During the daily press briefing on Tuesday, in response to a media question, the spokesperson for the Secretary-General said the Martin Nesirky said he does not think the UNSG has seen the film but he has been briefed on the film.
On the contrary to what the Channel 4 film showed, the UN Chief has visited more than one refugee camp and had talked to the internally displaced people in the camps during his visit to Northern Sri Lanka in 2009, the spokesperson said.
"'..The Secretary-General did much more than a whistle-stop tour to one refugee camp, and that he most certainly did speak to refugees in camps," Nesirky commented.
"This is something that is not correctly portrayed in that film," he noted.
When asked about UN follow-up on the report of the Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka, the Spokesperson said that response is being coordinated at the Secretariat.
"The process of coordinating between different parts of the UN system to ensure that the kind of internal look at how events unfolded and what lessons can be learnt from that, that's being coordinated between different agencies and different parts of the Secretariat at the moment," Nesirky told the media.
He reiterated that any follow-up investigation would need either cooperation from the Sri Lankan Government or a mandate from an intergovernmental body.
The UNSG is already implementing the recommendations that deal with the internal workings of the UN at the time with safeguarding the material that was gathered during the course of the Panel of Experts' work, Nesirky said.
According to the spokesperson the Secretary-General is working to ensure that there will be regular follow-up to keep an eye on the process that is under way through a national mechanism in Sri Lanka.
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