As
UN
SC
Blindspots Critiqued, Oxfam Excludes Sri Lanka Due to “Sensitivities”
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
May
9 -- The UN Security Council's intentional blindspots on
the protection of civilians are sampled in a report released today by
the UK-based organization Oxfam -- a study which itself has
blindspots.
To
its credit,
Oxfam compares some numbers to what's on the Security Council's
agenda:
“Darfur
had over 2,300 fatalities recorded by the UN in 2010, but with no
indication of civilian deaths. Similarly, Colombia, the DRC, and
Myanmar each experienced over 1,000 fatalities, but Myanmar and
Colombia remain off the UNSC’s agenda. Kyrgyzstan – with some
300,000 people displaced in 2010 – also remains off the UNSC’s
agenda.”
The
mission in Darfur,
UNAMID, under Ibrahim Gambari has largely gone silence on reported
bombings by the government of clinics, and blockades of aid and medical
supplies to camps for internally diplaced people. Click here
for most recent Inner City Press piece on Sudan.
Similar
silence from the UN
mission in Western Sahara, MINURSO, does not even appear to be
mentioned in Oxfam's 39 page report,
which analyzes the protection of civilians work for UN peacekeeping
missions.
While
Oxfam
recommends among other things that the UN's Emergency Relief
Coordinator, former UK diplomat Valerie Amos, brief the Council more
often, it's been striking for example that Amos, when asked by Inner
City Press, claimed she was unaware of the harm to civilians by
causes earlier this year by the sanctions and embargo on Cote
d'Ivoire, resulting in no medicine for civilians in Cote d'Ivoire.
More briefings of this kind will scarcely solve the problem.
In
fact, Oxfam's
report seems to some to be politicized, or at least and by its own
admission to have given in to “reporting sensitivities.” In
explaining why it chose the 18 countries it did, while excluding Sri
Lanka where by the UN Panel of Experts own recent finding, “tens of
thousands” of civilians were killed, Oxfam
in Footnote 27 states:
“The
18 countries chosen for inclusion were Afghanistan, the Central
African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Iraq, India, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, the Occupied
Palestinian Territories/Israel, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia,
Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, and Yemen. Though
Sri Lanka passed the
criteria for inclusion in this report, due to disputed information,
difficulties in verification, and reporting sensitivities, it was
finally excluded from the countries under study.”
So,
“Sri Lanka
passed the criteria for inclusion in [Oxfam's] report,” but Oxfam
decided to exclude it due to “reporting sensitivities.” This in a
report that purports to urge the Security Council to become
objective, to not give in to vetoes much less “sensitivities.” Oxfam
should explain this.
Ban and OXFAM-ers, Sri Lanka not shown
Even
this
month's
Security Council president, Gerard
Araud of France, said at his press
conference beginning the month's Program of Work including the May 10
debate on protection of civilians that “30,000 civilians” were
killed in Sri Lanka. This is a higher number than anything else in
Oxfam's report, but is excluded.
Oxfam
also
asked
for more briefings from, and presumably respect for, the Ban
Ki-moon's Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide, Francis Deng, and
on the Responsibility to Protect, Ed Luck.
When
Inner
City
Press asked Deng which countries his office is looking at, Deng
responded that he doesn't like to get country specifics. Despite his
geniality, there are numerous complaints from within his office,
about lack of direction in the UN work, and requirements to do non-UN
work such as edit and even type portions of Deng's books.
Ed
Luck, at last
interface, was applying for a job in Minnesota which would remove him
from the R2P post. Unless, like Ban's Special Envoy al Khatib who
remains a Senator in and resident of Jordan, Luck got dispensation to
moonlight and work, with UN staff, from his new home.
These
last
personnel
foibles are not Oxfam's fault, nor even mostly the Security
Council's, except to the extent that the Council has not reached out
to fix or at least oversee them as it should. But as a most extreme
example in recent years, the exclusion of the tens of thousands of
civilians killed in Sri Lanka not only from the Security Council's
agenda, from any follow up investigation by Ban Ki-moon and now from
NGO Oxfam's report, due to “reporting sensitivies,” is all too
telling. Watch this site.
* * *
In
Central
African
Republic,
UN Abandons Obo Like Birao, New Nigerian
SRSG to Hear CAR Alarm?
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
May
4
-- Months after civilians in the Birao area of the Central
African Republic were abandoned when the UN Peacekeeeping
mission MINURCAT pulled out, a call has gone up to establish at least
some kind of UN presence in CAR's Haut-Mbomou prefecture and its
capital Obo.
Only
two
international
medical
NGOs serve the area, where children are
abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army, according to Laura Perez of
the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
Inner
City
Press
asked
Ms. Perez why the UN was constrained from at least purporting
to serve the area. She replied that there is a weekly airplane flight
to Obo but that the UN Department of Safety & Security says UN
staff can only go with a military escort, which hasn't been arranged.
Previously,
Inner
City
Press
has reported on nepotism and mismanagement in the UN
mission in the Central African Republic. In
late 2009, Inner City Press had asked SRSG Sahle-Work Zewde, Special
Representative of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Head of the
United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office in the Central African
Republic (BONUCA) about a series of BONUCA
hires of relatives of the head of the UN Department of Political
Affairs Africa II Division, Sammy Buo. She said she would look
into it, take action and report back.
UN's Ban and Bozize, protection of civilians esp in Obo not shown
Nine
months
later,
having
heard nothing from her or about any changes,
Inner City Press asked her for an update. “I don't want to speak
about the past,” she said.
Inner
City
Press
asked,
“But are the individuals, including the former
employee of the Executive Outcomes private military firm, still
employed by the UN in the CAR?” She would not answer.
How
can
the
UN
credibly preach transparency and anti-corruption if these
are its practices?
Now
in 2011, UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is promoting Ms. Sahle-Work Zewde to
head the UN Office in Nairobi. Inner City Press asked Ms. Perez and
her fellow panelists at the UN on Wednesday where the process stands
on replacing Ms. Sahle-Work Zewde, and to assess the UN's
performance.
Eva
Smets of the
Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict declined to grade the UN's
performance, but said that more resources at needed. Belgium's
Permanent Representative to the UN Jan Grauls, who chairs the UN
Peacebuilding Commission for CAR said that a replacement for Ms.
Sahle-Work Zewde is just about to be named.
Further
reporting
by
Inner
City Press, confirmed by other missions, concludes that “a
Nigerian woman” is about to be named.
The Danish Refugee
Council's Patrice Effebi, in French, spoke of children demobilized from
the Armée populaire pour la
restauration de la République et la démocratie
(APRD).
Grauls said
that UN envoy Radhika Coomaraswamy will travel to CAR in October. While
calling the Security Council, on which he used to serve, secretive he
offered praise to the opening up of the Working Group on Children and
Armed Conflict, which he attended this week. Grauls left for a
teleconference with the World Bank about aid. Will it, the new SRSG or
anything get the UN into Obo? Watch this site
, 
