How can this be? What the heck is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thinking?! If Gambari was an EPIC FAILURE in Burma, what makes Gen. Ban Ki-moon think he's going to be any different in Darfur!? Darfur is in as much dire need of genuine humanitarian and diplomatic political assistance as Burma. I totally don't get this re-shuffling of INCOMPETENT STAFF? Gambari should have been FIRED! It appears to me that everybody just holds TITLES with no REAL service to speak of... All of you in the upper echelon scratch each others backs and NOTHING gets done to affect REAL CHANGE! All of you in positions of power talk a good talk, there is no question about that. World class bullsh*ters! Do you not feel once ounce of GUILT? or SHAME? Do you not have a CONSCIENCE or a HEART? Because you are certainly NOT doing the job description you so readily accepted? For it is quite obvious that MOST of you thrive on EGO and GREED! I think a deep cleansing is in order here!
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The Irrawaddy
Goodbye, Gambari, and Good Luck
written by Special Editorial
Thursday, December 3, 2009
It's official: Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy to Burma, is leaving the job that he has held since May 2007. According to recent reports, the former Nigerian foreign minister, who has occupied various high-level positions at the world body since serving as his country's permanent representative there in the 1990s, is slated to become the head of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in the conflict-hit Darfur region of Sudan on Jan. 1, 2010.
What will this mean for the people of Burma, who have lived through some of the most tumultuous events of their recent history during Gambari's tenure? Alas, precious little. Gambari—who liked to tell critics who faulted him for a lack of results that his mission was “a process, not an event”—often seemed a hapless bystander whenever anything actually happened in Burma. When the world expressed outraged at the Burmese junta's brutal crackdown on monk-led demonstrations in 2007, and again when it was appalled by the generals' callous response to Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Gambari proved wholly unequal to the task of channeling any of this energy to push for genuine political change.
Last May, when Burma experienced the worst natural disaster in its recorded history, Gambari was forced to step aside and let his boss, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, do the job of pressuring the regime to open the country's doors to international aid. Then, when he finally visited Burma a few months later, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's frustration with his perfunctory “process” came to a head and she refused to meet with him. This was an unprecedented and highly uncharacteristic rebuff from a person who has become virtually the embodiment of the UN's professed values, and probably a sign that Gambari should have been relieved of his duties more than a year ago.
It was at this low point in his role as special envoy, in August 2008, that Burma Campaign UK noted that from the time Gambari assumed his position,
• The number of political prisoners almost doubled from 1,100 to 2,056.
• More than 130,000 people in eastern Burma had been forced from their homes as part of the regime’s ethnic cleansing campaign.
• The peaceful pro-democracy protests of September were brutally suppressed, with protesters fired on and thousands of monks arrested.
• Humanitarian aid was blocked following Cyclone Nargis.
• Political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, had been routinely denied access to doctors and medical treatment.
Now, nearly a year and a half later, the situation is hardly any better. Indeed, if anything, the regime has become even more repressive and disdainful of the international community's concerns, as evidenced by its farcical trial of Suu Kyi earlier this year and its continuing roundup of dissidents ahead of next year's election.
It would, of course, be grossly unfair to lay responsibility for all of this entirely at Gambari's feet. But the obvious shortcomings of his approach should serve as a warning to his successor, who will need to actually achieve something if the UN's efforts to end oppression in Burma are not to lose what little credibility they have left.
The most important lesson to be learned from Gambari's failure is that it doesn't pay to play it safe.
In November 2007, the UN envoy earned some rare praise when he released a statement from Suu Kyi that she had given him during their meeting earlier in the month. Coming soon after Burma's worst political crisis in nearly two decades, the statement was carefully worded to avoid offending the Burmese generals. Nevertheless, the regime latched onto Gambari's supposed breach of diplomatic protocol to accuse the UN of taking sides. When he returned to Burma the following March, he was roundly scolded by the regime's propaganda minister and denied an opportunity to meet with junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
Sadly, this experience appears to have stayed with Gambari, weakening his resolve to broach sensitive issues with the regime. By allowing himself to be cowed, he lost the confidence of the Burmese people, who began to feel that he was merely going through the motions. If, however, he had been prepared to take more flak for the sake of fulfilling his stated mission, he would at least have given them some hope that the UN was taking the country's problems seriously, and might even have stood a chance of making some headway with the generals.
