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UN's Road to Accountability Is Murky and Long But Reporters Are Invited by Management's Kane

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, October 9 -- "Accountability is a state of mind," UN Management chief Angela Kane said Thursday, quoting the representative of a UN member state she left unnamed. The Ban Ki-moon Administration's so-called Accountability proposal was criticized by UN budget advisors as vague and relying on overpriced consultants. In her first press conference since replacing Alicia Barcena, Inner City Press asked Ms. Kane to respond to this and other criticism. "You're absolutely right," said Ms. Kane, " they didn't take a positive view. Not everyone understands what we are trying to achieve."

  But on an eminently simple issue, of filing required personal financial disclosure and Ban's call that his senior officials make summaries public, there appears to not yet be any accountability. While in 2006, there were 34 UN staff members who refused to file any financial disclosure, the number rose to 172 in Ban Ki-moon's first year, 2007. Ms. Kane and her colleague from the Office of Human Resources Management were not able to describe any repercussions for not disclosing. Instead they are focusing on why people didn't file, saying that it is difficult for example from the Congo.

  But what about the fully 36 senior officials who explicitly declined to follow Ban Ki-moon's call to make public some basic financial disclosure?  That's voluntary, Ms. Kane said. Yes, but recently Ban Ki-moon bemoaned that he tried to lead by example and no one followed. What is being done to turn that around? It wasn't answered.

Ms. Kane on the Web, 2006, "we want to be more accessible"

   Ms. Kane also glossed over doubts that have arisen about the UN's information technology plans. In two recent closed-door budget sessions, the plan has fallen under fire. In the first, it was unclear whether the plan was under the authority of the Executive Office of the Secretary General or of Ms. Kane's unit. That has apparently been resolved: Chief Information Technology Officer Mr. Choi will report to the Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Kane said on Thursday.  But when Choi was asked, in a closed door meeting this week of the UN's Fifth (Budget) Committee, how much money would be saved, he could not say. Questions were also raised about the UN's plan for a peacekeeping computer center in Valencia, Spain, which Ban Ki-moon announced but which has not yet been approved.

  "We want to be more accessible," Ms. Kane said when asked if she will move forward on Barcena's promise to implement a UN Freedom of Information policy. She told a story about having staffer in the Department of Political Affairs who in response to a request for information had to read and redact information about the Hungarian Revolution -- "there was a suicide," said Ms. Kane, "private information" -- and ended up writing a book on the topic. Only at the UN.

  In terms of when at least any right to UN information might exist, Ms. Kane neither specified when it might kick in nor when become effective: she emphasized that a recent policy in the UK will take five years to phase in. Sounds like the Capital Master Plan. On that, Ms. Kane said "a journalist will always have a space in the Organization," then said that spaces will be smaller and that she's "looking at the figures." Whether this will be consistent with what UN Correspondents are being told by their direct interlocutors is not clear.

  We'll have more on these topics. For now we note that while Ms Kane made a point of saying she finds it "sad" the positions of New York and Geneva UN Staff Unions and that she has spoken several times with the representative of the Geneva Union and also with New York, the Headquarters Staff Union leadership when asked says no, that is not true. The road to accountability is murky, long -- and still uncertain.

Footnote: Catch this reporter on Icelandic television, www.ruv.is

Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on UN, bailout, MDGs.

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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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