Book Review: On "The Procedure of the UN Security Council," A Big Tome That May Need Another Chapter, Or Shadow

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 12 -- Since 1975 there has been an imposing tome called “Procedure of the UN Security Council.” Its fourth edition was published in late 2014 with Loraine Sievers, formerly of UN Security Council Affairs, as lead writer, along with Oxford professor Sam Daws.

  The book is, literally, encyclopedic. While the below as is Inner City Press' wont focuses on things either NOT in the book, or covered too scantily for our tastes, or voiceless groups rendered further voiceless, we cannot think of a better reference book about the Security Council.

   That said, and perhaps understandably, the book veers on the side of portraying positively the Security Council's work and not its omissions. Since this review, such as it is, is being published on the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, we'll note that in the book or at least its index there is no mention of the cholera the UN brought to the island, killing more than 8700 people so far.

   In positive news, the book does recount how the Security Council moved to removed sanctions on Haiti in 1994 soon after Jean-Bertrand Aristide was returned. Page 524. These days, sanctions are rarely removed.

   A recent development in which a member of the Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group had to resign after being exposed writing a letter, on SMEG letterhead, portraying an Eritrean dissident as a possible future leader of the country -- what Inner City Press dubbed as part of its exclusive the “regime change” letter -- is not mentioned in the book, or so far in its online updates. 

  The incident raises a larger point: what training is given, and what rules apply, to the UN's sanctions experts?

   The acknowledgement for the book include several people are are in turn written about, such as Libya's Ibrahim Dabbashi and, of course, Diega Arria, he of the Arria formulat meetings.

   The book's section on that includes a “Somavia formula,” named for a former Ambassador of Chile, which holds this month's Council presidency. Plus ca change.

   On Arria formula meetings, there is an account of the Darfur meeting at which George Clooney participated; in other non-state news, Kosovo slipping into the General Assembly and clapping for new Security Council members elected in 2009 is described.

   The index does not list the FDLR, and the book does not seem to address a major problem in the UN and its Security Council, that the DPKO and DPA and even OCHA Under Secretaries General who address the Council are top heavy with, and apparently controlled and position owed by, the Western P3. 

  (Forget any mention of current DPKO chief Herve Ladsous' history -- while on the Council in 1994 -- in helping genocidaires escape from Rwanda into Eastern Congo, and now being in charge of the delayed “neutralization” of their progeny, the FDLR).

   Sri Lanka and the 2009 bloodbath on the beach does make an appearance late in the book, in a single paragraph on page 626, but without the to us obvious conclusion being drawn: how could the Council never have a real meeting as tens of thousands of civilians were killed? The book says, "although the matter was never placed officially on the agenda of the Security Council, from 26 March to 5 June [2009] the Council held four informal interactive discussions." 

  Did the Western P3 even even try to get such a formal meeting? 

  There is an interesting story how South Sudanese, before statehood, were able to participate in a meeting in the Security Council's temporary location in the UN basement due to the lay out. But, seemingly, the question on the Polisario Front not being allowed to speak at the Security Council stakeout is not addressed. 

  This is a larger issue: the role of the media, including social media, in today's Security Council is not address. Perhaps in a fifth edition - or in a different book. Watch this site.

Footnotes: we note because we want to the involvement, per the acknowledgments, of Vinay Kumar, Monica Bolanos,David Quarrey (previously UK political coordinator), Colin Keating, and Ionnis Vrailas. Generally, the book veers to the West. It's easier that way. Compare for example to this recent (December 2014) example. But perhaps there is another book, or chapter, to be written.

    

In UN Budget Wrangling on Longest Night of Year, of Bob Orr, Re-Costing & Ban Ki-moon's Mobility, No Answers on South Sudan

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 21 -- With the UN budget fight heating up as Christmas approaches, Saturday night found UN Deputy Permanent Representative gathering in groups on the second floor of the North Lawn building.

  There was Peter Wilson of the UK and Alexis Lamek of France, and their EU counterpart Ionnis Vrailas. There was US Joe Torsella, making analogies to the budget deal struck in Washington: can the UN do it?

  In fact, UN DESA has commented on US budget woes, as Inner City Press covered. They slammed the US for the impending fight of raising the debt ceiling. So who's mocking whom?

  And amid calls for cuts, including layoffs for some UN Security officers on January 2, why is the UN moving to send 500 blue helmeted guards to Central African Republic with mandates limited to offering protection to a smaller number of UN staff? Click here for that Inner City Press story.

In the UN budget process, disputes include $160 million of "re-costing" -- adding back to the budget after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon claimed cuts -- and the mobility plan of Mister Ban, himself so mobile as to be out of town. 

  Ban's Controller was present Saturday night along with other staffers. Apparently there were no UN Spokespeople working -- Inner City Press' questions from Saturday morning about the crisis in South Sudan went entirely unanswered for eight hours and counting.

  When Inner City Press spoke with diplomats working on the budget Saturday night, there were many critical comments about Ban's "corporate partnerships" proposal, some calling it an attempt to get a promotion for longtime UN official Robert Orr, said to be very close with Ban. 

 Orr himself was not seen, at least by this reporter in several hours, in the North Lawn.

 This is not a good time for the UN to have no one on duty answering press questions, and no noon briefing scheduled for Monday, December 23 as protested by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  As many of complained, the 2014-15 UN budget is over 600 paragraphs, 85 pages. Diplomats wandered around with random pages. A table was set up with mint Oreo cookies and dried green mangos; pizza boxes came in, and boxes of Starbucks coffee. America may run on Dunkin but the UN is all about, well, destroying neighborhoods (as one anti-Starbucks diplomat put it).

Notably absent from budget negotiations on Saturday, even on the sidelines, were the Staff Union, whose incumbent is battling to stay in control or block the recognition of Ticket 1, and those ostensibly covering the UN.

At least two Permanent Representatives were present: Benin, and Fiji as chair of the Group of 77, which Bolivia takes over on January 1. Finland's Deputy Permanent Representative Janne Taalas, the chair of the Budget Committee, joked to Inner City Press that it should get done since "this is the longest night of the year." Watch this site.