Landlocked South Sudan & CAR Discussed At UN, Then OHRLLS Envoy Taken Behind Closed Door to Censors' Clubhouse

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 7 -- When Nepal's Gyan Chandra Acharya, UN envoy for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, came to take questions in the UN's Press Briefing Room at noon on May 7, there were only three questions, or questioners.

  Inner City Press asked him about two particular landlocked countries in the news: South Sudan and the Central African Republic. What has the UN, with an entire office devoted to the subject, been able to do about Sudan's charging of South Sudan to export its oil to Port Sudan?

  Gyan Chandra Acharya gamely answered, about the connection between lack of development and conflict, while acknowledging that Austria, host of the November conference he was promoting, is both landlocked and affluent. (He called it, "land-linked.")

For that conference, there will be a preparatory session this coming weekend at the "Glen Cove Mansion" featuring the Permanent Representatives of Austria, Zambia and Paraguay,program here.

Footnotes: Speaking of promotion, UN associate spokesperson Vannina Maestracci gave the first question to UN Correspondents Association 2013-14 president Pamela Falk, who used it to pitch a 1 pm event with Gyan Chandra Acharya in the third-floor room the UN gives to UN, which has become the UN's Censorship Alliance. 

  UNCA board members in 2012 tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, as exposed by Freedom of Information Act requests; in 2014 they have refused to act but rather dragged their feet for a dues-paying member to whom French Ambassador Gerard Araud said, "You are not a journalist, you are an agent."

  The UN tries to prop up the group by giving it a big room where it hosts events: it is an Alliance. Whatever Gyan Chandra Acharya says in such a setting - Inner City Press is boycotting, with all due respect to the co-sponsors - he could and should have said in the open and free UN briefing room, on UN TV.

  Speaking of UNTV, after during the UN's ironic World Press Freedom Day event on May 1 an UNCA members tweeted that Falk said "GA commends UNCA every year," UNTV camera cuts to @innercitypress shaking head in disbelief, too funny" -- the UNTV control room got a complaint about their camera angles. This is called attempted censorship, as is this Digital Millennium Copyright Act filing with Google. Watch this site.

   

As Diarra Laughs at ECA Run, Complaints by Female Staff Unresponded To

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- For weeks Inner City Press has heard that the UN's Special Adviser on Africa Cheikh Sidi Diarra is a candidate to replace Abdoulie Janneh as head of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, ECA.

After informally asking Cheikh Sidi Diarra about it, on October 7 Inner City Press asked him on camera. He replied that he is not aware of an opening at ECA -- one heard laughter at this point -- and that he is honored to serve 90 nations in his various roles at the UN. Video here.

One of his roles is as head of the Office of High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries & Small Island Developing States, OHRLLS. Inner City Press has asked for a response to staff abuse claims within OHRLLS.

Specifically, Inner City Press has reviewed detailed written complaints against the OHRLLS Chief of Policy Development Sandagdorj Erdenebileg from 2011 back to 2008. Click here for one.

The complaints are consistent, of verbal and other abuse of female subordinates. Despite the 2008 complaint, in which a female UN staffer described in detail how Sandagdorj Erdenebileg was treating her like a "domestic employee," was still reportedly acting the same way, or worse, in 2011 -- telling his assistant to clean up his used tissues, for example:click here.

Inner City Press asked Sandagdorj Erdenebileg for his response to the 2011 complaint, sending it to him, and responded to his telephone call asking what the deadline was.

Still, no response was received by deadline. Inner City Press told Cheikh Sidi Diarra just after the NEPAD press conference Friday at 1 pm that his subordinate Sandagdorj Erdenebileg had been asked for a response.

"How do you know these things?" Cheikh Sidi Diarra asked. How indeed.

With all due respect, even as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon speaks about the rights of women, many female employees at the UN are mistreated and little is done about it, even when formal complaints are filed.

It is supervisors who should be held accountable for acting on complaints, such as the 2008 and then 2011 complaints at issue here.

In this UN system, there is very little review of candidates for top jobs.

Inner City Press is informed, for example, the new Department of Peacekeeping Operations chief Herve Ladsous was simply presented by the French government as the person who should be given the job, as a replacement for their previous interviewed candidate Jerome Bonnafont, and Ladsous was given it, despite his statements about Rwanda and then ousting Aristide from Haiti, and his role as chief of state to Michele Aliot-Marie when she flew on Air Ben Ali in Tunisia.

Cheikh Sidi Diarra has run several UN offices, and it seems obvious that the record of running of these offices, including how staff have been treated, should along with other factors such as those described in Friday's NEPAD press conference be reviewed before any next position. But will they be?

In the NEPAD press conference, Inner City Press asked if the International Monetary Fund, ostensibly a part of the UN system, works with NEPAD. The CEO of NEPAD, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, said that the IMF's structural adjustment program demands had hurt planning in Africa, but that this is being countered. Video here.

Cheikh Sidi Diarra on the other hand gave a rosy description of IMF involvement with the UN and various Ban Ki-moon task forces. This, apparently, is what Ban Ki-moon is looking for from officials in his UN. How women are treated, it seems, is far less important. Watch this site.