Is the noose finally tightening?

UNDP has shown remarkable skill at avoiding scrutiny of its activities over the last decade or so.

Anecdotal evidence of UNDP as corrupt and inept circulated fairly extensively but was never followed up for various reasons. Everybody just knew that they were inept and corrupt, but nobody was allowed to talk about it.

The very few voices of concern more or less shouted into a void of indifference.
Even as calls for reform of the United Nations became more urgent from the beginning of the decade onwards, this concentrated more on the UN Secretariat as well as reform of the outdated structures such as the Security Council.

UNDP continued blissfully with making grandiose promises of all the wonderful things that they were doing and are going to do. Efforts by a very small number of people pointing out that they were not doing any of these things and had no intention of doing any of them invariably fell on deaf ears. Or rather on ears that were concerned somewhere else. Each time it appeared as if attention might shift to UNDP, something else more urgent cropped up. For a while the scandal surrounding Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, dominated the discourse surrounding the unaccountability of International Institutions.

But if UNDP seriously believed that they will remain outside of the limelight indefinitely – it is possible that they may have believed such a thing, considering the extent to which they are stuck within their own little bubble – recent developments demonstrate just how wrong they are.
The small trickle of publicly available information has turned in the last few months into a torrent.

The IO Watch website claims: “Articles and allegations raise problems in various UNDP country offices, many of them going back for years.”

The current issues include North Korea, Burma, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, Russia, Ivory Coast, DRC, Afghanistan, Somalia, Philippines.

It is by no means the entire list. The real crimes are still to be exposed.

At the IO Watch site we are told: “They involve disregard for rules, intrigues, punishment of whistle-blowers, improper staffing, weak audits, selling improper travel documents, and assisting diamond-dealing and other dubious involvements in war-torn or struggling countries. At UNDP headquarters, allegations involve a meaningless transparency policy, poor governance in a compliant UNDP Executive Board, UNDP management refusal to supply audit reports to that board, inadequate internal audit work, manipulation of Internet blogs, belligerent top leadership, stonewalling on major issues, serious financial management control problems, and rejection of established UN policies and an insistence on an independent operational status.”
A survey in 2004 of staff integrity produced surprisingly negative comments on UN leadership and the management culture. Concerns have overwhelmingly come to focus on UNDP.

Perhaps the most central elements of this UNDP situation can be found in serious troubles uncovered in the UNDP office in North Korea in early 2007, which led Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call for a “world-wide audit of all programmes and funds.”

Trouble started when Artjon Shkurtaj, UNDP’s Chief of Operations and Security in North Korea (2004-2006) witnessed a range of UNDP abuses such as the funnelling of hard cash to the rogue regime of Kim Jong Il. He reported the issues to his superiors at UNDP. He was told not to make trouble. Finally Shkurtaj blew the whistle outside UNDP. UNDP then sacked him.

Fortunately, the UN has made provision for such situations. Kofi Annan had set up an Ethics Office, housed in the Secretariat and reporting to the secretary-general. Among other things, the Ethics Office is tasked to protect whistleblowers from retaliation.
So Shkurtaj took his case to the UN Ethics Office protesting that he had been sacked in retaliation for his whistle-blowing.

There, the ethics director, Robert Benson, a Canadian, finally produced a confidential memo addressed to the head of UNDP, Administrator Kemal Dervis, and copied to Ban and a number of others. He saw grounds that “a prima facie case had been established” that UNDP was punishing Shkurtaj for his whistle blowing. Mentioning “independent and corroborative information” for his finding, Benson supported Shkurtaj. UNDP officials denied this, saying that he was on a short-term contract that had simply expired.

By now the promised “world-wide audit of all programmes and funds,” after many delays, had shrunk to become only a single audit of the North Korea office.

On 01 June 2007 UNDP issued a statement regarding the preliminary audit report on UN operations in North Korea saying:
“UNDP will be transmitting a formal management response to the ACABQ shortly. UNDP would welcome a continuation of the audit process, including a visit by the UNBOA to DPRK. UNDP looks forward to the final audit report.”

This audit itself was stonewalled, but did manage to find violations of UNDP regulations. Eventually this was tacitly acknowledged, then swept under the carpet by the UNDP management. In a letter sent to UNDP, Mark Wallace, the US State Department ambassador at the UN for management and reform, wrote that the auditors’ testimony shows it is “impossible” for the agency to verify whether its funds “have actually been used for bona fide development purposes or if the DPRK [North Korea] has converted such funds for its own illicit purposes.”

Paradoxically enough, neither Wallace nor the U.S. government were allowed copies of the audits, which are considered “management tools” by UNDP and not even available to the governments that finance the organization.

