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As
Sudan Moves Against NGOs, No UN Guidance,
IRC Spins, Principles Come Last
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
March 16 -- With Sudan now saying
it
will throw all international non-governmental organizations out of
Sudan within
one year, top UN humanitarian John Holmes on Monday replied that the UN
as a matter of policy never asks NGOs
if, for example, they cooperate with the International Criminal Court.
Whether this policy can or even should continue is now in question.
Inner
City Press asked Holmes about language in a 2005 memorandum of the
International
Rescue Committee in which IRC's "Joseph Aguettant wrote to other senior
employees outlining guidelines for cooperating with the court, saying
it could
be justified because the ICC's work would help Sudan's people and bring
criminals to justice." (Click here
for the Reuters story.)
"That's for them to decide," Holmes said, adding
that he saw
"no need" for the UN to "take a view." Video here,
from
Minute 35:25.
But the UN
chooses the NGOs through which it delivers aid. While certainly John
Holmes
does not want to be quoted discouraging NGO cooperation with the ICC,
step by
step the case of Sudan is putting the issue before the UN.
Inner City
Press took a second pass at the question, asking Holmes how the UN
chooses
which NGOs to work with, beyond the financials, and what guidance it
would give
if an NGO's country director was quoted that the nation's president
should be
indicted by the ICC. This time, Holmes replied that the UN encourages
the NGOs
it works with to abide by humanitarian principles of
"neutrality, independence and
impartiality... as we ourselves do." Video here,
from Minute 50:44.
The UN and
its Department of Peacekeeping Operations have gone to great pains to
insist
that all they share with the ICC are pre-existing reports; their
statements try
to limit these to the example of reports prepared for the Security
Council. In
the case
of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga, however, DPKO gave
information to the ICC for which it claimed confidentiality, asking
that the information
not be shown even to Lubanga's defense team. Clearly, this went beyond
Security
Council reports, which are public.
So is the
UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs encouraging
the NGOs
it works with to limit themselves to, at most, the UN's level of
cooperation
with the ICC, which is to provide pre-existing written reports?
IRC's Darfur ad to "show how
your donations can allow them to continue to help"
It seems
important that Holmes and the UN clarify this. Because Sudanese
president Omar
al-Bashir is raising the stakes step by step. A future move might be to
say to
the UN, if you work with these NGOs that Sudan claims are not neutral,
Sudan
will through NGOs and even peacekeepers out of the country. Then what?
In
the wake
of the earthquake in Pakistan, then-OCHA spokeswoman Kristen Knutson
told Inner City Press
that OCHA would deliver aid if it had to through an NGO linked with an
alleged
terrorist group, that delivering emergency aid is the first priority. Click here for that
story. Meanwhile, more recently, the UN to placate
some but not all of the General Assembly's member states had gone out
of its
way to exclude those in control of the Gaza Strip from any role in aid
and
development projects there.
It appears
that the UN's hierarchy of values puts politics at the top, then the
provision
of aid coming before "principles."
To be continued.
Footnote: the
International Rescue Committee is disputing that its board of directors
"considered" the
proposed policy of cooperating with the ICC. See "corrected" Reuters
story, here,
reporting that IRC's spokeswoman "in a later email... played
down the review of the unsolicited proposal, saying the group's
management never seriously entertained cooperation with the ICC."
This cuts
both ways: while it
might help it convince Sudan and other governments of its commitment to
the
"neutrality" principle, certainly there are funders of IRC -- see advertisement
pictured above -- which
would be troubled by a blanket policy of not cooperating with the ICC.
For
example, if IRC staff became aware of the location of indictees of the
International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia or Rwanda,
would IRC
sit on the information?
Are even
the
NGOs' principles, then, entirely contextual?
Click here for Inner City
Press March 12 UN (and AIG
bailout) debate
Click here for Inner City
Press' Feb 26 UN debate
Click
here
for Feb.
12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56
Click here for Inner City Press' Jan.
16, 2009 debate about Gaza
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
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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Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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