UN in New York unblocks access to Global Compact Critics

Several sources have confirmed that www.globalcompactcritics.net is now accessible from inside the UN in New York.

On April 21, Matthew Russell Lee from Inner City Press reported that the UN headquarters in New York was blocking access to the Global Compact Critics blog. Attempts to read the blog from inside the UN, by staff or in the library, resulted in a message from the "ICT Security Unit". A few days later, a spokesperson from the UN Global Compact confirmed that the UN was blocking access to the blog and that this had not been done deliberately.

The UN Secretariat's IT division (ITSD) explained that the filtering of websites is outsourced to a company called Secure Computing. According to this company, www.globalcompactcritics.net had been “categorized as a site known for spamming or relaying spam”. The blog was blocked since it would pose “a threat to corporate networks, not for its political stance”.

The explanation of the ITSD and Secure Computing was hardly satisfactory, considering the fact that the blog is free of advertisement banners, pop-ups and AdWords.

Following questions from UN staff and Matthew Lee, the ITSD submitted a support request to Secure Computing asking them “to investigate and re-evaluate the categorization” of the Global Compact Critics blog. A day later, UN staff in New York could access www.globalcompactcritics.net again.

All’s well that ends well.