For
UNFPA Top Job More
Names, As Guterres
Meddles Before Interviews,
"His Decision"
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive series
UNITED NATIONS,
September 12 –
The UN system is moving to
find a successor at the UN
Population Fund for Babatunde
Osotimehin, who died suddenly
earlier this year. Inner City
Press was exclusively informed
by sources that the goal is to
name a successor before the
upcoming UN General Assembly
high level week - for which
the UN is both UNprepared and
UNfair
- and that the finalists range
from Costa Rica and Panama to
Senegal and a Belgian in
Kenya. UN Spokesman Stephane
Dujarric, when Inner City
Press asked him at the
September 12 noon briefing,
was unwilling to confirm any
of this, except that it is ultimately
the decision of Secretary General
Antonio Guterres - who also on
September 12 gave a new UN job
to the President of the
General Assembly who was
supposed to be overseeing him,
click here.
Inner City Press has been
informed of two more
candidates, Kate Gilmore and
Jose Miguel Guzman of the
Dominican Republic; the
sources say that while Deputy
Secretary General Amina J.
Mohammed was running the
process, now Secretary General
Antonio Guterres has "gotten
involved... Interviews are
September 12 (via video feed),
but process is very opaque
with missions being told
people are in, out, in
again....Amina is responsible
but Guterres meddling as well
and it seems pressure back and
forth between these two."
We'll have more on this;
neither has acted on the UN
censorship they inherited and
their new head of Global
Communications Alison
Smale hasn't even responded.
Strange that the only media
reporting on this UNFPA / 38th
floor dysfunction is the media
slated to be more restricted
during General Assembly week
than no-show state media like
Egypt's Akhbar al Yom (as
Egypt runs hard to run, what
else, UNESCO.) This is
UNacceptable and must be re.
The first four candidates Inner
City Press named in its
September 9 exclusive: Costa
Rica second vice president Ana
Helena Chacón Echeverría,
Acting Executive Director
Natalia Kanem, Belgian in
Kenya Marleen Timmerman, and
Senegal's Awa Marie Coll-Seck
of Roll Back Malaria is
short-listed. But when would
the winner actually begin? We'd
ask, but
Guterres'
spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric
literally runs
out of the UN
Press Briefing
Room
mid-question,
video here.
The UN is both unprepared and
unfair in the run-up to the
72nd General Assembly high
level week, which the UN brags
will include 90 heads of
state, five vice presidents,
36 heads of government, 3
deputy prime ministers and 55
ministers. At a background
briefing on September 8, a UN
Department of Public
Information official told
Inner City Press that the
current nearly-useless wifi
Internet “should” be fixed in
time, and that “there will be
a secondary pass for RC to go
to basement area, 1B, limited
to resident correspondents” -
a group of less than 200 of
the several thousand
journalist the UN says are
coming. Inner City Press
asked, Why are these passes
limited in that way? The UN
official said, “That's the
arrangement with Security and
with the UNCA [UN
Correspondents Association]
because we have to find some
distinction.” So the UN let a
group of at most 200 insiders
limit the access of thousands
of other journalists, with no
transparency. This Department
of Public Information has been
headless since April 1; New
York Times journalist Alison
Smale was named by Secretary
General Antonio Guterres as
replacement but has apparently
not arrived: she has not
answered e-mailed questions
about these elitist
“distinctions.” Actually, the
200 UNCA insiders include
numerous rarely seen state
media, for example Akhbar al
Yom from Sisi's Egypt, making
the “distinction” all the more
telling. Similarly, when Inner
City Press was for assurance
that at least the UN Press
Briefing Room would be open to
all journalists, the UN
official said while missions
are told that, there is no
guarantee, the Media
Accreditation office does not
make the bookings. Those are
done by the UN Spokesman,
Stephane Dujarric, who has a
history as noted by the Free
UN Coalition for Access
of "lending" the UN Press
Briefing Room to the president
of his native France, and to
UNCA, evicting the Press which
tried to cover the event with
Periscope. The UN is closing
in on itself, while bragging
about all the important people
coming to see it. The reformed
needed at the UN go well
beyond those alluded to in the
pre-signed outcome document of
the September 18 event. That
reform event, tellingly, is
not even mentioned on the UN's
list so far of UNGA72 events:
12 September: Opening of the
72nd Session of the General
Assembly (Preliminary list of
items in the provisional
agenda); 18 September:
High-Level Meeting on the
Prevention of Sexual
Exploitation and Abuse; 19-25
September: General Debate of
the General Assembly 72nd
Session; 20 September: Signing
Ceremony of the Treaty for the
Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons; 20 September:
Security Council High Level
Meeting: Reform of UN
peacekeeping, implementation
and follow-up; 26 September:
High-level plenary meeting to
promote and commemorate the
International Day for the
Total Elimination of Nuclear
Weapons; 27-28 September: High
-level meeting of the General
Assembly on the appraisal of
the United Nations Global Plan
of Action to Combat
Trafficking in Persons
(resolution 71/287). Watch
this site.
***
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