by the UN itself, “Asked how she had been selected to be Secretary-General and if there had been more than one candidate, Ms. Makarova said that 10 people had been nominated from around the world in a long and difficult process. Debates and interviews had followed.”

For Ban Ki-moon, by contrast, there have been no debates at all. He made his pitch in closed door meetings with regional groups, and now awaits a Security Council rubber stamp vote on June 16, when he won't even be in the country but rather visiting Security Council member Brazil.

A Caribbean nation's Permanent Representative told Inner City Press later on June 10, “once the Big Five signed off on Ban, it was a done deal, the rest of us are just window dressing.” He referred to the second stamp, even more rubber, set for the General Assembly on June 21.

But even without competition, sources in Ban's office tell Inner City Press that recently the re-appointment has been the focus of that offices work, putting pressure on member states to get instructions from their capitals within 24 hours and issue statements.

Ironically, in the contested UN Staff Union election held from June 7-9, the incumbents who have been critical of Ban are charged with using their UN offices on 48th Street for campaigning - meanwhile, Ban's Office just to the south has long been devoted to politicking. What could happen, before June 16 and 21? Watch this site.

Before Global Model UN, Financial Sponsors' Names Disappear, Malaysia on Refugees

By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/gmun1malaysia020410.html

UNITED NATIONS, February 4 -- As the UN promotes its upcoming Global Model United Nations, to be held in Malaysia, questions arose about previous corporate sponsorships of the event, and of some participants' travel. Inner City Press asked UN official Eric Falt about listed 2009 "sponsors" including Nestle and AIG affiliate C.V. Starr. Video here, from Minute 31:13.

Falt said he thought the deal with Nestle had fallen through, and hadn't heard of "the other" sponsor, AIG's C.V. Starr. Later he sent the following explanation:

With regard to Nestle, we had been in discussion with them last year to possibly sponsor students from developing countries who could not afford to attend the first conference in Geneva. In this end, this did not happen but the information relating to their expected sponsorship somehow remained on the website. As an admittedly late update, Nestle's name has now been removed from the website as a sponsor.

Since students are responsible for paying their own expenses (i.e., travel and accommodations), we encouraged them to seek their own funding from local enterprises. The names of other sponsors you mentioned who were also listed as “SPONSORS who provided financial assistance to Global Model UN Delegates” were provided to us by the students themselves. The United Nations did not have any direct connection with any of these sponsors. In any case, I would agree that this is potentially confusing and we have therefore removed this list of "secondary" sponsors from the website as well.

We're not sure that the solution to this "confusion" is to remove information about who is paying to fly delegates to the Global Model UN. If AIG (or Nestle) is paying, it should be known.

During the press conference, Mr. Falt said that the UN reviews potential corporate sponsor under rules promulgated by the UN Global Compact -- it's not "anything goes," he said. But the Global Compact has as a member, for example, PetroChina which is under fire for its engagement with the Al Bashir government of Sudan. If there are standards, what are they? And is the solution removing the names of sponsors, even "secondary" sponsors, from the UN's website?

Inner City Press also asked Malaysia's Ambassador about human rights complaints against his country for treatment of refugees, and crackdowns on free press. He graciously responded that these must be seen in the "context of the country itself... we have three major groups, and many smaller." He said that although Malaysia has not joined the Refugee convention, it still implements. But there are stories of mistreatment of asylum seekers, for example from Myanmar, here.

Will these type of issues -- UN engagement with corporations like Nestle, AIG or even PetroChina, and the host country's treatment of asylum seekers, for example from Myanmar -- be allowed to be debated at the 2010 Global Model UN? We'll see. Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/gmun1malaysia020410.html