Corporate Spin on AIDS, Holbrooke's Kudos to Montenegro and its Independence
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N.
UNITED NATIONS, May
31 -- Two faces of the UN were on display on Wednesday, as corporations were
celebrating themselves in less than transparent fashion while one of the corporateers praised, sincerely, the birth of the 192nd state, Montenegro.
The UN's two
faces were combined Janus-like in one: Richard Holbrooke, who along with Peter
Parry of Booz Allen Hamilton, briefed reporters on the Global Business Coalition
on HIV/AIDS. The GBC now has 215 corporate members, each of which pays an annual
fee of $25,000 and can help, the hand-outs state, "by simply adding the force of
their reputation and reach to [the] work." One of the members is DynCorp,
embroiled in abuse allegations in the Balkans. Not a member, at least for now,
is Credit Suisse, where Mr. Holbrooke was previously vice chairman. Listed as a
member is another financial firm on whose board of directors Mr. Holbrooke
currently serves, the insurer
American International Group (AIG).
Inner
City Press asked Mr. Holbrooke both about what, if anything, AIG does about
AIDS, and also for his reaction to the independence vote in Montenegro. On the
former, ICP noted that a
search
of AIG's website for "AIDS" results in not a single hit. "It might surprise
you," Mr. Holbrooke said, "but I am not in charge of their website."
"But what
does AIG do about AIDS?"
Mr.
Holbrooke said he was not comfortable answering, since he is a director of the
company. This approach seemed to spread on the podium. Inner City Press asked
Peter Parry about its role in USAID's $77 million contract to "build a system to
distribute pharmaceuticals to people with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Booz Allen
Hamilton and Northrop Grumman IT are among the contractors involved." See
Federal Computer Week of May 29, 2006 (live
link here as of May 31, 2006).
Mr. Parry responded that he doesn'twork in that part of the company, and so
couldn't answer. Whether forthcoming will be any answer or revision Mr.
Holbrooke's statement that Booz Allen's work on AIDS is pro bono is not known at
this time.
Outside
the briefing room, Mr. Holbrooke stopped to take informal questions about more
diplomatic matters. He opined that the current U.S. "administration has shown a
schizophrenic attitude towards the UN. We use it when it suits our purposes,
like Iran, and we bypass it in a way that undermines it. It needs to be funded,
and at the same time we need to push for more reforms."
Inner City Press asked if he had any comment on the vote in
Montenegro. Mr. Holbrooke responded:
"The Montenegro vote is fantastic. I
applaud the Montenegrin people. I've always thought that they should be an
independent country. It was an inevitable event. I congratulate the people for
making a historic decision. And now let's deal with Kosovo."
(.wmv clip to be
uploaded; formal briefing
here.)
And then he was gone...
Elsewhere at UN Headquarters on Wednesday, the President of the General Assembly
in response to
a stake-out question from
Inner City Press added his voice to that of UNAIDS' director, that members
states are "urged to
respond" to UNAIDS' surveys. Portugal's ex-president Jorge Sampaio briefed
on tuberculosis, while
declining to name the
countries with the most cases, or why the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria pulled out of Myanmar.
The
Global Fund's executive director Richard Feachum did
answer the question,
stating that like North Korea, Myanmar is a country where it was impossible to
know if money was being spent appropriately. These he distinguished where
countries where corruption has been found, and the funding temporarily cut off:
Ukraine and Uganda. (Click
here
for background on the Uganda situation.) In non-AIDS news, the cloak-and-dagger
in the Security Council involved cutting costs and troop levels in UNMEE in Ethiopia and Eritrea, in
the face of results in Timor-Leste. The seven Nepali blue helmet remain hostages
in Ituri in the Congo.
At 8 p.m. Inner City
Press asked Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of UN Peacekeeping, if there was any
update on the peacekeepers. "No," he said. "We're working on it," a bespeckled
colleague with him said. "No good news, but no bad news," Mr. Guehenno added.
