As
UN Won't Tell Press
When Yemen & Syria
Envoys & Kim
Leave, Sources
Cite UNOPS “Lusophone Fund"
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Series
UNITED NATIONS,
March 20 – How transparent, or
opaque, is today's UN? Inner
City Press has asked the UN's
top two spokesmen simple
factual questions, including
when particular officials' UN
contracts expire, below,
without answer. Also, who
works on the 38th floor? Who
pays them? But the two
spokesmen, both holdovers from
the Ban Ki-moon
administration, have refused
to answer, most recently for
four days this: "This is a
Press request to know the date
on which the UN contracts
expire for the following:
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed,
Staffan de Mistura, Sigrid
Kaag, Anthony Lake, Jeffrey
Sachs, Kim Won-soo, Han Seung
Soo." There have been no answers.
Nor to this, which Inner City
Press has sent to UNOPS: "This
is a Press request for UNOPS
to state, upon receipt,
whether it is paying or
facilitating the payment of
anyone in the Executive Office
of the Secretary General
and/or on the 38th floor of
UNHQ, and separately whether
UNOPS has a Lusophone fund or
similar entity and what it
does."
Also four
days ago Inner City Press
asked, "This is a Press
request for a list of who is
working in the Executive
Office of the Secretary
General; within that, who is
paid by the UN general budget,
who is paid by or through any
other UN-affiliated fund
including but not limited to
UNOPS and who funds that, and
who is paid by / seconded from
a country." The question about
UNOPS grows from a number of
sources having exclusively
told Inner City Press that
Secretary General Antonio Guterres,
a former prime minister of
Portugal, has been using a "Lusophone
fund" in the UN Office of
Project Services, UNOPS, to
pay several of those working
for him on the 38th floor. Why
not just answer?
On March
20, as Inner City Press
pointed out the seeming hypocrisy
not only of the UN preaching
media freedom while having evicted
and still with no
due process restricting
Inner City Press but also of
an all-male
UN team meeting with the
DR Congo, it was told Yes,
UNOPS is involved, citing to
General Assembly documents
saying that some working in
the UN do not have to be
categories, or disclosed, as
staff. But isn't this opacity
simply inviting budget cuts?
We'll have more on this.
***
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