International Reporting

On Friday, March 31, United Nations Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General Farhan Haq expressed disappointment in Israel’s decision to build a new settlement in Palestinian territory. This will be the first new settlement in the West Bank for 20 years.

This decision by Israel is considered illegal under international law. The settlement will be built in an area known as “Emek Shilo,” and was promised by the Israeli prime minister in February. This decision has drawn harsh criticism from not only the UN, but from Palestinian leaders as well.

Since the election of President Donald Trump, Israel has approved the construction of many new homes, although they have been additions to existing settlements. This will be the first new settlement in Palestinian territory by Israel since the election.

If I was reporting on this story, I would include the comment from the secretary-general expressing disappointment because it is important for this story to include the UN’s reaction to the situation. However, considering how stealthily Haq was dodging any questions relating to the announcement, there aren’t many direct quotes that could be included in a story.

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2017/03/31/un-chief-alarmed-by-israels-approval-of-new-settlement/
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/israel-blasted-approving-bank-settlement-170330205451007.html

While famine looms in Somalia, malnutrition and disease are rising sharply among Somali children, according to UNICEF. Children are suffering from health issues such as severe malnutrition and cholera.

“More than 35,400 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition were treated with life-saving therapeutic food at hundreds of nutrition centers across Somalia in January and February,” said Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General. Those numbers are reported to be a 58 percent increase over the same period of time in 2016.

“Children are dying from malnutrition, hunger, thirst and disease. During the 2011 famine, around 130,000 young children died, about half of them before famine was declared. We are working with partners around the clock to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” said Leila Pakkala, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.

According to Christophe Boulierac, another spokesman of the United Nation, the Somali children who are affected by these intestinal diseases are only in their early childhood. The climate of Somalia could be a major reason why so many young children are suffering from malnutrition and diseases. Somalia has been suffering from the worst drought the country has experienced in 20 years, which has caused those who live there to drink non-potable water. This has resulted in the outbreak of cholera and other serious infectious diseases.

“Over 3,000 people a day are being forced to abandon their homes in search of water and food. This is the highest displacement we’ve witnessed since the 2011 famine, and it’s spiraling higher each day,” says NRC’s Country Director in Somalia, Victor Moses. “The indicators are lining up dangerously with what we saw in the lead up to the 2011 famine.”

In order to combat the famine that has taken over Somalia, UNICEF and its partners are implementing a massive scale up plan. The organization is working to extend the reach of both facility-based and mobile nutrition, water, sanitation and health services. They also have teams in the hardest hit areas who are working with local authorities, partners and communities to treat and prevent malnutrition, acute watery diarrhea (AWD) and cholera. UNICEF Somalia has raised its 2017 funding requirement from $66 million to $147 million.

American and Swedish experts for the United Nations, Michael Sharp and Zaida Catalan, were killed in the Congo on March 12th along with their interpreter Betu Tshintela. “The United Nations frequently engages experts under individual contracts to work on short-term projects either as a consultant or an individual contractor”according to the United Nations. These experts were looking into an alleged human rights violation by the Congolese army and militia group according to the AP. They were investigating alleged mass graves.

On Friday March 31st at a noon briefing at the United Nations by Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, a reporter pressed this topic. “There’s an AP story datelined “Beni” about the Democratic Republic of the Congo that says that a third person, the interpreter, Betu Tshintela, was found with the two panel of expert members. Maybe this story was erroneous, but I just wanted to know from you, what’s the UN’s understanding of Mr. Betu Tshintela’s status?” the reporter asked. The story that he is referring to by the AP states that, “it is possible to identify the bodies as the two U.N. experts and their interpreter as being found near the Moyo River.”

Haq’s response to the reporter’s question served little insight. Haq said that ultimately it is not the United Nations place to confirm the report, but for the Congolese authorities who are investigating. The reporter asked a follow up question after Haq’s brief response asking if the United Nations had actually been to the site and who found the bodies. Haq said that the bodies were found by the Congolese and MONUSCO members, and that the reporter would need to ask the Congolese authorities.

Haq’s response to this question in particular felt curtailed and left the reporter visibly upset. He was shaking his head back and forth as he attempted to ask multiple follow up questions. The response from Haq left me feeling like the United Nations is sweeping these deaths under the rug and not protecting their own workers or even investigating their deaths.

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2017-03-28-AF-Congo-Bodies/id-3a607bc1ece84873ba490a75d45c49e8

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/141fe0ed2c9f4423b88cdc9920387bf4/sweden-un-congo-must-investigate-deaths-swede-american

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c4f9b5e7d3374e978820e97764b616c5/congolese-militia-decapitates-more-40-police-officials

 

Recent conflicts with providing aid to those in need in Yemen

Brandon Alexander

The recent conflicts and war in between government and rebel forces in Yemen marks even more disastrous situations for the civilians caught in the crossfire. Specifically, civilians in Yemen are unable to receive much needed medical and resource-based aid. Since March 2015, there have been well over 7,000 reported deaths and approximately 40,000 injuries following conflict between the government and the Houthi rebellion forces.

