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On Climate, UN Lobbies Itself, On Migration It Tells the Poor
to Go Home
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
November 20 -- That women are
impacted by climate change, and that global warming talks in Poznan
should take
notice, are hardly controversial positions. But Thursday at the UN a
strange
grouping held a briefing on this issue. Ostensibly a "civil society"
organization, the "Global Gender and Climate Alliance," said they
will try in Poznan "to ensure that climate change funds target women
and
men equally."
Strangely, the
founders of this Alliance are UN agencies, the UN Development Program
and the
UN Environment Fund. Inner City Press asked if this doesn't constitute
the UN
lobbying itself, the UN taking up the space where independent civil
society
should be. Video here,
"under construction" (at time of press conference) GGCA web site here.
The
briefers recoiled at the suggestion, calling the Alliance a
"coalition of the passionate" and saying that the UN needs to work
with civil society. Yes, but implicit in that formulation and in common
sense
is that the UN and civil society are not the same thing. The UN can't
lobby
itself, with member states money. Or can it?
UN's Hania Zlotnik, lump sum payments to
migrants to leave not shown
A similar
UN conundrum was in display at a briefing on migration earlier on
Thursday. The
UN's population expert Hania Zlotnik, after commenting on Bulgaria,
defended Spain's program of paying
legal immigrants
money to go home. It grew out of UN forums, she said. Should the UN be
advising
developed countries on how to send their poor folks home?
One wag
quipped that
contrary to the "give me your poor huddling masses" inscribed on the
statue of Liberty, Ban Ki-moon's UN was saying to the poor, go home.
There's a
lump sum unemployment payment, in exchange for a promise not to return,
at
least for three years. Is this an appropriate UN program? Why should
the UN
defend it?
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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