Before UK Presidency of UN Security Council in November, Amb Matthew Rycroft Fields Questions on Yemen, DR Congo, Ladsous, Tells FUNCA Will Stake-out

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 30 -- As the UK takes over presidency of the UN Security Council for November, its Permanent Representative Matthew Rycroft took and even answered Twitter questions for an hour on the morning of October 30, as the Council adopted a resolution about its Working Methods.

  Questions ranged from Yemen and the DR Congo to peacekeepers' sexual abuse, NGO involvement and transparency to the public of the Council's closed-door proceedings. Inner City Press asked Rycroft what he would do to make the Council more accessible to those impacted by it, for example in Burundi,  Yemen, Libya and Haiti, and if he or his Deputy Peter Wilson will hold question and answer stakeouts after closed consultations.

  The latter, Rycroft answered in the affirmative, adding that the UK mission will be using Periscope as well.

  How to supplement stakeout over coverage by UNTV is a question Inner City Press has been working and 'Scoping on; the UK take will be interesting to see.

   Asking about the MONUSCO mission in the DR Congo, and by Inner City Press about the mission's failure to try to “neutralize” the FDLR militia, Rycroft replied with worry for civilians and the hope that the government will work with MONUSCO.

  Given questions about the government's commitment to go after the FDLR as it did the M23, and given that DPKO's Herve Ladsous said the mission could go after the FDLR on its own, why hasn't it? This question hasn't been answered, nor any comment or action on Ladsous, on camera, including peacekeepers' rapes to “R&R.”

 Rycroft was urged to engage with the Saudi mission about airstrikes in Yemen - one wonders, aren't weapons being sold? - and to open up to NGOs. To this, he agreed; it was pointed out not only that the usefulness of NGO submissions is uneven, but that the UN has allowed in the NGOs of the now-indicted Ng Lap Seng, Frank Lorenzo and Sheri Yan. We'll have more on this.

Back on September 23, Inner City Press asked Rycroft similar questions not in the UN but a dozen blocks away at a Digital Diplomacy / “Soft Power” event by Facebook and Portland Communications. #Periscope video [was] here.

   Rycroft told Inner City Press that the best Security Council meetings he's been in have allowed in outside voices; he noted it is still not the custom to tweet from inside consultations, though perhaps it should be.

  Inner City Press asked the US State Department's Moira Whelan about US Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones quitting Twitter back in March, after one of her tweets about bombing of the Tawerga was attacked. Whelan said the State Department wants to support its diplomats when they come under fire; Rycroft said if a diplomat's intentions were good and well-considered, they should be supported even if things go wrong.

   Facebook's Katie Harbath mentioned that India Prime Minister Modi would be meeting with Mark Zuckerberg; an hour later at the Indian delegation's press conference in the Waldorf Astoria's huge Empire room, there was confirmation of this and other tech meetings for Modi. (Inner City Press asked about UN Peacekeeping, whose chief Herve Ladsous recently linked UN rapes to “R&R” on video, here.)

  There was talk of the UN and social media; from Inner City Press' and the new Free UN Coalition for Access' perspective, the UN itself far too infrequently responds and engages, and much of the corporate press corps resents new media coverage of the UN, for example with the old UN Correspondents Association's Valeria Robecco saying multimedia is NOT a photographer to block coverage of the Pope's visit, click here for that. But we will continue: watch this site.
 

As UN Security Council Talks Working Methods, New PGA Lykketoft Speaks As Old PGA John Ashe Is Indicted

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 20 -- When Spain as Security Council President for October held its “Working Methods” debate it tried to practice what it preaches: it did not propose an outcome to be adopted before hearing the 64 speakers.

   UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft posed questions, including “How can we bring more transparency, how can we improve participation?” (Inner City Press replied, “Fewer closed consultations, let UNSC hear from broader range of briefers, require USG Q&A #Ladsous,” the last being a reference to Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who refuses Press questions, then linked rapes to R&R, here.)

