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Calling Criticism "Unwise," UN Says It's Open to States and Staff, But Not the Public or Press

UNITED NATIONS, May 27 -- With Ban Ki-moon in Myanmar, his outgoing Under Secretary General of Management Alicia Barcena penned a response to the UN Staff Union's May 16 Open Letter, which was critical of Ms. Barcena and her successor, of what it called rule-breaking by senior officials, and by a generalized inattention to inside-the-UN developments by Mr. Ban. The response by Ms. Barcena, which appears to be Ban's response to the letter which was addressed to him (and which Inner City Press, seeking comment, handed to Ban's senior advisor on May 16), calls the Staff Union approach "reprehensible," unfair and, perhaps ominously, "unwise."

 Ms. Barcena begins by reciting the Ban "came into office... intent on strengthening the Organization and making it more efficient, transparent and well-managed. He very much welcomes the scrutiny of Member States, as well as the staff."

            But what about the public and the press?

Ban Ki-moon and UN staff in Myanmar, Ms. Barcena's letter not shown

  As an example of transparency, Ms. Barcena cites the publication of officials' Senior Compacts "on i-Seek," which is an intra-net for UN staff, not the public. When Inner City Press asked Ms. Barcena why these Compacts would not be available to the public, since the performance of officials at the top of UN Peacekeeping and Political Affairs clearly impact the public, she said, maybe later. Now she is leaving, and the Compacts are still kept in-house, just as there is still no UN freedom of information policy, another basic reform she had promised.

            The second example of transparency cited by Ms. Barcena is the "publication of financial disclosures." But many senior officials have only filed a form saying that they opt to not disclose. Supposedly they are being encouraged to make at least basic disclosure so that the public and Member States can know of possible conflicts of interest. But there are no repercussions for those officials who opt to disclosing nothing, or who make disclosures which omit obviously possible conflicts of interst, such as when the UN's outgoing head lawyer Nicolas Michel did not include in his public disclosure that fact that he received over $10,000 a month from the Swiss government, while ostensibly working only for the UN. Large family or not, the payment should have been publicly disclosed, if the UN's public financial disclosures are to have any substance.

   Nothing happened, either to Mr. Michel nor to those he says advised him that public disclosure of this blatant conflict was not necessary. Now, even more than Ms. Barcena, Michel ignores press questions about the activities of the UN Office of Legal Affairs, and Ban's Spokesperson's Office appears unable to get any answers, weeks after they forwarded the press questions to OLA. Is this transparent and well-managed? Likewise, Ms. Barcena has declined to response to numerous press questions about, among other things, the Geneva Staff Union dropping out of what Ms. Barcena calls the only structure for negotiation.

            In fact, the trend in UN disclosures even to Member States is become more rather than less secretive. In the most recent Chief Executives Board meeting on April 28, Ban Ki-moon according to leaked talking points proposed that henceforth Member States only be given copies of audits if they commit to keep them confidential, which has not been the case to date, as to the Secretariat. This constitutes Ban's Secretariat taking on the less-transparent practices of Kemal Dervis' UN Development Program, a UN entity which been allowed to declare autonomy from the UN's Ethics Office and whistleblower protection policy.

            Closer to home, when whistleblowers provided Inner City Press with copies of e-mails for publication showing the head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services writing to Ms. Barcena to be sure to be on the interview panel for a friend of hers, for a job in UN Procurement, and Ms. Barcena writing to her staff to make SURE she was on the panel, nothing happened. Likewise in the case of e-mails showing the acting head of Procurement, Paul Buades, taking thirteenth hour changes to a request for proposals for a big contract in Darfur, suggested by the French government's "mission economique" to the UN. While some day that the irregularities have taken Mr. Buades out of the running to hold on to the top Procurement job -- an Australian is rumored -- from the outside, no repercussions were seen.

            Ban Ki-moon, when Ms. Barcena penned this letter, was emerging from discussions with Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe, praising his flexibility. That's diplomacy, but from this exchange of letters, it appears that more focuses may need to be devoted to the UN itself running more cleanly and transparently -- not only to the staff and Member states, but to the press and most importantly the public. Help was requested, may this be a step in that direction. Watch this site.

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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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