By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, May 4 -- Months after civilians in the Birao area of the Central African Republic were abandoned when the UN Peacekeeping mission MINURCAT pulled out, a call has gone up to establish at least some kind of UN presence in CAR's Haut-Mbomou prefecture and its capital Obo.
Only two international medical NGOs serve the area, where children are abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army, according to Laura Perez of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
Inner City Press asked Ms. Perez why the UN was constrained from at least purporting to serve the area. She replied that there is a weekly airplane flight to Obo but that the UN Department of Safety & Security says UN staff can only go with a military escort, which hasn't been arranged.
Previously, Inner City Press has reported on nepotism and mismanagement in the UN mission in the Central African Republic. In late 2009, Inner City Press had asked SRSG Sahle-Work Zewde, Special Representative of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Head of the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office in the Central African Republic (BONUCA) about a series of BONUCA hires of relatives of the head of the UN Department of Political Affairs Africa II Division, Sammy Buo. She said she would look into it, take action and report back.
Nine months later, having heard nothing from her or about any changes, Inner City Press asked her for an update. “I don't want to speak about the past,” she said.
Inner City Press asked, “But are the individuals, including the former employee of the Executive Outcomes private military firm, still employed by the UN in the CAR?” She would not answer.
How can the UN credibly preach transparency and anti-corruption if these are its practices?
Now in 2011, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is promoting Ms. Sahle-Work Zewde to head the UN Office in Nairobi. Inner City Press asked Ms. Perez and her fellow panelists at the UN on Wednesday where the process stands on replacing Ms. Sahle-Work Zewde, and to assess the UN's performance.
Eva Smets of the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict declined to grade the UN's performance, but said that more resources at needed. Belgium's Permanent Representative to the UN Jan Grauls, who chairs the UN Peacebuilding Commission for CAR said that a replacement for Ms. Sahle-Work Zewde is just about to be named.
Further reporting by Inner City Press, confirmed by other missions, concludes that “a Nigerian woman” is about to be named.
The Danish Refugee Council's Patrice Effebi, in French, spoke of children demobilized from the Armée populaire pour la restauration de la République et la démocratie (APRD).
Grauls said that UN envoy Radhika Coomaraswamy will travel to CAR in October. While calling the Security Council, on which he used to serve, secretive he offered praise to the opening up of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, which he attended this week. Grauls left for a teleconference with the World Bank about aid. Will it, the new SRSG or anything get the UN into Obo? Watch this site.