   Russia's Vitaly Churkin questioned why the US, UK and France are allowed to “usurp” (as UN translated) the top UN posts for Political and Humanitarian Affairs and Peacekeeping. He called some Arria formula meeting little but propaganda, paid for by all the UN's members.

  France's Francois Delattre talked up his country's proposal on veto restraint; he did not address what was called earlier this month France's “implicit veto” for example against any human right monitoring by its Ladsous' DPKO in Western Sahara.

   Angola delivered a joint statement for itself and five other members (Chile, Jordan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Spain); Venezuela, like incoming Uruguay, called for a more inclusive Council process. (Venezuela added that the threat of the veto has kept Palestine from full membership.)

  Rwanda near the end asked why those impacted - Africans - can't at least share penholding duties; the pens France holds, for example at Burundi, are striking.

  Nepal suggested that elections for Council seats be held a full year in advance, to allow time to prepare. One of those running, now in June 2016, is the Netherlands, whose Ambassador was asked online for this country's view of the UN's response to date to the John Ashe, Ng Lap Seng and Global Sustainability Foundation (GSF) scandal.

  There was a lot of talk about the process for selecting the next Secretary General, but it remains unclear when a joint letter will go out from the Presidents of the Council and of the General Assembly, who spoke, including that a woman SG should be considered. That's good; Irina Bokova for example should explain her role in a GSF event giving out awards to businesspeople, just last month in the UN Delegates Dining Room.

  As the debate ended without any rights of reply, news broke of the formal indictment of John Ashe, Francis Lorenzo and Ng Lap Seng, who provided funds not only to South South News but through them to the UN Correspondents Association. The need for reform runs throughout the UN. We'll have more on this.
   

As UNSC Methods Reviewed, PGA John Ashe's Euro-Heavy Reform Group Says It's in Charge: ACT Up

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 30 -- During the all-day debate Tuesday in the UN Security Council, ostensibly of its Working Methods, the recent naming by President of the General Assembly John Ashe of a six-country advisory group on Council Reform was the elephant in the room, or Chamber.

  What was this group, first reported on by Inner City Press, set up to do? Why are three of its six members European, along with Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea and Brazil?

  Some have complained to Inner City Press that Sierra Leone didn't attend the first, "slapped together" meeting. A second meeting, they say, was held yesterday October 29 -- again, sans Ashe. (In fairness, Inner City Press published Ashe's office's response, here.)

  Brazil came out and said: the group, which is it on, will come up with a text which is to be the basis of inter-governmental negotiations. Another G-4 member, Germany, echoed this in its speech (which as we noted, also mentioned the growing role of Twitter, which the German Mission told Inner City Press in context includes media tweets, here.)

Later Tuesday evening yet another G4 member told Inner City Press they like this process. United for Consensus? Not so much.

Japan of the G4 said that even the current Elected Ten members weren't consulted on Syria. (In fact, despite UK calling in Valerie Amos and France calling in Saudi-sponsored rebel Ahmad al Jarba, it's largely down to Russia and the US, which even envoy Lakhdar Brahimi seems to be chafing against.)

Many points were made by members of ACT, and some surprising ACT supporters. Here's another one, on issues of needed transparency: the Free UN Coalition for Access,@FUNCA_info. 

  And here's an example: even the question of which media could cover the "Council's" recent Africa trip was decided, without transparency, by a single colonial member, France. African members, and others, weren't consulted. It's time to ACT up.

  New Zealand recalled that the Secretary General, under Article 99 of the Charter, can put urgent matters in front of the Council. But as Inner City Press reported, daily at the time, on Sri Lanka Ban Ki-moon never did that.

  He has a report saying that should happen in the future -- but his Office of the Spokesperson told Inner City Press the report, already leaked to Inner City Press by a UN whistleblower, may or may not exist. And so it goes in this UN. Watch this site.

