• by Thalif Deen (united nations)
• Thursday, April 22, 2010
• Inter Press Service

The U.N. Correspondents' Association (UNCA), which represents the interests of over 200 full-time journalists covering the world body, has lashed out at the Security Council for proposing new restrictions on the press corps - presumably for 'safety reasons'.

In a renewed attack on the most powerful political body at the United Nations, UNCA president Giampaolo Pioli said Thursday the new rules are 'unacceptable, demeaning and would amount to nothing less than an unprecedented assault on the freedom of the press at the United Nations under the guise of 'safety' measures'.

This is the second time that UNCA has protested restrictions imposed on the press corps.

In Thursday's letter of protest, UNCA directly responded to a memo from the U.N. Media and Accreditation Liaison Unit outlining a new set of guidelines the Security Council would like to impose on the U.N. press corps.

The guidelines not only spell out how reporters would encounter or follow delegates in the corridors but also when they should leave a 'closed off area' and up to what point they can continue their conversations with delegates and ambassadors.

'We find it highly offensive that the new rules talk about journalists as if they're unruly children who need to be restrained and prevented from 'roaming around',' Pioli said.

The argument that the restrictions 'are all for safety reasons is preposterous', he added.

The letter addressed to Ambassador Yukio Takasu of Japan, current president of the Security Council, says it will be easy to resolve this issue if the 15 members of the Council are willing to cooperate with the press corps.

'But if council members continue to hide behind the Department of Safety and Security, and fictitious and exaggerated 'safety' concerns, this Security Council will go down in history as the one that used a move to temporary spaces to impose a new caste system intended to keep reporters away from delegates to enhance the council's secretiveness and decrease transparency,' the letter warned.

'Journalists have not threatened the safety of delegates in the past, nor will they in the future,' Pioli said.

If an individual reporter, delegate, a representative of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) or a U.N. official violates common sense safety rules and endangers anyone, that person has no right to a U.N. grounds pass and should lose it, he added.

'I'm not sure many delegates on the Security Council would want to live with that label,' he added.

The Security Council comprises the five veto-wielding permanent members, the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, and 10 non-permanent rotating members, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey and Uganda.

The restrictions on the movement of journalists have apparently been imposed because of relocation of the Security Council chamber to a temporary conference room due to the ongoing renovations of the U.N. building.

Last week a similar protest came from NGOs whose movements have also been restricted under the guise of security and due to building renovations.

The Capital Master Plan (CMP), a five-year U.N. restructuring project costing about 1.9 billion dollars with a 2013 deadline, is apparently the primary excuse to restrict the physical movement of NGO representatives in the U.N. building, Jim Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, said last week.

'The United Nations appears to be getting progressively more hostile to NGOs - and member states appear to be behind this trend,' said Paul, speaking on behalf of a coalition of NGOs that have protested the new restrictions on civil society representatives.

Paul was also critical of the restrictions imposed on U.N. correspondents and sees a pattern of political heavy-handedness in the Secretariat.

Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), was equally critical.

'The public will see straight through the argument that delegates' safety is enhanced by keeping them shielded from the press,' he said.

Both diplomats and reporters are already inside a secure zone with visible ID. The United Nations should be a beacon for the human rights it was established to uphold, he added.

Those include freedom of expression and a free media. To deny reporters access to public officials would be hypocritical, he noted.

The CPJ spends most of its time defending the rights of journalists who are harassed by authoritarian regimes, said Mahoney. But he stopped short of drawing a parallel between these repressive regimes and the Security Council.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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