UN Won’t Act on Abuse of Women
Diplomats only talk about issue

Steven Edwards
March 3, 2007
National Post
Original Source: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=dddafbff-668f-42a8-9afd-7daaa59cdde7
Grand statements on the need to end violence against women are pouring from the United Nations this week at a major conference on the status of women, but don't expect the world body to actually point the finger at any country where women's rights are being trampled upon.
In the past, senior UN officials have imposed rules that shield regimes from the embarrassment of being named and shamed --and it's alleged protagonists in the latest example of UN acquiescence to tyranny are a senior advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the No. 2 at the world body's Division for the Advancement of Women.
At issue was a bid by the U.S. State Department to organize a panel discussion on the sidelines of the annual two-week conference under the heading, State- Sanctioned Mass Rape in Burma and Sudan.
UN member states have a right to sponsor discussion panels that might complement the official UN agenda, and Canada frequently takes advantage of the privilege.
But it appears that within the UN administration there was a sense that Burma -- called Myanmar by its ruling junta -- and Sudan would be offended by the panel's discourse.
In part, concern was prompted by a letter to the UN hierarchy from a group of mainly developing countries called the Non- Aligned Movement.
It said the group was expressing its strong opposition to the fact that a certain member state of the organization [read, United States] is trying to make undue use of UN premises to carry out clearly hostile actions against two other UN member states [read, Burma and Sudan].
At the height of the rising tensions, there was a conversation between Bob Orr in the executive office of the Secretary-General and Terry Miller, U.S. ambassador to the UN's Economic and Social Council, which oversees women's advancement issues.
While the UN interpretation is that Mr. Orr was simply seeking options the U.S. thought might defuse the situation, one senior U.S. official said the UN asked for more.
A very senior UN official called and asked us to move the panel away from the UN, he said. They didn't even want us to have it at the UN.
Less ambiguous is an e-mail sent to the U.S. mission by Sylvie Cohen, the UN's Advancement of Women deputy director, after notice of the event had appeared in the UN's Daily Journal.
She said the UN's Meeting Services branch felt the event's title would be perceived as offensive to named member states.
Her missive added that the Meeting Service officials noted it is not customary to name member states without their endorsement in the titles of United Nations parallel events.
Ms. Cohen went on to suggest the United States was additionally out of line because the event title used the term Burma to refer to that country and not Myanmar.
The name of one member state concerned is not mentioned in accordance with its official country name, Ms. Cohen's note said.
The U.S. official said the United States stood its ground, and the event went ahead on Tuesday at the UN, with experts from Harvard University and elsewhere discussing the two countries' horrendous human rights records.
Underscoring the validity of the theme, the chief prosecutor of the UN's International Criminal Court, established to prosecute major war crimes around the world, recommended that charges be laid against Ahmed Haroun, the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister, in connection with offences in the country's Darfur region.
The prosecutor said there was sufficient evidence to charge Mr. Haroun and a government backed militia leader with 51 offences, including mass murder, rape and torture.
Numerous human rights organizations have meanwhile documented widespread rape by Burma's soldiers over the years in a state-sanctioned bid to brutalize women from particular ethnic backgrounds.
Senior UN officials say there was never any attempt to have the venue moved.
The event took place, it was packed, and there was a lively exchange, said spokeswoman Marie Okabe.
Intervening on behalf of a state facing potential embarrassment is not without precedent, however, as Pakistani gang-rape victim Mukhtar Mai knows all too well.
She gained worldwide attention after she went public about a tribal court's order she be raped because her brother had dared woo a girl from a higher caste, and was to appear in a program called An Interview with Mukhtar Mai: The Bravest Woman On Earth at UN headquarters early last year.
It never took place because, according to the organizers, the UN blocked her appearance after Pakistani officials felt offended Mai would be speaking on the same day Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was in the building during a U.S. trip.
The UN position was later defended by then-UN communications chief Shashi Tharoor, who explained UN member states effectively run the UN and so their preferences have to be met.
A week after the Mai incident, Mr. Tharoor beamed about the UN's support for women's rights as he introduced actress Nicole Kidman as the world body's newly appointed Goodwill Ambassador for women's issues.
He has now left the UN, but not before he did well in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to succeed Kofi Annan as UN chief at the end of last year.