On
Ebola, Bleak
Picture of
Liberia's
Response,
Johnson
Sirleaf
Re-Think?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
September 9 --
With ebola
exploding
across
Liberia, the
head of the
UNMIL mission
Karin Landgren
provided the
Security
Council on
September 9
with a bleak
picture of the
government's
response.
Elections have
been
postponed;
quarantines
were imposed
without
sufficient
planning for
even food and
water for
those cordoned
off, for
example in
Monrovia's
West Point
neighborhood.
While Landgren
did not
directly
mention it,
there
favoritism was
shown in
allowing some
to get out of
the quarantine
zone. Not
surprisingly
there is a
growing
distrust for
the country's
president,
Ellen Johnson
Sirfleaf, long
a UN and UNGA
week darling.
But will any
of her
champions now
publicly
re-think?
Landgren
insisted that
UNMIL is not
directly
involved in
quarantining.
But
the UN has
still left
unanswered a
question about
ebola related
restrictions
ascribed to
its
peacekeeping
mission in
Darfur,
UNAMID.
On
September 8,
Inner City
Press asked
UN spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric:
Inner
City
Press: On
Ebola, can you
confirm that
UNAMID has
ordered troops
from Nigeria
and Sierra
Leone either
not to return
to their
countries on
holiday in
return because
according to
UNAMID, the
UN-African
Union Mission,
they might
bring Ebola,
and also there
is another
statement
saying that
prior to this
ban on
traveling home
for holiday,
that UNAMID
had ordered
medical
screening as
they left and
as they came
back from, and
to Nigeria and
Sierra Leone,
making trips
to or from the
UN?
Spokesman
Dujarric:
The report in
the Sudan
Tribune is
incorrect.
Inner
City
Press: Okay,
which part of
it?
Spokesman
Dujarric:
About the UN
telling troops
not to leave.
What we are
always looking
for in any
peacekeeping
mission is an
orderly
rotation of
troops to
ensure that
any mission is
able to
perform in the
best possible
manner. On the
screening
issue, I don’t
know and I can
ask.
Twenty-two
hours later,
there was no
answer. So, the
UN including
envoy to
Liberia Karin
Landgren
insists there
is no UN
involvement in
quarantining,
but could that
too be a
semantic
difference?
In
terms of the
screening
reported at
UNAMID, some
contrast it
not only to UN
Peacekeeping
not performed
the most basic
screening of
the
peacekeepers
which it
brought, along
with cholera,
to Haiti --
but of not
screening for
cholera even
now.
The
stonewalling
by UN
Peacekeeping's
Herve Ladsous
(video
compilation
here, UK
coverage
here)
including on
the question
of
accountability
for his DPKO
having brought
cholera to
Haiti raised
questions as
the UN speaks
more and more
about ebola.
We'll have
more on this.
* * *
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