SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 27 –Inner City Press
has formally written to U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Michael Waltz, Ambassador Bartos and Tammy
Bruce, asking the U.S. Mission to formally support its
pending UN accreditation application — filed Saturday,
seeking restoration of resident correspondent status and
access for this September's General Assembly High-Level
Week, eight years after being physically removed from UN
Headquarters covering the Fifth (Budget) Committee, with
no hearing and no appeal since.
Application to UN here;
letter to USUN here;
video of filing, here.
The legal argument is specific, not
general: under the 1947 U.S.-UN Headquarters Agreement,
the United States, as host country, bears obligations
concerning access to UN Headquarters — which sits on U.S.
soil, under a treaty the United States itself signed. This
is not a request that Washington adjudicate press freedom
in some foreign capital; it is a request that the U.S.
enforce an agreement it made at home, governing an
organization it hosts. Inner City Press has asked
the Mission to raise the exclusion directly with the
Secretariat, to request a written explanation — something
the UN itself has never provided in eight years — and to
support prompt approval of the pending application before
High-Level Week begins.
With a new Secretary-General to be chosen
this year, and the application window still open for more
than a month, Inner City Press intends to make the same
request of other national missions and members of Congress
in the days ahead. Watch this site
