Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 23 -- Ten weeks ago in Mali the UN Security Council, through trip leader Gerard Araud of France, put a positive spin on dialogue in Mali. On April 23 at the UN, Inner City Press asked new Malian foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop for an update on dialogue in Kidal, and on the stated investigation of the shooting of civilian demonstrators there.

   Diop relied that he is too new in the position to answer on the probe. He said there is a new chief negotiator for the armed groups and what he called, in a Nixonian phrase, the "silent majority." Where did the last ten weeks go?

  Inner City Press asked if the new Dutch contingent in the UN's MINUSMA mission will share information and intelligence with the government in Bamako. Diop said he wasn't sure, but that the Dutch are giving five helicopters to MINUSMA.

  Inner City Press didn't ask Diop about the rape charges against MINUSMA peacekeeping -- maybe Dutch UN envoy Bert Koenders will answer that, as UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous refused on April 9, here.

  The French-led half-tour of Mali by the UN Security Council ended on February 4, carefully scripted and edited, declared a success. In the Mopti meeting of the Council, Kidal in the north was not represented, and questions about killings there were not addressed.
 
   Likewise, despite claims by many Council members and the Council as a whole to have a zero tolerance policy for sexual abuse or exploitation by UN peacekeepers, the charges of gang rape against UN peacekeepers from Chad serving in Mali were not addressed.

   At trip's end, the UN mission MINUSMA uploaded a 7 1/2 minute YouTube video. The Council members speaking in it, as edited in the final cut, were France's Gerard Araud and Samantha Power of the US, along with UN envoy Bert Koenders. Inner City Press asked MINUSMA, and the UN in New York, that the concluding press conference be live streamed, or made available on a phone line, or at least shown afterwards. From the February 3 UNHQ transcript:

  But DPKO under Herve Ladsous never provided anything. The MINUSMA mission put up the 7/12 minute video, the last minute and a half of which appear to be the press conference. But only Araud and Koenders speak in this final cut of the press conference.

  Clearly, MINUSMA filmed the whole press conference, to then choose these clips. Why not make the whole video available, as the UN does at headquarters, and as MONUSCO does in the Congo? Is MINUSMA's Mali the UN's new Hollywood - or Cannes?

   Again: before the press conference, Inner City Press for the Free UN Coalition for Access asked at the UN's noon briefing about access to the event, where questions about Kidal and alleged gang rapes by peacekeepers could and should be asked. Video here, from Minute 19:05.

 UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky said Internet speeds are slow but he hoped his colleagues in UN Peacekeeping were listening and could dial. This did not happen; the MINUSMA mission made Inner City Press aware of bullet points to open the press conference and a photo with Araud in the middle, other Ambassadors sitting behind. Inner City Press has asked for the Q&A.

  Meanwhile it emerges that King Mohammed VI of French ally Morocco is meeting with the MNLA, giving more credence to pre-existing doubts. It's all a French connection: are the Council and most of the UN, other than French-run UN Peacekeeping, just along with the ride?

  During the Council's Mali trip, MINUSMA produced and uploaded a series of YouTube videos, heavy on the positions of French Ambassador Gerard Araud.

  Inner City Press noted that the "interview" uploaded from Mopti, where the Council did not meet representatives from Kidal in the North, omitted all of the questions asked. Inner City Press asked why, and on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access asked that the Council's 7 pm press conference be live-streamed or otherwise made accessible in real time.

  MINUSMA responded that "Internet speed is not sufficiently fast, sorry for that." FUNCA has asked that questions can be posed and answered by Twitter, as done for example the UN in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from which envoy Martin Kobler complained on February 3 of protesters stoning UN vehicles; Kobler did a live-streamed Twitter Q&A.)

  We note that from Mail the UN's MINUSMA, despite the statement about Internet speed, has continued to put online Araud (and envoy Bert Koenders) videos on YouTube, for example here and here. Koenders claimed that with president IBK, "all the aspects" were discussed -- but still nothing has been said pubicly about the failure to meet with those from Kidal, and about the alleged gang rapes by UN peacekeepers.

  Araud went further in his MINUSMA video, quoting US Ambassador Samantha Power that strong-man IBK is "impressive," video here at Minute 0;40, and calling his dialogue "completely inclusive" despite the absence of those from Kidal.

  So will these questions be asked, allowed and answered at "the Security Council's" 7 pm press conference? The Free UN Coalition for Access has asked.

 That the Malian Presidency proudly links to a Radio France Internationale story praising the French ambassador as "at once very nuance and very clear" is one thing.

  Now the UN Peacekeeping mission in Mali MINUSMA has edited and posted a video of Ambassador Araud, with all questions edited out. Click here. Thus Araud is able to speak about "inspecting" the UN force, without anything about oversight of the French Serval force the UN belated authorized.

  (Will the 7 p.m. press conference at MINUSMA headquarters in Bamako be live-streamed? One would think with the money spent that the UN could do it. But will they?)

  Likewise, Araud speaks of meeting with the armed groups of the north without saying anything about Kidal.

   It's one thing that the Security Council members did not visit the north due to safety concerns. But given the centrality of Kidal to the split in the country, how could their meeting in Mopti with "civil society" from the north not include Kidal?

  It is confirmed, by French-selected scribes: the Council met with it "civil society from Timbuktu, Gao and Mopti" - and NOT from Kidal. But the scribes, typically, did not question the omission, much less disparities in description of killings in Kidal or the lack of transparency by the UN about gang rapes by its peacekeepers, despite claims of "zero tolerance."

  On February 3, France's Operation Serval is set to make a presentation. While the Security Council has so far remained silent about France's Operation Sangaris' killings in Central African Republic, and taking sides and leaving some at risk as even Navi Pillay noted, more should be expected in person in Mali.

  It and the below are important issues, but are not addressed in the tweets and facebook-ed statements of the Council members on the trip, much less in MINUSMA's upbeat photos of Bert Koenders and France's Gerard Araud inspecting the troops.

   Did the Security Council, led by France and Chad, meet with leaders from Kidal or not? Especially given the dipute, below, about killings in Kidal?

  So far, the way France arranges this trips like the one to the Democratic Republic of the Congo last year, there is too little media coverage, at least online, about the trip.

   The MINUSMA mission, which is releasing interesting photographs, directed its promotions to only one media: Radio France Internationale. And RFI has now published a piece calling French Ambassador Gerard Araud statement "a la fois tres nuancee et tres claire" -- at once nuanced and clear. Hmm.

   Alongside a growing with of tweets (beginning with UK, Lithuania, US, now joined by Luxembourg, Bert Koenders and Araud inspecting the troops),, the Council members have returned to Bamako. Not yet mentioned: the UNresolved charges of gang rape by the UN peacekeepers from Chad.

  If the UN's and Security Council's stated policies on sexual violence and conflict and "Zero Tolerance" mean anything, the issue will have to be addressed, and publicly, during the two day trip.

  Back on January 16 the UN Spokesperson's Office sent Inner City Press this response, which does not answer the question of accountability. But here it is, in full: