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UN Budget
Compromise Closes in on 92 Jobs, Arms Trade and Durban II May Trigger
Vote
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
December 23, 7:59 am -- The last-minute
fight
over the UN budget largely concerns development, the number of new
posts
to be funded, with side-votes possible on the Durban II conference and
even the
arms trade treaty.
The initial
proposal to strengthen the UN's so-called development pillar involved
150 new
jobs. Following the spread of the global
financial crisis, richer countries have tried to say that this should
all be
put off. The developing countries of the Group of 77, on the other
hand,
compare the $700 bailout in the U.S. alone with the $25 million
requested for
the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs.
Yesterday
we reported
that rather than 150, the real end-game negotiation contrasts 80 or
90 new posts. Tuesday morning, in the run-up to a plenary meeting
slated for
later in the afternoon, the compromise appears to be 92 posts. The philosophical differences between
developed and developing countries have not been addressed,
participants say.
But Christmas and the holidays are coming.
In one view, the developing countries operate at
cross-purposes. They defend the UN
Development Program when this break-away entity, with its own supposed
ethics
office and whistleblower policies, actually undermines the UN
Secretariat's
Department of Social and Economic Affairs. Development has been
outsourced, in
a way, to UNDP which is not accountable to the UN General Assembly.
General Assembly's d'Escoto ignored by UNDP's Dervis, short end of the
development pillar
No one
apparently can even tell UNDP and its Administrator Kemal Dervis not to
reproduce and try to take over DESA's remaining functions. UNDP is less
and
less responsive, going weeks for example before answering basic
questions from
the press.
But as to
this
year's budget resolutions, sources tell Inner City Press that
recorded
votes are still possible. Last year it was Durban II; this year, add
arms
control. An advance copy of a report of the UN Advisory Committee on
Administrative and Budgetary Questions on the "program budget
implications"
of the arms trade treaty conference proposed for 2009 puts the cost at
$1,225,000. A vote is possible not due to the amount but due to the principle.
Compare the amount to the over $3 million
wasted on 30,000 licenses of Oracle that have gone unused, as uncovered
yesterday by Inner City Press, click here for
that.
As usual at
the UN, a political dispute has its budget echo. Small things are
debated in great detail while, for example, an unaccountable UNDP runs
wild,
and the cause of development suffers. So it goes at the UN.
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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