On
AIDS at the UN Perspectives Vary, Some Civil Skeptics and Many Non-reporting
Countries
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N.
UNITED NATIONS, May
30 -- Brandishing a 629-page report of the global AIDS epidemic, the head of
UNAIDS Peter Piot on Tuesday emphasized that the 2001 contribution target of
$8.3 billion has been reached. Asked why only 126 of 191 current countries, or
of the 189 that made the 2001 commitments, have responded in any way to the
UNAIDS survey requesting information, Mr. Piot said that this is a problem,
particularly in Central Asia and in developed countries which think "this is
only for poor nations." (The nations which have not reported can be inferred
from
this web site.)
Mr. Piot indicated that the May 31-June 2 High Level Meeting will be used to
urge the non-reporters to come clean.
Hearing
the issue of the missing country data for the second time was UNICEF's executive
director Ann Veneman, who afterwards gave a heartfelt interview to South African
Broadcasting.
Activists
in town for the meeting had a different take. In from Nigeria, Omulolu Falobi
laughed at the size and weight of UNAIDS' report. "They could buy medicine for
three people for the cost of each book," he said. He stated that the funding
offered by the U.S. President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, contorts
developing countries' responses to AIDS toward religiously-rooted programs
focused on abstinence, like those on Ghana and of Uganda's First Lady. In from
Bolivia, and stating that her HIV/AIDS came from being raped in 1998, Gracia
Violetta Ross Quiroga, stated that she sees so much misspending in Latin America
by the Global Fund for AIDS that she cannot advocate for additional funding for
that mechanism. She and other activists stated more generally that much more
funding that the $8.3 billion referred to by Mr. Piot is needed.
Mr.
Piot & Ms. "I am not an expert" (see
Report of 5/15/06,
below)
On the
matter of the non-reporting countries, Liz Ercevik Amado from the Coalition for
Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies opined that many Middle Eastern and
Central Asia states may not have reported due to taboos and stigmas surrounding
the issue of AIDS. In from Canada, Kieran Daly of the International Council of
AIDS Service Organizations said, of the Catholic Church and its anti-condoms
policy, "You could argue that they're killing people." For the coming three
days in and around the UN, let the arguments begin!
In
Congo, Peacekeepers Turned Hostages: Interview with Jean-Marie Guehenno by Inner
City Press
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N.
UNITED NATIONS, May
30 -- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, one UN peacekeeper is dead, three
wounded and seven taken hostage by the forces of Peter Karim, known for hauling
the DRC's resources east into Uganda. At UN Headquarters on Tuesday, Inner City
Press interviewed Jean-Marie Guehenno, Under-secretary general for peacekeeping
(click
here
for WAV file). Earlier,
Inner City Press asked
Secretary General Kofi Annan what is being done to secure the peacekeepers'
release, and how the DRC election, slated for the end of July, can take place in
these circumstances. The
Secretary General replied
that Karim has been implored to release the peacekeepers, and will not have
impunity. He added that the UN is doing the best that it can for the election,
the first in 40 years in Congo.
An hour
later at Kofi Annan's spokesman's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked about
reports that Karim is demanding $20,000 per peacekeeper. We do not pay ransom
for our personnel, the
spokesman replied,
and there will be no impunity. Asked about MONUC's own report that it is
government soldiers who are responsible for most of the rapes in the Congo, the
spokesman referred to training, and repeated that there is and will be no
impunity. That was the word of the day. To inquire further, Inner City Press
asked at the noon briefing if Jean-Marie Guehenno would take questions after he
briefed the council. "We've asked," was the answer.
At 1
p.m., Inner City Press asked Jean-Marie Guehenno as he rushed into the Security
Council if he would answer questions at the stakeout after he briefed the
Council. Mr. Guehenno replied that he was not going in to brief, but rather to
find an Ambassador. It was past three p.m. when the briefing began. Kofi Annan
and Mr. Guehenno went in, and at 4:08, the Secretary General came out, waving.