   

UN Working Methods Ritual Masks Small 5 Trauma, Singapore Cites O'Brien Letter

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 26 -- Security Council reform is a perennial UN issues, sadly like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Monday's session on Working Methods was an open debate for the fifth year in a row.

  But this one was different, coming as it did after the shoot-down of the reform resolution by the so-called Small Five by a letter from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's top lawyer Patricia O'Brien.

  Singapore said, "the Office of Legal Affairs gave an interpretation that 'it would be appropriate if the General Assembly were to adopt the draft resolution with the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the General Assembly membership.' Member States learnt of this legal opinion, not from the OLA or even the PGA who had first raised the query."

  While Singapore went on to focus on a Permanent Five member faxing the OLA letter out -- to Inner City Press' information, this was done during the General Assembly session -- the letter was leaked and published by Inner City Press the night before.

  The larger problem was that O'Brien letter was never made an official document. It was "put out there" in order to get the Small Five to withdraw their resolution. Then it disappeared. And O'Brien never appeared to answer any Press questions about the letter and its reasoning. Such is the lawless UN.

  Still Monday's session, which after Singapore heard from Egypt, Small Fiver Switzerland and Iran in the morning, then incoming member South Korea, Small Fivers Costa Rica and Uruguay and others in the afternoon.

  Russia's Vitaly Churkin in the morning said that working methods are the property of the Security Council -- he confirmed this translation afterward to Inner City Press, while others told Inner City Press that his reference to Charters Six and Eight was MIS-translated as Chapter Seven. The P5 are united on these issues. And many beyond them praised the Council's new website.

  Morocco's Ambassador Loulichki suggested that non Permanent members be consulted on what committees they might like to chair.

    Inner City Press hears that on Working Methods or documentation, outgoing member Portugal might be replaced by incoming Argentina. Fresh from their face off with the International Monetary Fund and a foreclosing vulture fund, here's hoping they can move the ball of transparency forward. Watch this site.

At UN, SC Meets in Secret on Transparency, Down Closed Hall, Concept Paper Here

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 23 -- On Monday the UN Security Council Permanent Members met in their consultations room about transparency. Inner City Press later obtained from an unnamed source the underlying Concept Paper, which it puts online below.

On Friday the Council's Committee on Working Methods took up the topic again, this time amid in the North Lawn building amid even greater secrecy.

Inner City Press stood in the hall outside Conference Room 7, as media often do. A non-Council diplomat told Inner City Press, "Transparency and the Security Council? Give me a break."

The Council's substantive work of the day was the negotiation of a long-stalled Presidential Statement about the Sahel, unblocked in light of the coup d'etat in Mali. (Our next articles is on that.)

On March 22 Inner City Press asked Council president Mark Lyall Grant about the stalled Sahel statement and was told that political coordinators would meet on Friday at 10:30. But it was not at the Council, and only at 3 pm was it learned that a draft of the Sahel would go now go "under silence."

Non-Permanent members of the Council were mostly represented on Working Methods by their Political Coordinators; the Permanent Five at a lower level. The UK and France, for example, were represented by the diplomats who represented them during the recent meetings of the International Criminal Court state parties. Friday after France's Beatrice Le Fraper du Hellen walked in, soon Inner City Press was told to leave even the hallway. So much for transparency.

The Press' ability to cover UN meeting should not depend so much on in which UN building the hosts choose to hold the meeting. This is similar to the meeting in UN-rented 380 Madison Avenue of the UN Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations, including Sri Lankan General Shavendra Silva whose Division 58 is depicted in the UN's own Panel of Experts report as engaged in war crimes.

When Inner City Press covered it as it would in the UN, Sri Lanka got UN Security to throw Inner City Press. Now the North Lawn building is said to have secret corridors, and the Council tries to meet in them.

And so we have the Concept Paper, which invited comment on among other things a proposal to not have Ambassadorial level meetings on, "say," Friday afternoons:

The Council is allotted five full conference days per week but, on average, our figures indicate that only around half of these allotted conference resources are used. Just under half of the unused resources can be re-allocated within the UN system, but around a tbird of the overall allotted time is not utilized. While maintaining the capacity to meet at any time and at short notice should the need arise, we believe there is a case for the Council agreeing to a practice that it should not meet, say, on Friday afternoons (other than when urgently necessary). Providing this level of clarity to the Secretariat would enable them to adjust their planning so that the level of unused resources would be sharply reduced. Our estimates indicate that this modest reform would save several million dollars. Additionally, we think that we should look at redeploying some of the time from the Council itself to subsidiary organs, whose number and frequency of meeting have increased in recent years.

Periodicity. Recently steps have been taken to reduce the number of mandate renewals concentrated disproportionately at a few points in the year (notably June and December). However more can be done to avoid spikes in the work of the Council with consequences for the workload of the Secretariat and all Missions of Council members. We believe that recent planning documents from the Secretariat (see Secretariat Note of 1 March 2012) demonstrate that there is scope for the Council to spread its workload more evenly throughout the year by adjusting mandate renewal periods and reporting requirements so that these are not concentrated at particular points. There is also scope to align related reporting requirements (e.g. of mission reports and sanctions committee reports concerning the same country) so that Council consideration of related items could easily be "clustered" into a single thematically consistent session.

Interactivity, We welcome the greater level of interactivity achieved in recent months through, for example, less recourse to speakers' lists for consultations, more informality of discussion, through regular horizon-scanning sessions and through the judicious use of videoconferencing technology wherever appropriate and practically feasible (which increased from 3 uses in 2010 to 28 in 2011). Our view is that this leads to more productive and stimulating exchanges and generates purposeful debate. We believe that we should actively explore further such changes.

And so ostensibly to discuss reform, and greater openness in publishing the full year's schedule on the Council's website, the Council meet Friday in a closed door down a hallway some wanted the Press out of. We'll have more on this.

While UN SC Counsels Secrecy, Transparency & Reform Needed

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 19 -- Is the UN Security Council getting more secretive or less? It seems some members would like it to become even more of an insiders' club, excluding not only the press and public but even other UN member states which are not among the Permanent Five members or those ten elected to two year temporary terms.

The Council met behind closed doors on Monday morning about its "working methods." Just outside the Council chamber, Inner City Press asked a number of diplomats including from the UK and Portugal which co-authored the "concept paper" which was being consider, if the paper could be made public. One country said no, the other said perhaps a summary could be given.

And so when the Council President for March, UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, came out to the stakeout, Inner City Press asked him three questions, about working methods, Syria and Sri Lanka:

Inner City Press: On working methods, was there any discussion of issues that would deal with transparency? Greater transparency by the Council with the press and the public. In terms of transparency, is Mr. Guehenno a Deputy to Kofi Annan or not? And if you could, I wanted to ask you one thing, if you could just say for the record, there’s the reports that this Commonwealth event that you deemed inappropriate, the presence of the DPR of Sri Lanka, given his record in the UN’s own report. Is that the case and could you say your reason for it?”

Amb. Lyall Grant: I'm not going to comment on the last two issues. On the Mr Guehenno point, I mean, if there’s an announcement, no doubt the Secretary-General will make that announcement. But on working methods, which we did discuss this morning, yes, there was discussion of transparency. A number of members raised that. And in particular, around the annual report of the Security Council’s work in November. There were some suggestions that there should be an ability of the Council to pick up some of the ideas that are raised in that open debate in November from other members of the United Nations and to react to that, to have some follow-up to that open debate on the working methods in November. And certainly that was one of the areas of transparency. Equally, I have to say, there was quite strong support for the idea that consultations should be confidential and leakage from the consultations room should be contained and that if the Security Council is to do its business efficiently when there are confidential discussions, negotiations, going on in the consultations room, they should remain confidential and not be leaked out.

After this answer, a number of diplomats came to Inner City Press to emphasis the anger of some in the Council about leaks, including information Inner City Press has published in the spirit of transparency.

Further description was provided of a meeting last week which was abnormally closed and at which the directive against leaks to the Press was strongly emphasized.

The Security Council's topic last Thursday morning was Haiti -- the president has eight passports, and UN peacekeepers found guilty of raping a 14 year old boy were sentenced to only one year.

Sources tell Inner City Press that US Ambassador Susan Rice declared that only the 15 top ambassadors and their Haiti experts (with a few exceptions) should stay in the consultations room, and nothing would be in writing. The sources say Rice expressed anger at leaks to Inner City Press, and warned against them.

It is ironic, because as exclusively reported by Inner City Press at the beginning of the month Lyall Grant proposed a session of "Permanent Representatives only." Not only Russia but also the US opposed the idea.

It now seems the US is not against the one country, on representative idea, only the requirement that it be the top Ambassador, since Rice is often out of town.

Monday, too, Rice was said to be in Washington. One would like to ask her directly, but on this it has not been possible prior to the Council's discussion of working methods and (less) transparency.

Last week when Inner City Press sought a comment from the US Mission's Ambassador for Management Joseph Torsella, the answer was to see Joe's tweets. Other questions asked were not answered, including on Syria, Sri Lanka and, ironically, Security Council reform:

I've received the below as a summary of what the US asked in yesterday's GA session on Security Council reform, from a participant. If you don't mind, is it accurate? United States Q

- How many of the 25/26 seats will be permanent/non-permanent?

- How does the L69 propose to allocate non-permanent seats?

- L69 proposal on development status as a factor of consideration, will this status be made independently? Or via a group?

- Will seats for small island nations be rotating? Will it differ from other non-permanent seats?

- Do all L69 members attend SC meetings and do they find them useful?

Would USUN want to add anything?

The questions were not answered or even acknowledged. As others have also said, of late the US has a weak record on international governance reform, including opposing reforms at the IMF, maintaining it can appoint anyone to head the World Bank, even Larry Summers, and declining to answer questions.

The Council's closed door discussion Monday morning would impact not only the press and public but also other UN member states. Until now, countries not serving on the Council come and get private briefings, for example by the European Union for its members. Is that supposed to stop?

Monday afternoon an elected member of the Council told Inner City Press that it is the Permanent Five who have "no responsibility to others... the rest of us, we report back to our Groups."

This is similar to the issue of the funding of Special Political Mission, which while designed and pushed through by the Permanent Five, are left in the regular UN budget rather than the Peacekeeping budget, essentially shifting the costs of the P5's decision onto other states.

Among the other topics in the working methods meeting Monday morning was shifting the Council's translation and administrative support to its "subsidiary bodies" on Friday, and not having Council meetings of Permanent Representatives on that day.

The UK pushed for greater interactivity -- in closed door "horizon" consultations -- and for spreading mandate renewals out across the year. The Secretariat is proposing producing a calendar for the whole year: but would it be public?

A defender of Monday's discussion tried to distinguish between "leaking" and "briefing." By this argument, draft documents should never be given out, and summaries of consultations should only give "a sense of the mood of the whole Council," not specify who said what. Talk about accountability.

Inner City Press' editorial line and project, as should be clear, is that more transparency is better than less, and that regular people, including because they pay the taxes that support the UN and the Council's missions, have a right to know what is taking place.

Currently, the UN won't even say who is getting paid, with global taxpayers' $900,000 allocated in the General Assembly resolution on Syria. Are former UN officials Nicholas Michel and Alan Doss getting paid? Is Jean-Marie Guehenno a deputy to Kofi Annan? Who is in Syria today for Kofi Annan's mission?

The French Mission to the UN drafted a Presidential Statement about the Annan mission, which Inner City Press obtained and put on line: in the spirit of transparency. Watch this site.