Inner City Press: Investigative Reporting from the United Nations

On CAR Rapes, UN Report Under Embargo, Broken, Ladsous Airbrushed Out

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 17 -- The UN's twice delayed report on peacekeepers' rapes in the Central African Republic and the UN's cover-ups is being released today. It was pre-given to Foreign Policy, only a portion of it. Still, the UN at 10 am said it remained under embargo until noon. Whatever the merits, this report therefore for now focuses on the portion given to FP and the spin put on it.

Amazingly, FP does not even MENTION the official responsible for UN Peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous. This is more telling, or troubling, given that Ladsous is cited in two separate UN Dispute Tribunal rulings as having tried to get Anders Kompass fired for having released information about alleged child rapes by peacekeepers from Ladsous' native France. How can this be air-brushed out?

Ladsous on September 11, 2015, on camera in the UN Press Briefing Room, linked the CAR rapes with “R&R.” Video here. It seems FP, and other scribes, never reported this. In fact, Agence France Presse at Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's rare press conference on December 16 -- the day BEFORE the CAR report was released, or given -- praised Ban for his response to sexual abuse. (Ban and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric refused to take a question from Inner City Press, despite calling twice on the same UN Correspondents Association scribe.)

Now one assumes that instead of Ban it will be Dujarric, or perhaps even HIS deputy, to pick and choose and fend off questions about the pre-spun report at noon. We'll be there: watch this site.

[The Free UN Coalition for Access notes that most organization, including international organization like the IMF, lift embargoes when they are broken, partial as here partially and self-servingly broken. But this is today's UN; in any event, the above report for this reason is based on the partial self-serving leak / embargo break.]

Follow @innercitypress Follow @FUNCA_info

Share |

These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.