According to BBC last Tuesday, a large percentage of the death and injury count comes largely from air strikes by a “…Saudi-led multinational coalition that backs the president,” (BBC). Many of the areas airstrikes and fighting have occurred at or near medical centers and have either completely destroyed or rendered the buildings dangerous and non-functional. According to the World Health Organization; “Only 45% of current health facilities are fully functional and accessible, 38% are partially functional, and 17% are completely non-functional.” In conjunction with the medical centers, issues circulating around Yemen’s Hodeidah port in the city of Al Hudaydah present even more hardships in the distribution of resources and aid to those in need.

In a Reuters article yesterday, March 31^st, the Hodeidah port was reported as being Yemen’s largest port that received “more than 70% of humanitarian aid and food imports”. However, due to the present of armed Houthi forces in the area, it’s become increasingly difficult to distribute the aid and materials to civilians. In the UN Press Briefing on Friday, March 31^st, Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq responded to a question regarding the progress of the access of food and aid. He stated: “We want civilians to be able to receive humanitarian assistance as efficiently and effectively as possible. One of the things we’re strongly urging is that all ports should remain open to receive commercial and humanitarian inputs into Yemen.”

This harkens back to a March 20^th Newsweek op-ed by Yemen’s ambassador to the US, Ahmed Awad Binmubarak. There, Ambassador Binmubarak  stated: “Our government recognizes the significance of Hodeidah’s port for aid delivery and therefore rooting out the Houthis will eliminate their destructive meddling in aid distribution.” Whether or not the UN plans to engage the Houthi forces at the Hodeidah port is yet to be seen, though it seems unlikely as UN Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed stated at a panel on November 7^th, 2016 that the UN would advocate that “no military operations should be undertaken in Hodeidah,” (Reuters).

Announcements

Draft of story #2 due next Wednesday, April 5.

Final draft of story #2 due April 19 (the first day back from break), along with your pitches for your final project.

Final project assignment: Same general idea as your first two stories: non-medium-specific story within your beat (if written, it should be about 800 words; if photo, somewhere between 12-20 photos with strong, multi-sentence captions; if video, it should be an edited two- to three-minute project; if radio, it should be roughly a three- to four-minute narrated story) except that there should be one additional multimedia element.

This means that, like with your first two stories, there should be at least one photo, but there should also be some kind of audio or video component to go along with it. This isn’t a multimedia class so these additional elements don’t need to be the kind of elaborate or ambitious audio/video pieces that could be a standalone story; they just need to complement your story. It could be a simple 30- or 60-second clip of one of your sources talking, for instance—maybe going into more detail about something you touched on in your story.

Friday UN trip – please confirm!

Yahkiney Lynch
Candice McLeggan
Megan Guard
Amberley Canegitta
Ruonan Zheng
Anna Poslusny
Gabby Tjahyadukarta
Rebecca Simon
Tafannum Rahman
Maria Markowicz
Dylan Diaz
Junior Martinez
Peter Rodriguez

UN assignment

Write a short blog post for the class site by class time on Monday. Pick one of the topics the spokesman decided to weigh in on today and do a bit of research into the backstory. Sum up the situation in two or three brief paragraphs and include links to two or three stories that have been published about it. Tell me, according to your best news judgment, whether the spokesman’s comments were newsworthy enough to quote in a story if you were covering it yourself. Why or why not?

Full texts of briefings can be found here: https://www.un.org/press/en/content/noon-briefings

If you do not come to one of the briefings, your assignment is similar except that instead of a short blog post, I want you to actually write a 400-word breaking news story on one of the topics that is covered in a briefing this week, quoting the spokesman as well as two or three other official or high-profile sources. (Twitter is a good source for this—you can even embed Twitter posts in your story, write it as a sort of timeline where you aggregate posts as the story develops.)

Using Twitter as a journalist: Great for breaking stories and finding sources, although you have to be really careful to do your due diligence. Also these days a great way to raise your profile/brand, especially if you’re a freelancer. And finally, a way to get the news out directly in a different medium, like Rukmini Callimachi. Be careful—because you can definitely expose yourself to criticism!

A recent great example of “international” reporting in NYC: https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-03-17/child-brides-are-little-known-problem-america-today

Park Geun-Hye was South Korea’s first female President whom many people had great hopes for because of that reason. However, last year it was found out she had been taking bribes from big companies like Samsung and letting her best friend, Choi Soon-Il, have high government clerance and use company money that was given to the President to benefit her own benefit.

