Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

UNITED NATIONS, March 25 -- Most of the UN's work is in Africa, but it gets very little oversight of its work there, at least from the press corps it accredits to its New York headquarters.

  On Monday at noon Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky questions about the UN in three countries in Africa: the Central African Republic, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Video here.

  In CAR, despite a UN political mission there, its envoy Margaret Vogt was in New York on March 13, she told Inner City Press, on vacation. She showed little sense of urgency, saying that she would brief the Security Council “in April” and maybe Ban Ki-moon would issue a statement before then.

  Now the Bozize family has been deposed by the Seleka rebels, and Inner City Press was left, or back, to ask if the UN refugee agency UNHCR is giving some form of VIP service to Bozize's entourage in the DRC, or the same service offered to others fleeing CAR.

  Nesirky said he would check; he declined to confirm if Bozize himself is in Cameroon.

  On Sudan, Nesirky read out a statement about IDPs being kidnapped on the way to Nyala. Inner City Press asked, how was this possible when they were accompanied, if not protected, by armed UN peacekeepers?

  Nesirky insisted he'd already read a statement. But it did not answer the obvious question: what's wrong with UNAMID? Previously UNAMID let rebels in Darfur take all their weapons, without firing a shot. Where IS the Protection of Civilians strategy? The UN has never directly answered that one.

   Closely monitoring like the peacekeepers in Darfur “monitored” the IDPs who they let get kidnapped? How is it that there is so little oversight of UN Peacekeeping and its fourth French boss in a row, Herve Ladsous? Watch this site.