By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 3 -- Our least favorite stories to write are obituaries, and this one is particularly painful, so we'll keep it short. An able diplomat at the UN, Sana Maboneza, died on the night of December 1 in a car crash on Interstate-495 in Virginia.
He covered the Security Council, the C-34 committee on peacekeeping, the election of incoming Secretary General Antonio Guterres and virtually every other issue at the UN and beyond, for example Somali athlete Samia Yusuf Omar death in the Mediterranean, here.
Sana was present on the UN's 38th floor on November 11 of this year when Rwanda's new ambassador Valentine Rugwabiza had the ceremonial presentation of credentials with outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Obituary: UN Diplomat #SanaMaboneza Is Dead, A Great Man From the Great Lakes Regions, Rest in Peace innercitypress.com/obituary3sanam…
But Sana hadn't drunk the UN Kool-Aid, so to speak: when Ban and his head of communications Cristina Gallach had Inner City Press ousted from the UN in February, and evicted in April (confined to minders ever since), Sana spoke up. And he was interested in things at the beyond the direct interests of his country -- which he represented ably. He will be missed: the world is poorer without him.