By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 8 -- Months ago amid a soldiers' munity in Burkina Faso, Inner City Press asked the spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon what the UN thought and was doing about it.
First there was no comment, then Inner City Press was told that Said Djinnit of the UN Office for West Africa was “monitoring” the situation.
But the report filed in the run up to the Security Council's semi-annual meeting Friday about UNOWA did not mention Burkina Faso, despite having sections on Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Niger and the Cameroon - Nigeria Mixed Commission. Why not?
Djinnit was supposed to be the guest at the UN's noon briefing on Friday, and had finished his closed door briefing to the Council before noon. But he did not appear for the briefing, nor back at the Council stakeout.
Hours later in the UN's North Lawn building, Inner City Press spotted Djinnit by the Vienna Cafe, and asked him, “What about Burkino Faso? Why is it not in your report?”
Not everything goes in the report, he said cryptically.
Later still it was confirmed to Inner City Press that in Friday's closed door consultations, several delegations asked about Burkina Faso and Djinnit said he followed it closely and was in touch with President Blaise Campaore and “key stakeholders.”
Why not put it in the report, then? Burkina Faso is known to not want to be discussed in the Council. The country and its diplomats are used by the UN, and US and former colonial power France, on Darfur and Cote d'Ivoire.
Inner City Press is told that Djinnit routinely praises the long-serving Campoare. To openly discuss mutinies in the country is inconsistent with all this -- and so it is not in the UN report, and is confined to closed door consultations. And so it goes at the UN.