At nearly five o'clock Mr. Guehenno emerged, with a half-dozen staffers in his
entourage. For eight minutes Mr. Guehenno answered Inner City Press' questions,
all on the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Asked
about the status of the seven kidnapped peacekeepers, Mr. Guehenno said the
militia leader involved would be held personally accountable if the Blue Helmets
are not released. Asked if this militia leader is, in fact, Peter Karim, Mr.
Guehenno replied, that is the assumption. He described an ambush in Ituri in
which one peacekeeper was killed, three injured and seven surrounded and
captured. A helicopter that arrived thereafter could not free them, due to the
surrounding jungle.
Asked to
clarify a recent quote that there are not that many deaths in Congo, Mr.
Guehenno distinguished between "direct" deaths, by shooting or machete, and more
indirect impacts of war, including the breakdown of the state and health system.
Asked if
the elections, slated for the end of July, are on track, Mr. Guehenno replied
"as much as can be," and described logistical and political obstacles. Mr.
Guehenno asked rhetorically, Will it be a Westminster democracy? No, he
answered. He said that what gives him hope, when he goes "beyond Kinshasa," as
the ten Permanent Representatives visiting DRC in the second week of June
apparently will not, is excitement about voting, and the mobilizing of voices
"who have no voice."
"Ituri Explorer" / MONUC
Mr.
Guehenno
Asked
about the calls in Kasai for a boycott of the election, Mr. Guehenno replied
that the leader of the UDPS had been given many opportunities to participate,
but unfortunately has chosen not to. Asked about President Kabila's allegation
that the three dozen foreign bodyguards, including three from Orlando,
Florida-based AQMI Strategy and others from South Africa's Omega Risk Solutions,
were attempting a coup, Mr. Guehenno said he only knows the news he reads. One
wonders if others in a position to impact Congo even read the news. Click
here
to hear Inner City Press'
interview with the UN's Jean-Marie
Guehenno, recorded on a $20 MP3
player and edited on open source audio software, with an voiceover introduction
recorded in an echo chamber on the UN Headquarters' third floor. Watch -- and
listen for -- this site.
At
the UN: The Silence of the Congo and Naomi Watts; Between Bolivia and the World
Bank
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N.
UNITED NATIONS, May
15 -- The Democratic Republic of Congo and its ongoing wars hit the top three of
the UN's
list of "Stories the World Should Hear More About." At the UN's noon
briefing, Inner City Press asked about
reports over
the weekend, of 500 rebels attacking the 800 Congolese soldiers stationed at
Nioka in the Ituri region. The spokesman answered the UN's Congo mission, MONUC,
has been focused on "controlling the militias." But
other reports have
Peter Karim's band smuggling wood into Uganda to exchange for yet more weapons.
Note to UN: the world needs to hear more...
In
response to a follow-up question requesting comment on the fact that the UN's
call for $682 million in assistance to the DRC has yielded less than 14% of the
figure, the spokesman noted that the list of countries which gave is public, so
by implication so are the non-givers. "What does the Secretary General say to
those countries which haven't given?" "Give," was the answer.
DR Congo
Paparazzi
filled the UN's briefing room, to capture each phrase Naomi Watts read about her
visit to Zambia for UNAIDS. Asked why the
UNAIDS website has a country listing but
no information about Afghanistan,
Deborah Landey said it was hard, but that a global survey will soon come out
with such information. After the briefing, UNAIDS director of advocacy (and
noted novelist) Achmat Dangor told Inner City Press that 125 of 191 countries
responded to UNAIDS' survey. Asked if information on Afghanistan will be in the
forthcoming global study, Mr. Dangor said no.
In a
question unrelated to AIDS, Inner City Press asked Naomi Watts about the
criticism, including by UNHCR, of
Australia's new anti-refugee proposal, to outsource those seeking asylum to
the scorched island of Nauru.
Inner City Press
question: "Have you heard of this? Would you like to say anything about it?"
