SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 28 – As Denmark
assumes the Presidency of the UN Security Council for
August, Inner City Press has written to Permanent
Representative Christina Markus Lassen with two requests:
access, in person or by WebEx, to the Council's August 3
press briefing, and Danish intervention with the UN's
Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit and the Office of the
Secretary-General on Inner City Press's long-pending bid
for restored access to UN Headquarters.
The letter is not the first sent to
Denmark's Mission on this question. Almost identical facts
were laid out nearly a year ago, in September 2025, ahead
of UNGA80's High-Level Week: physically removed from
Headquarters on July 3, 2018 while covering the UN's Fifth
Committee, barred from re-entry two days later, and, eight
years on, still no hearing, no written findings, and no
appeal from any part of the Organization.
What is new this year: Inner City Press's
July 26 accreditation application, filed with the current
MALU office, is now a matter of public record, posted to
DocumentCloud here
and linked directly in the letter to Denmark's Mission,
alongside MALU's own auto-generated confirmation of
receipt, "This is not a confirmation of approval. Please
wait for further updates by email."
The letter asks Denmark to do precisely
that: follow up, on Inner City Press's behalf, while the
Presidency gavel is in Danish hands. The larger
backdrop is the Secretary-General transition itself.
Guterres's term ends December 31; a new Secretary-General
is being chosen now, following a candidates' town hall
Inner City Press covered this month, at which press
freedom and institutional trust were repeatedly invoked
and never once tested against a case sitting in the UN's
own building. Whether Denmark's Presidency answers, and
whether the current administration resolves this before
handing it to the next one, remains to be seen.
Inner City Press is sending similar letters
to certain other national missions in the days, as the
accreditation window remains open for more than a month
and High-Level Week is roughly two months out. We will be
reporting on all and sundry. Watch this site.
