Nick Wadhams

Truly Amazing

The World Health Organization has done it again.

A couple of days ago, the WHO sent out a news release announcing that polio had been eradicated in Somalia. Many news organizations wrote stories reporting this fact, giving enormous amounts of free publicity to the WHO. One of them happened to be The Associated Press.*

Unfortunately for AP, the global news wire violated an embargo that barred news organizations from reporting the story until 09:30 GMT on March 25. In an broadside sent to everyone on his media distribution list, WHO News Team Leader Dick Thompson brings down the hammer in classic schoolmarm fashion: Though an AP "investigation" later found the embargo violation to be an accident, "accidents have consequences, both to reporters preparing their own stories and to the embargo system which we value."

Then, AP reaps the whirlwind. News Team Leader Dick Thompson again: "The sanction for AP is the same as it has been for others _ a two week suspension from the distribution list."

Smackdown! AP gives the WHO free publicity and mistakenly releases the story early, thereby giving the WHO a little more free publicity, and the WHO goes all Security Council on its ass. Take that, AP, you... you... you giant news organization that just gave us lots of free publicity! See if we let you give us lots of free publicity ever again!

This isn't the first time. Less than a year ago, the WHO did the same thing to the New York Times. Who does the WHO think it is?

The real question here, aside from the idiocy of embargoes, is whether polio has truly been eradicated in Somalia. After all, polio was eradicated in Somalia once before, in 2002, but came back. And, as the AP story notes, there's not really a whole lot of reliable data in Somalia, so no one really knows if polio has been eradicated (again). Which, of course, just makes News Team Leader Dick Thompson look even more silly. With data like that, you might think he'd take his free publicity and run.

*Disclosure: I was an Associated Press reporter for eight years. Two of those years were spent covering the United Nations and its various agencies full-time (and often giving them free publicity). Stuff like this sometimes made me want to feed 440 squirrels through an industrial-sized woodchipper.

U.N. Memo Madness II

Though calm has returned to Nairobi and not a single expatriate has been harmed during Kenya's political crisis, U.N. headquarters remains closed for safety reasons.

"Instructions still remain that only those who feel safe to report to the office should come to work," says the internal memo.

U.N. Memo Madness

Ah, U.N. memos. They are written with an earnestness and purpose that comes off all wrong when read by regular people.

So it is with this internal memo from U.N. Environment Programme Director Achim Steiner. Kenya's crisis has led U.N. headquarters in Nairobi to close for all but essential staff, defined as those necessary to "maintain a minimum operational capacity."

This is not a big deal in the larger scheme of things, and you can't fault the U.N. for wanting to protect its staff. And it should be said that U.N. agencies are hard at work in the field. The World Food Programme and UNHCR are in Eldoret. But it would seem to send the wrong message that the U.N. headquarters shuts down when Kenya plunges into crisis.

Best quote of the memo: "We must be realistic in terms of what the UN can do under these difficult circumstances and it is imperative that we all help by looking out for and after each other."