Inner City Press: Investigative Reporting from the United Nations

Mexico Despite Carnage Is "Stable," Espinosa Says, Killings Not Political, Says UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 16 -- "Mexico is a stable country," foreign minister Patricia Espinosa told the Press on Wednesday. Inner City Press had asked her about attacks on police and Mexico City's control over territory by armed groups with members under the age of eighteen. Earlier, a Mexican spokesman had said that the country is not a case of armed conflict, that whatever conflict exists is a purely internal matter. But the level of killing exceeds that of many of the situations on the agenda of the UN Security Council, on which Mexico serves for the rest of 2010.

Inner City Press asked UNICEF and Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN's envoy on children and armed conflict, what they do about Mexican armed groups' use of under-aged fighters, and about the shooting of a 15 year old Mexican by US border guards earlier this month.

Ms. Coomaraswamy said she didn't see that death, in Ciuidad Juarez, as relevant to her mandate. She said that armed conflict, according to her Office and presumably the the UN, must have a "political dimension."

So, Inner City Press asked, if the groups in Mexico began to refer to corruption in the capital, would this be a political dimension?

Patricia Espinosa on June 16, armed Mexican youth not shown
How is the increasingly deranged and decentralized Lord's Resistance Army a political group?

They want to seize state power, Coomaraswamy said. And they assert the rights of the Acholi people.

But the LRA hasn't been in Uganda in quite some time. Its recruits are not Acholi. And Mexican armed groups, including drug gangs, seek to control the machinery of government, which if not controlled would attack and arrest them. So what is the difference?

UNICEF later provided a more detailed answer:

To: Inner City Press
From: @unicef.org
Date: Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 10:17 PM

According to international humanitarian law, Mexico is not in an armed conflict situation. Nevertheless, the increased levels of violence reported in the country have put security issues at the center of the public agenda.

Some information on UNICEF programs in Mexico

UNICEF Mexico develops a wide range of initiatives that encourage active youth participation in their educational setting to help overcoming situations of risks.

To this end, UNICEF Mexico has supported the national Construye-T initiative since 2008, whose purpose is to encourage participation by young people so that they stay in school, successfully overcome the situations of risk to which they are exposed and build their own life project.

Construye-T is one example of public policy that focuses on youth and the construction of citizenship in which government, the educational community, civil society organizations and international agencies, participate and positions young people in a leading role.

The Construye-T is being implemented in 1,696 senior high schools nationwide, reaching 961,154 young people between 15 and 18 years old.

Protecting the rights of unaccompanied migrant children and adolescents is a key priority of UNICEF in México.

UNICEF actively participates in the Inter-Institutional Panel on Unaccompanied Child and Adolescent Migrants and Migrant Women, which brings together some 17 institutions ranging from public authorities to international agencies. These joint efforts have resulted in the development of a new model to protect unaccompanied migrant adolescents and children and in securing an increased national budget allocation in Congress in 2009 for its appropriate implementation. As part of this model, UNICEF has supported the establishment of a special corps of Child Protection Officers.

More than 30,000 adolescents and children are repatriated yearly to or from Mexico. Over 20,000 of them now count on a system for their protection, which includes immediate care, specialized attention and separate accommodation from adults, communication with their families and safe return to their communities of origin.

UNICEF also works closely with the government to strengthen child protection measures on every level of the society. This kind of advocacy work includes technical support to the government to ensure that children's rights are respected.

Yeah -- "the increased levels of violence reported in the country have put security issues at the center of the public agenda." Watch this site.

* * *

Child Soldiers in Somalia Unaddressed in Security Council Speeches, Conflict of Interest

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 16 -- As the UN Security Council debates one of its favorite topics, Children and Armed Conflict, it has a conflict of interest. Since 2006 it has supported, some say propped up, the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia. Now what was long known has been more publicly exposed, that at least 20% of the TFG's soldiers are underage, some below ten years old.

On June 15 Inner City Press asked Council President for June Claude Heller of Mexico what the Council would do about the report. There is a debate tomorrow, Heller said on camera. Later, emerging from consultations in the Council chamber with, among others, delegates of Ivory Coast and Georgia, Heller said that something would be said on the topic on Wednesday.

Mexico's foreign minister Patricia Espinosa Cantellano is in New York for the debate, slated to speak to the Press at 11:30. But not on this topic, Inner City Press is told. What then could she be asked? If the underaged members of drug gangs like La Familia in Michoacan should be considered children in armed conflict?