Response by Naomi
Watts: "I am not an authority on that." But that wasn't the question.
Developing? (Click
here
for the press conference in Real).
Naomi "I am not an authority on that"
Watts
Bolivia's
foreign minister David Choquehanca Cespedes fielded most of the questions at a
half-hour briefing on the kick-off of the meeting of the Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues. One of the questioners asked "if there will be further
restrictions on gas operations in Bolivia." The answer addressed unfair bargains
of the past and included reference to 500 years of oppression. Near the end, a
person attending the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues complained that all
most "Occidental" questioners cared about was gas and timber and money. "What
are we, objects?" he asked. For the record, Inner City Press directed questions
to the Forum's chairperson Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and to Jose Antonio Ocampo,
Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, about the progress if
any of the draft International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
and about the World Bank's requirement on its projects for
consultation with, but not consent by,
indigenous people. Ms. Tauli-Corpus
responded that the draft Declaration should be on the agenda of the new UN Human
Rights Council, with an eye toward adoption by the end of the year. And, she
said, it is hoped that the Declaration will use the term consent and not
consultation, in pointed reference to the World Bank. Left unanswered -- and
unasked, due to the abrupt end of the briefing -- was whether Bolivia under Evo
Morales might run for a seat on the Human Rights Council next year. Time will
tell...
An earlier report
from Brussels --
The
Place of the Cost-Cut UN in Europe's Torn-Up Heart;
Deafness to Consumers, Even by the Greens
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee, in Brussels
BRUSSELS, April 28 --
Ears ringing with the talk of waste within the UN system, an Inner City Press
reporter yesterday visited the consolidated, scaled back and renamed UN Regional
Information Center (UNRIC) in Brussels, to see how an early attempt at
cost-saving is working out.
On
narrow, car-filled Rue de la Loi, just passed the European Commission, the UNRIC
is tucked in on the 7th and 8th floors of a stately building in the Residence
Palace compound. Outside are construction zones, the city literally torn-up to
build office space for the ten new EU members. Inside UNRIC it is spacious, with
hardwood floors and uncaptioned photos of each Secretary-General. The UNRIC's
deputy director is an engaging Dane who is among other things the answer to the
UN system Jeopardy question: who was the spokesman for the president of the
General Assembly when the World Trade Towers were demolished by hijacked plane?
Who is... Jan Fischer. Mr. Fischer also served the UN in Iraq in 1993, along
with a stint in Australia. He knows the System, and the context of the
cost-cutting he's witnessed at the UNRIC.
The
travel budget the more than half-dozen country desk officers based in Brussels
is $16,000 for six months. This has resulted in fewer trips to the countries
covered by each desk officer, and even to them staying with family and friend on
such trips. There's a striking correlation between surname and country covered:
Carlos Jimenez for Spain, Fabio Graziosi for Italy, Dimitrios Fatouros for
Greece and so forth. The desk officers were once "national information
officers," which required this consonance. Now that they've had to move to
Brussels, they've been "professionalized," in the parlance of the UN civil
service. Still some stay with friends and family on their UN trips back home.
In
Brussels some 15,000 journalists cover the doings of the European Union and to
some degree NATO. It is hard, Jan Fischer says, for UN news to break through.
They hold press conferences, and briefings by visiting UN envoys, from conflict
diamonds to the rights of the child. Across from the well-guarded United States
embassy, there's a storefront for UNICEF, with its tell-tale blue sign. The UN's
refugee agency, it appears from a list, has a dozen Brussels employees, seeking
EU funding for their far-flung operations. UNRIC tries to get their stories
told. Mr. Fischer says he'd rather say too much than too little; he suggests
that the media not abandoned UN staffers who go off script and speak their
minds. It's a plan that makes much sense, and one that we will follow. This
series of occasional visits with continue from Inner City Press, consonant with
the cost-cuts as they come.
