By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 27 -- After a fight in the Security Council about including a human rights monitoring unit in the upcoming Ethiopian force in Abyei, the Council on Monday adopted a resolution that merely “requests the Secretary-General to ensure that effective human right monitoring is carried out.” But how?
Inner City Press asked UK Deputy Permanent Representative Philip Parham how human rights will be monitored by the Ethiopian force itself, if there is no civilian component. As transcribed by the UK Mission, Parham replied that “the Security Council resolution mandating UNISFA, as you have seen, requires the Secretary General to ensure human rights monitoring, and that is what he will do, by whatever are the best means available.”
Inner City Press asked about the lack of any civilian component; Parham replied:
“The establishment of this mission has obviously happened at speed in circumstances that are relatively unusual and it will be for the Secretary General to work out what the best way to achieve what the Security Council has asked it to do, which is to ensure that there is effective monitoring of Human Rights.”
If it's for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to work it out, then Ban's spokesperson's office should have some answers, or at least preliminary ideas.
But when Inner City Press asked Ban's deputy spokesman Farhan Haq about what Parham had said, and asked for example if the monitoring will be done out of the UNMIS mission in South Sudan, Haq not only didn't answer: he said no answer will be provided until Ban submits his required reports to the Security Council. Ah, transparency.
Sudan's Permanent Representative Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman also came to take Press questions. Inner City Press asked him about the UN staff arrested in South Kordofan. He replied that they are only “in custody,” for their own protection.
Inner City Press asked his if President Omar al Bashir, indicted for genocide and war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court, will be present at South Sudan's independence declaration on July 9 in Juba. Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman answers, as to Bashir, “He will be there.”
Given their duties under the ICC's Rome Statute, what will other attendees do? Watch this site.
