Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 -- While televised disasters in Myanmar and China lead to calls for the UN action or intervention, within the UN system itself dissention is growing. The refusal of Myanmar's top general Than Shwe to even take a call from Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon was described by UN Staff Union president Stephen Kisambira to Inner City Press on May 14 as reflecting a loss of authority and respect for the entire UN.  Following a meeting the next day, Kisambira on May 16 sent a scathing two-page letter to BAN Ki-moon, which Inner City Press is putting online here.

    The letter complains among other things of abuse of authority and of impunity, and of the failure of BAN's new proposed system of internal justice to hold managers accountable. At Friday's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked BAN's spokesperson to respond to this critique of the Secretariat's proposal, in light of an even more specific complaint filed with the General Assembly's Budget and Legal Committees, available here. The Spokesperson said BAN might not have the letter yet, and in any case it is under discussion and so there will be no comment. Video here.

            The Staff Union's letter also complains that Ban "appointed to the post of Under-Secretary-General, Department of Management not someone with solid managerial credentials and proven managerial competence but an insider with a mediocre performance record."

  Inquiries into the basis of this critique yield stories of complaints against Ms. Kane stretching back to her time in the UN Library, a tale that when sent as the number two official in UNMEE in Ethiopia, the then-number one threatened to resign, and most recently dissatisfaction within the Department of Political Affairs, where she had been Assistant Secretary General. "To get her out of DPA," this source said, anonymous because fearing retaliation, "they promoted her to USG [Under Secretary General] This is how it works at the UN. But why didn't Germany submit someone from outside the UN?"

    While it was widely understood that the USG for Management position was slated for a German -- Joachim Ruecker, the German head of the UN Mission in Kosovo was another candidate -- a pattern has emerged in which developed countries like Germany and Japan submit for "their" senior UN posts people near the ends of their careers, while developing countries, for whom posts are more difficult to get, submit some of their best.

   A senior UN official, with a central role in approving or delaying appointments even down to the D-1 level, when asked about the letter on Friday evening said he had not seen it, but was surprised at the criticism of Ms. Kane. She came up through the ranks, he said. Staff should see it as an inspiration.

Team BAN in the clouds: inspiration not shown

   But the dissatisfaction is not limited to the Staff Union at UN Headquarters in New York. Recently, the UN Staff Union in Geneva joined its New York counterpart in pulling out of the Staff Management Coordination Council, which the current USG for Management had said was the only body she could negotiate with (and has declined to comment on Geneva's drop-out, since). Now, the Geneva Staff Union's Xavier Campos has issued a critique of the Secretariat's justice proposals and lack of responsiveness, which Inner City Press is putting online here.

Another of the Staff Union's complaints concerns insurance. When Inner City Press asked the Spokesperson about these complaints, there was no response. About wider insurance issues, including reported mis-mangement of the UN's Malicious Acts Policy, questions were put in writing to the top two officials of the UN Office of Legal Affairs, without any response. Then the questions were submitted to the Spokesperson's Office, which re-submitted them to the Office of Legal Affairs. Again no answer. Here are (some of) the questions:

"please state whether the UN collected on its Malicious Acts Insurance Policy after the 2003 Baghdad bombing, please state whether the UN has collected on its Malicious Acts Insurance Policy after the 2007 Algiers bombing. Please state the amount of premiums paid by the UN for its Malicious Acts Insurance Policy for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and year-to-date 2008. Please confirm or deny that Lloyds of London is the UN's MAIP insurer, and if applicable for how long it has had this contract and how it was selected. Please state who is responsible and accountable for the decision to take out the UN's Malicious Acts Insurance Policy."

            None of these questions, posed in writing more than 50 hours ago, has been answered.

  The complaints are not limited to those who work for the UN. The member states in the General Assembly, all of whom are members of the GA's Budget Committee, have increasingly criticized the Secretariat's contracting practices and delay in making proposals public. When Inner City Press asked for a response or explanation, none was forthcoming.

  There is no question that the situation in post-cyclone Myanmar cries out for attention. But one has to keep one's own house in order, as a precondition to acting effectively on the world. The issue of the still-unexplained delay of more than a week by the Secretariat in approving New York staff's request to raise money to help those in Myanmar, while those in Vienna were already raising money, is small but symptomatic. It is still not too late, it is hoped, to turn things around.  But it is getting later.

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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

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