By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 4 -- On replacing Navi Pillay as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Inner City Presson May 9 asked the UN about one of the candidates, Jose Ramos-Horta, moonlighting for UBrain.tv while serving as UN enovy in Guinea Bissau. The UN has yet to answer.
Other names in circulation include Indonesia's Marzuki Darusman, who has worked on Sri Lanka and more recently North Korea, and candidates from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Current UN Human Rights official in New York Ivan Simonovic, now working on a new report on Ukraine including the Odessa killings by June 17, seems star-crossed by geography: it's Asia's turn.
But it's supposed to be Eastern Europe's turn for the next Secretary General, and that is not stopping Helen Clark and others for campaigning for it, click here for that.
Back on May 9, Inner City Press asked:
Inner City Press: I'd like to ask about Guinea-Bissau and then some press freedom questions... can you confirm that Jose Ramos Horta is leaving? It's said that he’s leaving to go work at UBrainTV based in Tokyo and quote, “he has been an adviser for UbrainTV for more than a year.” I wanted to know, is it permissible to be a full-time SRSG and also be an adviser to a for-profit company? Was this cleared by the ethics office?
Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq: I don’t have any information about any other business that Mr. Ramos Horta may or may not have, so I don’t have any comment on that. Certainly, he continues with his work right now though.
Since that May 9 exchange there has been no information from the UN Spokesperson's office. Inner City Press held off on this report, out of respect for Ramos-Horta. But doesn't the UN have to answer? Watch this site.