UN's Ban and Sec't Espinosa, 2009, support for TFG and its child soldiers not shown

But here's from Secretary Espinosa's statement:

"Mexico call upon the Security Council, within the limits of its mandate, to continue being vigilant of the repercussions that armed conflicts have on children, and to promote concrete actions to fulfill the recommendations emanating from the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. We defend the interests of children and consider that, as a community, we must enhance our efforts to give a wide and effective protection to children. Crimes against children cannot be stopped if perpetrators remain unpunished."

What about enablers in the recruitment of child soldiers, like the UN Political Office on Somalia, UNDP and... the UN Security Council? We will be asking. Sixty countries are coming to speechify. Watch this site.

Update of 10:38 a.m. -- After Susan Rice strode in at 10:11, the meeting and speeches started. Another P5 member's spokesperson said they're aware of the TFG Somalia expose, but "it hasn't come up, there's been no reason for it to come up." And in today's debate on children and armed conflict? "Let's see," the spokesperson says. Yeah, let's.

Update of 10:41 a.m. -- it emerges in the Security Council "quiet room" people, including Ambassadors, are watching the Spain - Switzerland game instead of listening to the speeches on children and armed conflict.

Update of 11:37 a.m. -- US Amb. Susan Rice briefly mentions Somalia, calling on "all parties" to stop recruiting child soldiers. What about the "party" the US is funding, the TFG? Not enough specifics. She also mentions DRCongo, the Lord's Resistance Army and the Central African Republic. Answers on Somalia, and on US safeguards, are needed. But here comes Sec't Espinosa.

* * *

While US Denies Paying Child Soldiers of Somali TFG, Safeguards and UN Role Not Clear

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 15 -- Since the Transitional Federal Government was installed in Somalia, it has been known that it controlled its small turf by using child soldiers. The US provided salaries, the UN system provided training.

But as Mexico's Ambassador to the UN Claude Heller told Inner City Press on June 15, when a 12 year old with an enormous AK 47 is on the front page of the New York Times, what had been accepted changes. See video here.

Heller is the president of UN Security Council for June, and will chair a meeting on June 16 on children and armed conflict. After Inner City Press asked him about the TFG, Heller replied off camera that the issue will be raised on June 16.

In the interim, Inner City Press asked but the UN and US diplomats about the issues. Carolyn Vadino, a spokesperson at the US Mission to the UN, told Inner City Press that

"The United States is firmly against the use of child soldiers by all sides in any conflict. U.S. assistance provides salary support to TFG security forces. Prior to making payments to any individual member of these forces we take appropriate steps to verify the ages of such individuals to ensure that we are not funding salaries of anyone under the age of 18."

How in a war-torn environmental like Mogadishu the US claims full control over the payments to individual soldiers is not known. Another US official, speaking only on background, referred to safeguards in "the Leahy amendment." Clearly, there are more questions to be asked and answered.

Lovefest with TFG, May 2010, UN's Ban, Kouchner, Turks, child soldiers not shown

At the June 15 noon briefing, Inner City Press asked UN Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq:

Inner City Press: on Somalia, there is this report of the use by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of child soldiers, and this includes quotes from the UN saying that they’re aware of it. Since the UN provides training and some funding for the TFG forces, the UN system does, I’m wondering what safeguards are in place that the UN itself has not been either training or funding or otherwise involved in the use of child soldiers by the TFG?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: Certainly the United Nations does not approve of the use of child soldiers anywhere, and we would not encourage any of that in its operations. If I have any further information on the specifics of that, I’ll let you know. But certainly, among other things, tomorrow, we will have as one of the guests at the noon briefing, Radhika Coomaraswamy, who deals with this issue and you can certainly ask that of her as well.

We'll be there: watch this site.

Footnote: In the UN's North Lawn building on June 14, Inner City Press was approached by two Somali woman, in from Minneapolis for a conference on the Millennium Development Goals. The women asked how to arrange a meeting with new envoy Augustine Mahiga, to tell him of Somalia's plight before he takes up his post in Nairobi. They spoke of the lack of opportunity for children in Mogadishu. But these are not voices that will be heard in Wednesday's Security Council session. But afterward and on the sidelines, there will be questions - perhaps even answers.

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

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

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