Now that he is leaving Burma, we can only wish him the best of luck with his new posting. The people of Darfur, like the people of Burma, certainly need all the support the international community can give them. But if all he is doing is adding another high-profile assignment to his already impressive resume, perhaps he should consider leaving the job to someone who has the passion to do it properly.
Goodbye, Gambari, and Good Luck
written by Special Editorial
Thursday, December 3, 2009
It's official: Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy to Burma, is leaving the job that he has held since May 2007. According to recent reports, the former Nigerian foreign minister, who has occupied various high-level positions at the world body since serving as his country's permanent representative there in the 1990s, is slated to become the head of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in the conflict-hit Darfur region of Sudan on Jan. 1, 2010.
What will this mean for the people of Burma, who have lived through some of the most tumultuous events of their recent history during Gambari's tenure? Alas, precious little. Gambari—who liked to tell critics who faulted him for a lack of results that his mission was “a process, not an event”—often seemed a hapless bystander whenever anything actually happened in Burma. When the world expressed outraged at the Burmese junta's brutal crackdown on monk-led demonstrations in 2007, and again when it was appalled by the generals' callous response to Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Gambari proved wholly unequal to the task of channeling any of this energy to push for genuine political change.
Last May, when Burma experienced the worst natural disaster in its recorded history, Gambari was forced to step aside and let his boss, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, do the job of pressuring the regime to open the country's doors to international aid. Then, when he finally visited Burma a few months later, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's frustration with his perfunctory “process” came to a head and she refused to meet with him. This was an unprecedented and highly uncharacteristic rebuff from a person who has become virtually the embodiment of the UN's professed values, and probably a sign that Gambari should have been relieved of his duties more than a year ago.
It was at this low point in his role as special envoy, in August 2008, that Burma Campaign UK noted that from the time Gambari assumed his position,
• The number of political prisoners almost doubled from 1,100 to 2,056.
• More than 130,000 people in eastern Burma had been forced from their homes as part of the regime’s ethnic cleansing campaign.
• The peaceful pro-democracy protests of September were brutally suppressed, with protesters fired on and thousands of monks arrested.
• Humanitarian aid was blocked following Cyclone Nargis.
• Political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, had been routinely denied access to doctors and medical treatment.
Now, nearly a year and a half later, the situation is hardly any better. Indeed, if anything, the regime has become even more repressive and disdainful of the international community's concerns, as evidenced by its farcical trial of Suu Kyi earlier this year and its continuing roundup of dissidents ahead of next year's election.
It would, of course, be grossly unfair to lay responsibility for all of this entirely at Gambari's feet. But the obvious shortcomings of his approach should serve as a warning to his successor, who will need to actually achieve something if the UN's efforts to end oppression in Burma are not to lose what little credibility they have left.
The most important lesson to be learned from Gambari's failure is that it doesn't pay to play it safe.
In November 2007, the UN envoy earned some rare praise when he released a statement from Suu Kyi that she had given him during their meeting earlier in the month. Coming soon after Burma's worst political crisis in nearly two decades, the statement was carefully worded to avoid offending the Burmese generals. Nevertheless, the regime latched onto Gambari's supposed breach of diplomatic protocol to accuse the UN of taking sides. When he returned to Burma the following March, he was roundly scolded by the regime's propaganda minister and denied an opportunity to meet with junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
Sadly, this experience appears to have stayed with Gambari, weakening his resolve to broach sensitive issues with the regime. By allowing himself to be cowed, he lost the confidence of the Burmese people, who began to feel that he was merely going through the motions. If, however, he had been prepared to take more flak for the sake of fulfilling his stated mission, he would at least have given them some hope that the UN was taking the country's problems seriously, and might even have stood a chance of making some headway with the generals.
Now that he is leaving Burma, we can only wish him the best of luck with his new posting. The people of Darfur, like the people of Burma, certainly need all the support the international community can give them. But if all he is doing is adding another high-profile assignment to his already impressive resume, perhaps he should consider leaving the job to someone who has the passion to do it properly.
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