On
Syria, UN Says
No Access, But
UNICEF Says
1600 Dead in
Week
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
September 2 --
Media are
hungry for
numbers about
Syria, and
what better
and more
credible place
to get them
than the UN
system? But
where in the
UN system? And
where do the
numbers come
from?
On
Sunday morning
a New York
Times
assistant
managing
editor
redistributed
a short "CNN
Breaking News"
piece from
earlier that
morning, which
began:
"(CNN)
-- At least 1,600
people were
killed in
Syria last
week, making
it
the deadliest
week yet in
the civil war,
according to
UNICEF.
Patrick
McCormick
of the U.N.
children's
fund said the
toll included
children."
No
further
sourcing
beyond
McCormick was
provided, but
a news search
found a
Reuters piece
quoting
McCormick that
"Syria
witnessed in
the past week
an escalation
of violence
particularly
in Damascus. A
record death
toll of 1,600
persons was
reported,
including
children,"
and saying
McCormick was
"citing a U.N.
document."
Inner
City Press
asked
McCormick, to
whom it has
previously
directed
questions
productively
about child
soldiers in
Burundi and
less
productively
about UNICEF
Canada
allegedly
accepting
funding from a
pornographer,
"what the UN
document is,
and how the
figures were
collected."
McCormick's
two
word answer
was "call
ocha" - the
UN's Office
for the
Coordination
of
Humanitarian
Affairs.
This
seemed
strange, since
in
2009 OCHA
refused to
release very
specific
casualty
figures --
2,683 --
it had
collected in
Sri Lanka.
At the time,
the UN told
Inner City
Press it is not in the
business of
counting the
dead --
Inner City
Press thought
and thinks the
UN should at
least do this,
where it can.
But in a
credible and
transparent
way.
In Syria in
2012, the
UN's mission
has left after
UN
Peacekeeping
chief Herve
Ladsous said
that even
observers in
armored cars
can't get
around.
When Inner
City Press
asked
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's
spokesperson's
office if the
UN could
confirm the
shooting down
a jet by the
Syrian
opposition,
the answer was
that the UN
has no access
and cannot
confirm even
that.
How then would
OCHA
have collected
figures of the
type it
refused to
release in Sri
Lanka
in 2009, and
why would it
(well, UNICEF)
release them
about Syria in
2012? Watch
this site.
, 
