On Guinea Bissau, IMF Focuses on Cashews & Cuts to Industry, UN on Strikes & Syrians

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 18 -- Guinea Bissau is poor and is getting poorer, even as the UN and International Monetary Fund crank out reports about transit strikes and cashew prices.

  An IMF team under Mauricio Villafuerte visited Bissau from February 10 to 13, and has today concluded that "Growth and fiscal prospects for 2014 hinge on the success of the cashew campaign and external support. The mission highlighted the importance of setting clear policy guidelines as soon as possible to avoid the uncertainty that undermined last year’s cashew campaign. In this context, the mission suggested to suspend contributions toward the industrialization program (FUNPI)."

  Meanwhile UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's report on Guinea Bissau, to be formally issued later as a document of the Security Council under the symbol S/2014/105, highlights strikes by teachers and in the transport sector, and that "the drop in cashew nut prices in 2013 was one of the main shocks for 74 percent of households."

  The "socio-economic" section of Ban Ki-moon report on Bissau doesn't mention the FUNPI industrialization program to which the IMF suggests suspending contributions.Industrialization, we hardly knew ye.

  Ban Ki-moon's 16-page report on Guinea Bissau devotes two long paragraphs to "74 individuals claiming to be Syria nationals who had arrived in Bissau from Casablanca, attempted to board a commercial flight to Lisbon with fake Turkish passports... the air crew were allegedly forced to transport the 74 individuals to Lisbon [where they] requested asylum from Portugal. The airline suspended its flights to and from Bissau."

  As an aside, despite much European hand-wringing about Syria, the number of refugees and asylum seekers taken has been extremely low. Inner City Press asked UNHCR's Syria coordinator Amin Awad about that, for that video, from Minute 15:50, click here. Watch this site.

   

UN Stays Upbeat on Guinea Bissau, Security Council Might Visit, Send 200 Guards to Libya to Protect UN Mission After Inaction on Civilians

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 26 -- Twice in Guinea Bissau since the 2012 coup the election have been put off. When UN envoy Jose Ramos-Horta emerged from the UN Security Council on Tuesday evening, Inner City Press asked him if he thinks that this time they will happen, in March 2014, and if military chief of staff Antonio Indjai will in fact relinquish power.

 Ramos-Horta was upbeat, saying he thinks this time it will happen. When Inner City Press asked about the proposed Amnesty Law for the authors of the 2012 coup, Ramos-Horta expressed support for it only if there are iron-clad commitments by the military to stay out of politics. So: a conditional amnesty that would end if that commitment were broken?

 The West African States in ECOWAS want to send two formed police units, and want international support - read, money - for it.

Sources in the Council's consultations told Inner City Press there is discussion of a Security Council trip to Guinea Bissau in January, and of a Presidential Statement to be drafted by Togo which "has the pen." Inner City Press asked Togolese Permanent Representative Kodjo Menan and he said yes, this might be his last big act on the Council (Togo leaves in December, to be replaced by Nigeria).

  On the trip, the idea was "floated," along with statements about Guinea Bissau's resources including, yes, cashews. Less than two million people -- and forty political parties.

  In a stealth session after Ramos Horta left, Council diplomats heard a plan from the UN to send some 200 guards for its mission in Libya. 

  Inner City Press has been writing about the Council's failure to even get a briefing on the killing of dozens of civilians in Tripoli by militias, and now the state of emergency in Benghazi. Tellingly, the Security Council only heard on Libya now when it came to protecting the UN itself. Watch this site.