{"id":135901,"date":"2019-06-24T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=135901"},"modified":"2019-07-01T11:46:05","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T10:46:05","slug":"free-rohingya-coalition-calls-for-the-resignation-of-un-secretary-general-and-senior-deputies-over-systemic-un-failures-in-myanmar-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/06\/free-rohingya-coalition-calls-for-the-resignation-of-un-secretary-general-and-senior-deputies-over-systemic-un-failures-in-myanmar-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Rohingya Coalition Calls for the Resignation of UN Secretary General and Senior Deputies over Systemic UN Failures in Myanmar Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

19 June 2019 – <\/em>In a 36-page official report (29 May 2019) entitled \u201cA brief and independent inquiry into the involvement of the United nations in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018<\/a>\u201d, former Guatemalan Foreign Minister and UN diplomat Gert Rosenthal, acknowledges the UN\u2019s \u2018systemic failures\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Rosenthal report finally admits to what the several generations of Rohingya survivors of Myanmar\u2019s genocide have always known through their collective and individual experiences: the United Nations has failed them \u2013 not simply since 2011, the report\u2019s cut-off year, but since the first wave of Myanmar\u2019s genocidal destruction in 1978.<\/p>\n

This is not the first-time UN\u2019s very own diplomats and officials have conducted ad hoc assessments of UN\u2019s failures in cases of atrocity crimes (that is, war crimes, genocide, crime against humanity and crimes of aggression).\u00a0\u00a0 In 2012, the then Assistant Secretary General Charles Petrie, who had served as UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar (2003-07) reached a similarly damning conclusion \u2013 that UN failed to effectively and properly discharged its mandate of protection, reconciliation and humanitarian mission in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

While the Coalition welcomes the UN\u2019s own official admission of its failures as the world\u2019s most important global governance system, we are deeply troubled by the fact that the UN remains incapable of heeding the lessons of the past and of self-correcting.<\/p>\n

With deep scepticism, the coalition view the report and the present Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u2019 promise of \u2018implementing all the recommendations\u2019 made by Mr Rosenthal.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, Mr Guterres, then UN High Commissioner for Refugees, was told in a face-to face meeting by Myanmar\u2019s then-President Thein Sein that Myanmar intended to confine Rohingya to segregated camps and requested the UN to facilitate the removal of Rohingya from Myanmar in August 2012. Myanmar\u2019s intent to commit international crimes was thus made clear to the most senior levels of UN, yet no action was taken.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Free Rohingya Coalition<\/p><\/div>\n

Particularly concerning is the fact that the report is still littered with obfuscatory phrases like (moral and analytical) \u2018shades of grey\u2019, \u2018complex layers\u2019, \u2018complexities\u2019, \u2018contradictory priorities\u2019 while not holding any managerial leaders within the UN, starting with the former UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar (2014-17) Renata Lok-Dessallien \u2026., who reportedly suppressed an internal report of the alarming failings of the UN in Myanmar in taking the egregious rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, specifically against the persecuted Rohingya ethnic minority.<\/p>\n

Instead of holding his own senior UN officials accountable for their failures to uphold UN\u2019s stated norms and principles \u2013 emphasized in UN\u2019s Human Rights Upfront policy of 2014, the Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres has rewarded the failed UN manager Lok-Dessallien with the larger UN portfolio as the head of UN in India where she is based now.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the Secretary General\u2019s mandate of Mr Rosenthal as a sole consultant precluded the essential question of UN\u2019s own accountability as the 29 May 2019-dated Myanmar report made it clear: \u201cthe consultant was not asked to evaluate the conduct of entities or individuals in the mode of personal or institutional accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

For any internal assessment report to merely point to the systemic failures while not apportioning the responsibility to those within the UN who have failed Rohingya survivors entirely evades confronting the crucial issue of accountability and impunity regarding the conduct of UN officials.<\/p>\n

The coalition therefore holds that in order for impunity to end within Myanmar and within the international protection system, Secretary General and his managerial deputies should be held accountable for the failures that have thus far emboldened Myanmar\u2019s ongoing genocidal persecution of Rohingya ethnic minority in Rakhine State.<\/p>\n

We therefore demand the resignation of senior UN leaders in whose hands the management of the entire UN System rests. Their leadership and management have failed the thousands of Rohingyas who were mass-slaughtered, maimed, raped or otherwise violently deported from their villages to Bangladesh where they exist in subhuman conditions.<\/p>\n

Yasmin Ullah, the coalition\u2019s research coordinator, based in Canada said, \u201cif it takes a genocide for UN to finally investigate itself and comes up with no solution as to how it is going to take responsibility over the\u00a0 lives of millions of my people who have been displaced, traumatized, and left in a limbo in various countries, then there is something terribly wrong with the UN as an institution. Its core mandate requires that it works to promote and protect human rights of all people, and this report proves that it has failed at the fundamental level. Resignation of senior officials is the least UN can do to hold itself accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media Contacts:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sharifah Shakirah (Malaysia) | +60 11 2307 0641 | sharifah1shakirah@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Yasmin Ullah (Canada) | +1 778 714 4324 | u.m.yasmin8@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Nay San Lwin (Germany) | +49 176 62139138 | nslwin@rohingyablogger.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 freerohingyacoalition.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 June 2019 – The 36-page UN diplomat Gert Rosenthal Report entitled \u201cA brief and independent inquiry into the involvement of the United nations in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018\u201d, finally admits to what the several generations of Rohingya survivors of Myanmar\u2019s genocide have always known: the UN has failed them \u2013 not simply since 2011, the report\u2019s cut-off year, but since the first wave of Myanmar\u2019s genocidal destruction in 1978.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":117011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677,82],"tags":[229,240,526,120,865,267,487,926,866,651,103,107,527,380,292,126,92],"class_list":["post-135901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-updates-on-myanmar-rohingya-genocide","category-united-nations","tag-activism","tag-asia","tag-burma-myanmar","tag-conflict","tag-genocide","tag-geopolitics","tag-human-rights","tag-humanitarianism","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-justice","tag-racism","tag-religion","tag-rohingya","tag-solutions","tag-un","tag-violence","tag-violent-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}