Footnote: in a
third-floor room in the European Parliament on April 27, Green party delegate
Heide Ruhle listened while nodding to consumer advocates despairing of non-bank
input into the pending Consumer Credit Directive. When asked, with an
administrative colleague, about merger review in the Euro zone, the Green
response was that review by particular nations is outmoded. Will Brussels'
review consider predatory lending? That remains unclear.
Other Inner City Press
reports are archived on
www.InnerCityPress.org -
Kinshasa Election
Nightmares, from Ituri to Kasai. Au Revoir Allan Rock; the UN's
Belly-Dancing
Working with
Warlords, Insulated by Latrines: Somalia and Pakistan Addressed at the
UN
The Silence of
the Congo and Naomi Watts; Between Bolivia and the World Bank
Human Rights
Council Has Its Own Hanging Chads; Cocky U.S. State Department Spins
from SUVs
Child Labor and
Cargill and Nestle; Iran, Darfur and WHO's on First with Bird Flu
Press Freedom?
Editor Arrested by Congo-Brazzaville, As It Presides Over Security
Council
The
Place of the Cost-Cut UN in Europe's Torn-Up Heart;
Deafness to Consumers, Even by the Greens
Background Checks
at the UN, But Not the Global Compact; Teaching Statistics from
Turkmenbashi's Single Book
Ripped Off Worse
in the Big Apple, by Citigroup and Chase: High Cost Mortgages Spread in
Outer Boroughs in 2005, Study Finds
Burundi: Chaos at
Camp for Congolese Refugees, Silence from UNHCR, While Reform's Debated
by Forty Until 4 AM
In Liberia, From
Nightmare to Challenge; Lack of Generosity to Egeland's CERF, Which
China's Asked About
The Chadian
Mirage: Beyond French Bombs, Is Exxon In the Cast? Asylum and the
Uzbeks, Shadows of Stories to Come
Through the UN's
One-Way Mirror, Sustainable Development To Be Discussed by Corporations,
Even Nuclear Areva
Racial
Disparities Grew Worse in 2005 at Citigroup, HSBC and Other Large Banks
Mine Your Own
Business: Explosive Remnants of War and the Great Powers, Amid the
Paparazzi
Human Rights Are
Lost in the Mail: DR Congo Got the Letter, But the Process is Still
Murky
Iraq's Oil to be
Metered by Shell, While Basrah Project Remains Less than Clear
At the UN, Dues
Threats and Presidents-Elect, Unanswered Greek Mission Questions
Kofi, Kony,
Kagame and Coltan: This Moment in the Congo and Kampala
As Operation
Swarmer Begins, UN's Qazi Denies It's Civil War and Has No Answers if
Iraq's Oil is Being Metered
Cash Crop: In
Nepal, Bhutanese Refugees Prohibited from Income Generation Even in
their Camps
The Shorted and
Shorting in Humanitarian Aid: From Davos to Darfur, the Numbers Don't
Add Up
UN Reform:
Transparency Later, Not Now -- At Least Not for AXA - WFP Insurance
Contract
In Congolese
Chaos, Shots Fired at U.N. Helicopter Gunship
In the Sudanese
Crisis, Oil Revenue Goes Missing, UN Says
Empty Words on
Money Laundering and Narcotics, from the UN and Georgia
What is the Sound
of Eleven Uzbeks Disappearing? A Lack of Seats in Tashkent, a Turf War
at UN
Kosovo: Of
Collective Punishment and Electricity; Lights Out on Privatization of
Ferronikeli Mines
Abkhazia:
Cleansing and (Money) Laundering, Says Georgia
Post-Tsunami
Human Rights Abuses, including by UNDP in the Maldives
Who Pays for the
Global Bird Flu Fight? Not the Corporations, So Far - UN
Citigroup
Dissembles at United Nations Environmental Conference
Other Inner City Press
reports are archived on
www.InnerCityPress.org -
For reporting about banks, predatory
lending, consumer protection, money laundering, mergers or the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), click
here for Inner
City Press's
weekly CRA Report.
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