By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 3 -- With the UN mission in Mali set to begin in four weeks' time, Chad's Permanent Representative Ahmad Allam-mi on Monday complained to Inner City Press about his country still being listed among recruiters of child soldiers.
He said that only "twelve or twenty" people wanted to get their children into the army. It's been addressed, he said, but the UN takes too long to then go out and check every facility.
His concerned seemed to be with implementation of the UN's claimed human rights due diligence policy. He might relax: the UN's Herve Ladsous covered up 135 rapes by the Congolese Army for four months, then didn't follow through and suspend UN support to the 391st and 41st Battalions.
Ladsous was seen wandering around Monday afternoon outside the Arms Trade Treaty event, looking lost as he did at Togo's End of Security Council Presidency reception last week. Outside the UNSC, the UN has tried to disallow the media worktable that was there before, and seized a small table brought in the interim by the Free UN Coalition for Access. As Ladsous evades press questions, perhaps he likes there being no table. But who else?
As to the deployment to Mali, Allam-mi said Chad has a "biometric" system to check soldiers before they go. He went on to say that "some NGOs just do the work of their governments." And some NGOs don't work at all. Watch this site.