UNITED NATIONS,
October 14 – UN
departments hold periodic “Town Hall” meetings
with staff and some are worse that others.
Several attendees of the UN Department of
Public Information town hall meeting on
October 3 chaired by Alison Smale after a
month atop DPI have marveled to Inner City
Press at what was said by Smale. That staff
complain to Inner City Press that Smale and
Guterres may bring in outside consultants is
understandable; perhaps these overpriced
consultants will highlight waste within DPI.
On October 12, Inner City Press reported,
based on multiple sourcing, Smale's consultant
talk.
On October 13, Inner City Press asked UN
Spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who said he was "not aware"
about the consultants, did not directly
respond to the request
that he find out, and provided no information
in the following 24 hours. Now Inner City
Press publishes some of the video on the
consultants, here...
...And this from a recent UN Advisory
Committee on Administrative and Budgetary
Questions report about UN consultants, A/72/7,
page 32: "The Advisory Committee recalls that
the General Assembly, in its resolution
65/247, expressed concern over the increase in
the use of consultants.. the Advisory
Committee identified cases in which the
intended scope of the proposed consultancy,
the recourse to external rather than in-house
expertise, the proposed length of the
engagement and the categorization of
expertise/level of remuneration could be
called into question... the Committee intends
to request the Board of Auditors to conduct a
performance audit with respect to the use of
consultants across the Secretariat and to
report thereon in the context of volume I of
its annual report on the financial statements
of the United Nations."
So on what basis is Smale saying she'll hire
consultants, while failing to address or even
respond on the censorship and
retaliation by the Department of Public
Information she is in charge of? As
noted, contempt for Africa, and false promises
of openness, were the themes of the
complaints. Smale began by invoking the Prague
spring, and described CNN as a high level of
media to which the UN should aspire. She
mispronounced the capital city of the Central
African Republic, while saying that presenting
Guterres' upcoming trip there as entirely
positive will be her litmus test for the
Department's performance. So, a staffer asked
rhetorically, we have to lie that the UN is
serving Central Africans well or be reviewed
by some European consultants. Inner City Press
would say, CAR needs help, but honesty and
self-improvement by the UN, responsiveness,
would serve it better. Outside the UN, from
Cameroon many have noted Smale's focus on
Germany and Catalonia, more on this to follow.
Smale invoked not SWAT but “SWOT,” insisting
that the UN should push itself forward for
credit for example at the recent Global
Citizen concert in Central Park. She alluded
to a move toward “flexible space” on the 10th
floor of the UN, DPI's offices, where she is
expected to keep her private office, like
the no-show Egyptian state media to which DPI
is trying to award Inner City Press' long time
shared work space on the third floor: full
disclosure. We'll have more on this.
***
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