She was finaly impeached last week by the federal court, and the heir of Samsung was arrested, showing the people that coorporations that make such a big part of the country’s economy are no longer safe from justice as they have been in past scandals.

I wanted to do a kind of timeline that would take the whole scandal and explain it beginning to end. I want it to be for someone who has never heard of it, or has very little knowledge of it. Initially I wanted to gear this towards the youth that might want a connection to their country but find it too hard to follow newspapers and often get lost in the many articles there is of the scandals. However, I think I want to do a simple timeline, written, but with graphics obviously.

My main source who is a well educated man who grew up in Korea and studied in Europe reccently emailed me back telling me he finished his phD so he’ll be my main source for opinions and explanations of what happened and what the attitude of the people has been throughout the scandal. I’m also hoping to talk to a student or someone younger to get that Korean-American view as opposed to a more educaed Korean view.

No, Canada is not another state. Located in the northern region of North of America, the country borders itself with the United States and is home to 35 million inhabitants. English and French are the two dominant languages, particularly in vastly populated urban areas: Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

With recent headlines surrounding an attack on a mosque and the recent arrest of a dual citizen to have been part of the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the country has emerged as a hot topic of sorts when it comes to extradition, emigration, and how the U.S. financial shift will affect the nation.

I’m looking to delve deeper into what makes Canada stand out as a country that provides universal healthcare to its citizens, still has close ties to its British mother, but remains as politically independent as any nation can be.

Ranked 18th on the 2016 list of World Press Freedoms, the country’s journalists enjoy more freedom than that of the United States, which is ranked 41st.

UPDATE ON UN TRIP

New dates: Tuesday the 28th and Friday the 31st. From start to finish the time commitment should be from 11:15 to about 1:15—however, if you need to leave a little early, we can let them know and they’ll have someone walk you out.

We’ll meet at the entrance (46th Street and 1st Avenue) at 11:15. Be ready to go through security at 11:30. BRING YOUR IDs.

The noon briefing will finish around 12:45 and the Q&A section where they take questions from reporters will go for about 30 minutes.

So for next week, we will not have class on Monday (this trip is taking its place) but we WILL have class on Wednesday.

Intro to the United Nations

It was established after WWII to prevent something like that from ever happening again. How successful has the UN been in that mission?

That’s debatable.

Members include nearly every nation in the world: 193 out of 196 (or 195 depending on whether you count Taiwan). When it was founded, they wrote the UN charter (sort of like its constitution) and a universal declaration of human rights.

The United Nations is made up of a number of main bodies:

General Assembly: This is the chief policymaking branch, and it plays a significant role in codification of international law. It’s the deliberative body of the UN, in which all member states have one vote. Issues on which the General Assembly deliberates and makes recommendations include matters of peace and security, budgetary matters, and nearly anything else within the scope of the UN Charter. Major questions require a two-thirds majority, and minor questions are resolved by a simple majority. It meets to go into session every year in the fall.

Security Council: This department is charged with maintaining international peace and security. Its main functions include hearing complaints, recommending peaceful solutions, and working to end conflict in areas where hostilities have already erupted through such means as cease-fire directives and UN peacekeeping forces. It is in charge of sending “peacekeepers,” also known as blue helmets, who are only supposed to use force in self-defense and who have been known to cause some problems of their own.

The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, also known as the Permanent Five, Big Five, or P5, include the following five governments: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The members represent the five great powers considered the victors of World War II. They’re the only ones with veto power, which ruffles some feathers.

Economic and Social Council: This body discusses international economic and social issues, identifies issues hindering the standard of living in various regions of the world, and makes policy recommendations to alleviate those issues.

International Court of Justice: Located in The Hague, the ICJ is the judicial body of the UN. It includes 15 elected judges and settles cases according to International Law.

Secretariat: This body is the administrative branch of the UN and is charged with administering the policies and programs of the other bodies. The Secretary General is the top official in the Secretariat. The current secretary-general is António Guterres, a Portuguese diplomat who was previously the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015.

Aside from the main bodies, the UN has 15 specialized agencies. These are autonomous organizations working with the UN and each other and governments through the Economic and Social Council as well as at the inter-secretariat level.

These agencies include:

UNHCR

UNICEF

IMF

WHO

The World Bank

UNESCO

The rest can be found here.

Covering the UN as a journalist

As an international journalist, it’s good to be familiar with how the UN works for a number of reasons. Its affiliated agencies are often extremely helpful for journalists, especially freelancers, but you have to be very careful about how accepting assistance from these agencies could affect your objectivity as a journalist.

Aside from that, the UN itself can be a bountiful source of stories, and it’s good to examine it with a critical eye to hold it to account. No matter how noble its mission, it is a massive bureaucratic entity run by fallible people. It’s prone to corruption and is known for fostering a culture of impunity as well as mismanaging funds. (The UN has a LOT of money—member states pay dues—and wherever large amounts of money can be found, you can always find people being tempted to do bad things. Good rule of thumb for any humanitarian crisis situation: follow the money.)

