On
Syria, UNICEF
Won't Say Who
Counted 1600
Dead, Wires
Use
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
September 2 --
After UNICEF's
Patrick
McCormick was
quoted
that "at
least 1,600
people were
killed in
Syria last
week"
and Reuters
said he was
"citing a U.N.
document,"
Inner
City Press asked
McCormick,
which
document? And
how was the
data
collected?
McCormick
answered,
"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.
Later
on September
2, AP ran a
headline
"UNICEF says
1,600 people
were
killed in
Syria last
week," noting
down in the
fifth
paragraph
of the story
that McCormick
"did not
immediately
explain how he
arrived at the
figure."
On
OCHA's
ReliefWeb site
is a UNICEF
report which
states "a
record
death toll of
1,600 persons
was reported."
So it appeared
that
UNICEF's
McCormick was
quoting a
UNICEF report.
Why then pass
the
buck to OCHA?
And
so Inner City
Press has
asking asked
McCormick:
"on
OCHA's
ReliefWeb
website in the
UNICEF weekly
report, it's
stated
that 'A record
death toll of
1,600 persons
was reported.'
The
question:
reported by
whom? Does the
figure cited,
in the UNICEF
report and by
you, include
military
deaths? Deaths
among armed
groups?
"Seems
important to
answer this,
especially
since the UN
system says in
other contexts
it does not
have access
and / or does
not count the
dead. If
you're saying
that the
UNICEF report
you cited was
based on
OCHA
information,
please which
what
information,
or who it is
at OCHA
you're saying
I should
call."
There
has been no
answer, even
as the figure
is distributed
all over the
world (click
here for
Washington
Post).
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. How
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.
, 
