At UN, Jody Williams Slams Rape in Conflict, Cites Mexico, Ladsous Next?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 7 -- On the UN subject of Children and Armed Conflict, there is a lot of conflict about just what armed conflict is. Countries like Colombia, Mexico, Pakistan and India contest being put on CAAC lists, saying their internal problems are not UN recognized armed conflicts.

  Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams on Thursday near the UN said that to bypass this problem, the group she works with does not include in its name the words war or “armed” conflict, but is called the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict. She said this includes, for example, Mexico.

  But does it include the United Nations? Not only sexual exploitation and abuse by the UN's own peacekeepers, but rapes committed by army units which the UN supports?

  Such support is supposed to be prohibited under the UN's Human Rights Due Diligence Policy. But that Policy is being shown to be less than meaningful. 

  After 126 rapes in Minova just between the 20 and 22 of November, 2012, UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous refused to answer Press questions three times. (November 27, December 7 and December 18, video here).

  When after advocacy by the Free UN Coalition for Accesson February 6 Ladsous did take Inner City Press' question about the 126 Minova rapes, he said that the UN knows the identity of the majority of the perpetrators. But the UN has not stopped working with anyone.

   Instead, the UN says it is waiting for the Congolese authorities to finish their own investigation. It has been three and a half months; there is no assurance that the DRC will complete any credible investigation.

   So might the group with the long name, the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict get involved and bring some accountability to Herve Ladsous, ifFrench minister Najat Belkacem hasn't? Watch this site.

On Myanmar in Manhattan, Long Shot ICC Strategy Pitched, UN Ban Meeting & US Quote Followed by Inaction

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 17 -- Myanmar, or UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Group of Friends on Myanmar, have a place in the upcoming UN General Debate week. In the run-up, fifteen blocks from the UN, there was a film screening and panel discussion about the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women of Burma, held at the glitzy Paley Center for Media on September 16.

Jody Williams of the Nobel Women's Initiative told an auditorium packed with well dress and well meaning New Yorkers that they should write to US Permanent Representative Susan Rice to thank her for President Obama's belated joining of a call for a international inquiry into war crimes in the country.

Some are dubious of this change in US position, after Obama first changed policy to one of engagement with the Than Shwe military government. It's easy for an unnamed US official to join a call for an international inquiry which will never happen, these skeptics say.

Inner City Press, which reports daily on and from the UN Security Council, can attest that the US these days rarely even tried to raise the issue of Myanmar. A senior US official who met with the Press earlier on September 16 confided not being briefed about the upcoming Group of Friends on Myanmar meeting.

The strategy propounded at the September 16 session was to press for Myanmar to be referred to the International Criminal Court. Since Myanmar is not a member of the ICC, this could only be accomplished by a referral from the UN Security Council.

But it is crystal clear that any referral of Myanmar to the ICC would be vetoed by China, as well as Russia. Strangely in Thursday night's discussion, the word China wasn't once used.

Several attendees found it strange to be promoting a strategy that has no chance of success to such high profile and high income New Yorkers. But perhaps that's not the goal?

After the session of the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women of Burma in March 2010, Jody Williams and several others including Thin Thin Aung of the Women's League of Burma met with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. So far, no read out appears to have been given, nor follow up taken. Watch this site.

Footnote: before the panel discussion the movie “This Is My Witness: Women of Burma Break the Silence” was screened, and afterward Jody Williams urged moderator Pat Mitchell to do what she can to get it screened at Sundance. Also, a portion of “Burma Soldier” by Annie Sundberg was shown, in which a former Burmese military officer described the routine rape of ethnic women in Myanmar.

Reference was made to using UN Security Council resolution 1820, about sexual violence and conflict, which may be more promising that the UNSC to ICC strategy. But will UN sexual violence and conflict official Margot Wallstrom, asleep at the switch during the recent Congo rape scandal, do anything about Burma?

At UN, Ban Is Called "Not Invisible" By His Aides, Myanmar Silence Unexplained

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ban1advisors092908.html

UNITED NATIONS, September 29 -- Asked about 19 days of silence about Myanmar by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, his senior advisor Nicholas Haysum on Monday said, "We're dealing with the appearance of silence... the perception of invisibility." Ban's advisor on so-called "global goods," Robert Orr, was similarly abstract, saying that "this question of invisibility is a distraction."

Inner City Press had asked both men about criticism of Ban that has come out in the past month, and if their joint appearance for nearly an hour marked some sort of new beginning by the Ban administration. "No," said Mr. Orr, this has "nothing to do with criticism." He said that no country, in its bilateral meeting with Ban, had raised the UN reform questions of availability of audits to donor states, or of whistleblower protection.

If anything, Haysom said, Ban may issue too many statement. But why then did he cancel his scheduled September 27 press availability about Myanmar? Sometimes, Haysom said, involvement in delicate negotiations limits the "capacity to stand outside the process and shout." But 19 days after silence from Ban after his envoy Ibrahim Gambari left Myanmar without meeting with either Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi or General Than Shwe?

Another Nobel Prize winner, Jody Williams, told Inner City Press later on Monday that Ban's involvement in Myanmar has been useless, that's why Aung San Suu Kyi rebuff his envoy, and that Ban is legitimizing a scam constitution which excludes the regimes main opponents, who won elections in 1990.

Haysom said the decision to cancel the September 27 press availability about Myanmar had been Ban's, and that he couldn't explain it. Perhaps the track record on this issue, ascriticized by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, explains it.

News analysis: Things can, of course, always change. If Ban, who seems a genuinely affable person, does not want to speak to the press on the record about such issues as Myanmar and Darfur -- the latter he confined to off the record lunches which were then suspended -- then availability by his top advisors Haysom and Orr is better than nothing. If they they claim it has nothing to do with the mounting criticism.

Footnote: Inner City Press caught up with Ibrahim Gambari later on Monday, and told him of the criticism by Jody Williams and fellow traveler Mia Farrow. Gambari said that he had been with Farrow in Angola, working together. Those then were the days. We hope to have more from and about Gambari later this week.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/ban1advisors092908.html