I Love the U.N., But It Is Failing

“Six years ago, I became an assistant secretary general, posted to the headquarters in New York. I was no stranger to red tape, but I was unprepared for the blur of Orwellian admonitions and Carrollian logic that govern the place. If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again.”

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals for the year 2015 that were established by the United Nations in 2000. All 189 United Nations member states at that time, and at least 22 international organizations, committed to help achieve the following Millennium Development Goals by 2015:

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. To achieve universal primary education
3. To promote gender equality and empower women
4. To reduce child mortality
5. To improve maternal health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. To ensure environmental sustainability
8. To develop a global partnership for development

The MDGs have since been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals. This sort of thing can provide excellent news pegs.

IRIN

The UN used to have its own news agency, IRIN, but in 2015 IRIN split off to become its own nonprofit entity devoted to covering humanitarian news: http://www.irinnews.org/

NGOs

Not to be confused with UN agencies, there are also a number of high-profile nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) out there doing similar kinds of work with similar aims, but they’re not affiliated with the UN. These also merit scrutiny. Aid business is good business.

A few of the most well-known of these include:

Oxfam

MSF

World Vision

Partners in Health

Save the Children

The Red Cross

The Central Asia Institute

 

           The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States has left a sizable amount of the population feeling concerned about what the next four to eight years would have in store for them. One such group is the Muslim American community, which faced ever increasing stigmatization in the years after the September 11th attacks. Both the campaign and subsequent election of Trump have increased incidents of bias against Muslims. But the apex of this occurred shortly after he took office.

 

           In a controversial move, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769 into law. The order reduced the number of refugees that were allowed into the United States, suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for four months, and indefinitely barred entry for Syrian refugees. But the area of the order that attracted the most attention was a complete ban on immigration from countries that Homeland Security deemed as a threat to U.S. safety. In addition to Syria, these countries are identified as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

 

         Enforcement of the new law began almost immediately by border officials. Reports soon came in about people from the aforementioned countries were barred from flights to the U.S, regardless of whether or not they had valid visas, to Muslim travellers that were just arriving to the U.S., only find themselves detained in the airport immediately after stepping off. In response, several states took the order to court and many of them blocked it. But it paled compared to the protests that followed in cities across the country.

 

         In various international airports across the country, including New York’s JFK Airport, lengthy protests were staged, calling for both an immediate repeal of the band and the release of detained passengers. But after protesting at the airports, some decided to take it even further and show New Yorkers what life could be like without Muslims.

 

          On February 1st, delis and bodegas across the city, many of which are owned by Yemeni immigrants, closed down for eight hours in protest for the executive order. During the shutdown, a massive rally was held in front of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall for the rest of the evening. According to organizer Debbie Almontaser, a thousand businesses were involved in the shut down, with several other restaurants and stores participating out of support. “They are part of the American fabric through the service they offer day in and day out for their communities.” A lot of store owners hung signs on their doors urging their regular customers to join them at the rally and show support for the Muslim community. Others added more personal signs to their doors. One such bodega had a sign that simply said, “Closed. My family is detained at JFK” At Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, thousands of Yemeni-Americans gathered to voice their concerns about the travel ban. As one bodega owner explained, “This order goes against everything we came here for and everything America stands for.” The protest has also gained support from figures like Mayor DeBlasio and Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams. By the end of the event, the Muslim community staged one of the most successful anti-Trump rallies after the inauguration. “This is the first time that the Yemeni-American community has come out in such numbers on an issue that has affected them.”, as Almontaser explains.

        One such bodega that participated was the J.K. Deli And Grocery in Flushing, Queens. The store’s owner, Ali Mazumder, moved the U.S. in 1987 and has been operating the deli since the early 90s. “While thankfully nobody that I know was detained at JFK, I still felt that what Trump was doing wasn’t right and that he needed to get a loud and clear enough message from Muslims that he was doing more harm than good.”

        While he was grateful by how customers were understanding towards him participating in the shutdown, Mazumder wishes that it didn’t have to come to a boycott. After spending years in the country and gradually establishing himself amongst the neighborhood with the store, Mazumder is disheartened by how quickly Trump managed to raise anti-Muslim sentiments both during the campaign and after his landslide victory. “Before Trump ever thought about running for any sort of public office, let alone president, I never once felt unwanted or scared because my background. After the election, reading stories about Muslims being profiled by strangers made me become more precautious whenever I’m not home. You never know when you might run into one of these crazy people.”
      For now though, it’s business as usual in the city. Not just at J.K. Deli, but at the thousand other bodegas that voiced their opposition to Trump and his new immigration laws.