It also turns out that UNDP, which has no ethics office of its own, is refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of the UN Secretariat’s Ethics Office, promising instead that they will be making their own arrangements for a “complementary external review” that would cover both its North Korea operations and Shkurtaj’s allegations.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed all of this with UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis, but none of the substance of these discussions is publicly available. Kemal Dervis has also not held a press conference since December 2006. He is simply not available to provide some sort of clarity on what is going on.

On 11 September 2007 the International Herald Tribune reported that:
“UNDP and other specialized UN agencies intend to meet later this month to try to define standards for whistle-blowers, since the entities contend they do not fall under UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's ethics office.”

It is a remarkable feat of arrogance on the side of these agencies to believe that it is up to them to determine, by themselves, under what jurisdiction they want to fall. UNDP did not bring up this point when the Ethics Office was created in 2005. They did not even mention it when they became aware that this office was investigating one of their decisions. It only became an issue when this office made a decision that they did not like.
The IO Watch website suggests that “UNDP is, for most practical purposes, morphing from a development agency into a species of highly privileged rogue state - operating, it seems, outside any jurisdiction.”
Notwithstanding all the talk about jurisdiction, it still remains a fact that the concept of “investigations” within the UN system should also be taken with a pinch of salt.

In an article “The lies from within,” Francis Montil, former Deputy Director of the United Nations' internal investigation agency, OIOS says:
"The culture" is one in which "the hypocrite, the liar, the fraudster, the nepotist and the dilettante is more likely to survive and progress than the average 'thinking' reasonable man or woman".
"The oil-for-food scandal taught them nothing," says Montil, who believes the fraud and corruption in the 2005 tsunami reconstruction period will come back to haunt the UN, which has willfully ignored all the warning signs.
A lot more pressure needs to be applied if a UN agency, especially the so-called principle agency of the system is to be held truly accountable.

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) wrote a letter on 03 October 2007 in this regard to;

Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General
The United Nations
New York, New York

Dear Mr. Secretary General:

As you may be aware, in 2005, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) provided technical assistance to the Office of the Under Secretary for Management at the United Nations in its efforts to improve internal oversight and transparency. When the Secretary-General issued the bulletin entitled “Protection against retaliation for reporting misconduct and for cooperating with duly authorized audits or investigations” (SGB/2005/21) on December 19, 2005, GAP publicly praised the United Nations for applying best practices in whistleblower protection. However, since that time, serious concerns have arisen regarding the effective implementation of the policy.

We were deeply dismayed to learn of the treatment of Artjon Shkurtaj, a whistleblower who was retaliated against by UNDP management after disclosing misconduct in the UN office in North Korea. The Washington Post (“Reprisal Indicated in a U.N. Program, August 21, 2007)” reported that the UN Development Programme refused a request from the UN Ethics Office to submit to an investigation of Mr. Shkurtaj’s disclosures.

Instead, Kemal Dervis, Administrator of UNDP, announced that he would name candidates for an ad hoc panel to investigate the matter, effectively asserting that UNDP will define its own separate ethical standard. At GAP, we are surprised and troubled to learn that UN Programmes apparently can opt out of the whistleblower protection policy and reject Ethics Office findings.

This ad hoc decision-making comes, unfortunately, as no surprise to those who have watched the reform process at the United Nations closely. In their wisdom, the members of the Redesign Panel on the United Nations System of Administration of Justice anticipated the “confusion” that would surround the scope of the rulings of the Ethics Office and, calling its functions “[A]n essential component of the reform of the Organization,” urged the Secretary General to clarify its jurisdiction more than a year ago.

We would appreciate your written clarification of the basis upon which a troubled progamme, such as UNDP, can be allowed to avoid independent scrutiny of the propriety of its conduct.

Mr. Secretary General, we wish to second the appeal of the Redesign Panel; we ask that you respond positively and urgently apply the rulings of the Ethics Office to the UN Funds and Programmes. The “UN Delivering as One” initiative cannot be achieved with each unit applying a different set of ethical standards, nor can “One UN” be implemented at the country level if led by a UNDP that insists on its own institutional autonomy in the face of General Assembly resolutions.

To remove all controversy and place the United Nations firmly on the road to reform, we appeal to you, Mr. Secretary General, to invoke your authority to oblige the United Nations system to abide by a single code of ethics and to address immediately the plight of those staff members who sought to protect the mission of the United Nations and instead exposed themselves to injustice and retaliation at the hands of unscrupulous actors.

We look forward to your response and wish to take this opportunity to assure you of our highest consideration.

Very truly yours,

Beatrice Edwards
International Program Director
Government Accountablity Project

One can only hope that they receive a response.