In Other Media-eg New Statesman, AJE, FP, Georgia, NYT,  Azerbaijan, CSM Click here to contact us     .

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UN GATE, March 5 –  On February 29 Inner City Press exclusively published an internal UNESCO email leaked to it about the agency's contact with the Coronavirus COVID-19 and its cover up. UN system boss Antonio Guterres, typically pro-China, has refused banned Press questions on it.

  Now this from Inner City Press' many UNESCO sources: Since Monday this week, UNESCO is in turmoil after the announcement that five of its staff may have been contaminated by COVID-19 because of negligence and profit-based decision making by the French Director General Audrey Azoulay.  The crisis is hitting the corrupted UN unprepared and poorly managed. Incompetence and greed are putting at risk the lives of thousands UN staff members but also affects those of permanent representatives of member states to the United Nations and of its specialized agencies. 

 After remaining dumb-mute for months, in order to avoid clashes with China, its main donor, now that the French authorities decided to heighten the level of emergency in the host-country and reinforce the fight against the Coronavirus, the French DG Azoulay finally announced some steps. At this stage, she had no other option but to over-react so as to counterweigh the absence of any measures taken by her administration against the spread of COVID-19 at the Paris based agency.

  For weeks, DG Azoulay was trying to downplay coronavirus risks. But the mounting crisis started threatening her own political asset and yesterday she released this message, here.  

  We thus learned that “UNESCO will convene an emergency meeting of education ministers on 10 March to share responses and strategies to maintain the continuity of learning and assure inclusion and equity”. Outlandish decision against basic common sense and contrasting sharply with the decision taken by the Governing bodies to cancel and postpone all meetings planned at UNESCO for at least one month, including the statutory meeting of the Executive Board. 

  The legitimate question that no member state dares yet to ask publicly is how come UNESCO became such a buffoon and why member states allowed the UN intellectual agency to reach that level of criminal foolhardiness in less than 2 years? 

  DG Audrey Azoulay again abdicated her fundamental constitutional responsibilities. Even worse, she allowed the fashion week show with Italian participants to be maintained and held at UNESCO’s premises a week ago.

   This damaging decision of DG Azoulay aimed at down-playing the seriousness of the situation at hand and at getting the fat contract executed. Another problematic decision that member states representatives unquestioningly accepted despite the risks for their health and the health of their families.  The Cabinet of Azoulay did clearly not take the threat of COVID-19 seriously. Instead of preparing the institution for it, nasty jokes were made at internal meetings by ADG/ADM Nicholas Jeffreys and Director Cabinet Kacyanides about the coronavirus being a “great opportunity for getting rid once and for all of ambassadors criticizing the French DG Azoulay and of staff protesting against their current working conditions…”. 

  Yesterday evening, at his meeting with the Chairman of the executive board and the President of the general conference of UNESCO, the Deputy director general from China again downplayed the risks as per the instructions of his government in Beijing, with the tacit approval of DG Azoulay. He even mentioned according to the information provided to Inner City Press from a source in the Cabinet of DG Azoulay, that all radical decisions for countering the virus are in the hands of the member states.

  This is another blatant example of how the top management of UNESCO is running away from its institutional responsibility while getting fat salaries paid by tax-payers world-wide.  The current situation at UNESCO is obviously highly alarming, but it’s still not enough for the ambassadors to UNESCO to start asking questions about the rotten management style of the French DG Azoulay or about her covetousness to get fresh money from fashion companies bringing contaminated contractors to the building. Not a single open question yet about the responsibility and accountability of DG Azoulay and of her senior managers in doing so.

  This is where UNESCO stands today, a Zombie land propitious to the flourishingof corruption, embezzlement, abuse of power and nepotism.  This is Antonio Guterres' UN. We will have more on that.

***

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

Past (and future?) UN Office: S-303, UN, NY 10017 USA
For now: Box 20047, Dag Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017

Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540

Search innercitypress.com  Search WWW (censored?)

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

 Copyright 2006-2020 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com for