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By Matthew Russell Lee & UNESCO sources

UN GATE, Oct 5 – Inner City Press has been reporting regularly on the messy situation of UNESCO, even while banned from the UN by corrupt Antonio Guterres, now 825 days. Now this:

For months, DG Azoulay and her team downplayed the Coronavirus warnings and exposed the staff to unnecessary risks of contamination, her staff say.

Now that - since last Saturday, half of her closest collaborators from the Cabinet, including the Director of her cabinet Nicolas Kacyanides, got COVID-19 positive tests, the same staff tell Inner City Press.  They are all quarantined at home until further notice.

The whole UNESCO is therefore paralyzed because of the irresponsible managerial behavior of DG Azoulay and her senior team.  Today, all new cases have been duly reported to the Chief of the Medical service, Dr Cordier.

No internal release of information whatsoever though by HRM, since Dr Cordier is still under the imperative instruction from the Cabinet of the French Director general Audrey Azoulay not to disclose any information on that issue in order to avoid panic and complaints against the administration for managing so poorly the crisis and for failing to protect the staff.  The Agency is run by blackout on information and rumors, and no one is deeming necessary to inform the potential victims of the new COVID cluster created in the Cabinet.

From his home, Kacyanides is blocking all access to reliable information about the recent developments in a desperate effort to enforce an embargo on the spread of the virus from his office.

Meanwhile at the UNHQ, this - Guterers Spokesman Duajrricc going maskless, video here.

   On March 24th, Inner City Press wrote about it already but no measures have been taken whatsoever to improve the situation. “Such scandalous lack of transparency in the current dramatic situation, is a crime towards all staff and their families”, said one high official to Inner City Press. “We hope member states’ representatives who are directly concerned by this shameful fiasco of Audrey Azoulay will finally wake up and decide to step in by placing her under a form of trusteeship and thus extending their control over her hopeless administration”.   The COVID-19 crisis hit the corrupted UNESCO totally unprepared. After remaining dumb-mute for months, despite that the French authorities decided to strengthen the procedures for protecting the population, the French DG Azoulay still remains silent and absent from her duties and constitutional responsibilities. Definitely, Audrey Azoulay was trying to downplay coronavirus risks, but not communicating on the contamination of half of her Cabinet is a totally new level of the usual outrageous “I-couldn’t-care-lessness” attitude of the French DG.   For how long more will member states representatives unquestioningly swallow all that, despite the huge risks even for them, remains to be verified. 

Since the very outset, the Cabinet of DG Azoulay did clearly not take the threat of COVID-19 seriously. Instead of preparing the institution for it, nasty jokes were made at internal meetings by ADG/ADM Nicholas Jeffreys and Director Cabinet Kacyanides about the coronavirus being a “great opportunity for getting rid once and for all of ambassadors criticizing the French DG Azoulay and of staff protesting against their current working conditions…”. 

This Monday, clearly, the tables have turned. Now the same who joked inappropriately are being contaminated themselves.   This is where UNESCO stands today, a Zombie land propitious to the flourishing of abuse of power and nepotism dangerously detrimental to staff members and to their families.  Watch this site.

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