Geography According to the UN Development Programme

Looks like the UN (or, to be more specific, the United Nations Development Programme) are at it once again. According to this link, passed on by friend and commenter Nicole,

“The Lebanese Republic is a small, mostly mountainous country in the Western Asia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east, and Palestine to the south.”

The UNDP purports to be”the UN’s global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life,” and it would seem that some of their colleagues on the ground in Lebanon are advocating a change of their own, taking liberties with regard to content by listing Palestine as its neighbor to the south.

While such text may be the work of local writers with obvious interests, the bottom line is that the UNDP is a UN-affiliated program, and as such, one would expect that content on an official UN website would reflect the official position of the organization (the official position being, of course, that the country bordering Lebanon to the south is Israel), and not local biases on the ground. It is disturbing (though sadly, not terribly surprising), that such content should be displayed, either as the result of oversight or other, more questionable reasons. In any event, such “mistakes” are simply unacceptable.

Let the UNDP know your thoughts on the subject. I have…

UPDATE 1: It seems that the above text about Lebanon is rather similar to the Lebanon entry in Wikipedia. Similar, but not identical, given that Wikipedia mentions Israel as the country to Lebanon’s south. (Thanks again, Nicole!)

UPDATE 2: The response I’ve received from the UNDP is as follows:

“Dear Madam,

Thanks for your message.

We appreciate your interest in our work and thank you for bringing this error to our attention.

We have taken immediate action and I have been assured that corrective measures will be taken soonest.

Best regards,”

Needless to say, I’ll be keeping a close eye on this to see if they follow through.

Update 3: The text in question was fixed as of Thursday evening, Israel time. I’ve written a new post on the subject here.