UNDP
Report
Excludes
Separatist Data, Praises Myanmar and Iran,
Politicized Dev't
By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
November
4 -- In the run up to today's release by the UN
Development Program of its Human Development Report 2010, questions
arose about data inclued, and not included, in the Report.
A full
three days before the release, Inner City Press asked the lead author
of the report Jeni Klugman if for example the “Cyprus” data
included the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and why Kosovo was
not even listed. She promised to “revert,” but has not.
More
tellingly,
when
asked why the data of Taiwan, a major economy, is not included
even under “Other Countries or Territories,” Ms. Klugman
acknowledged its exclusion from the data sets, but said it was
mentioned in the text. Inner City Press then asked WHY it was the
UNDP had excluded Taiwan's data. “You know the UN better than I
do,” she answered.
The
answer, of
course, is the power of China. In the case week that Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon went to China for four days but pointedly did not
mention human rights or the next Nobel Prize winner in his time with
President Hu, UNDP issues a report excluded the data of Taiwan, which
Beijing considers a “Province of China.”
One
can assume that
UNDP would adopt whatever map of the South China Sea that Beijing
puts out, with or without explanation.
In
“Other
Countries or Territories,” beyond North Korea, Iraq and Somalia,
Lebanon is listed. Inner City Press asked why. Ms. Klugman said that
UNDP is not in charge of the data, that is it collected by the World
Bank, UNESCO, the World Health Organization and others. But who
decided to leave Taiwan out of UNDP's report?
UNDP's Clark and UN Ban, human rights not shown
While
these
exclusions
and lack of clarity are a threshold issue, a finding of
UNDP's report is that some countries significantly moved up in the
development rankings from 2005 to 2010. In the top three is Iran,
something that Ms. Klugman when asked found hard to explain.
She was
more effusive on the second fastest climber, Timor Leste -- it's that
aid became included, she said. Azerbaijan, the fastest riser, is a an
oil story pure and simple. But what about Myanmar, which rose six
places from 2005 to 2010? Watch for Ban Ki-moon to use this
convenient fact. Watch this site.
* * *
UNDP's
Assistant
to
Palestinians
Beat Rohr Lists Ph.D from Diploma Mill, Helen Clark
Through Spokesman Dodges
Questions
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August
26
-- To head UNDP's Program of Assistance to the
Palestinian People, UNDP's
Administrator Helen Clark recently named
Mr. Beat Rohr of Switzerland, listing in her announcement his
qualification that “Beat has.. a Ph.D in Management from the
Pacific Western University in Los Angeles.”
There
is
a
problem:
a simple Internet search shows that Pacific Western University in Los
Angeles is a discredited diploma mill that changed its name to try to
put the scandal behind it.
"Pacific
Western
University,
prior to an ownership change, changing its name and
becoming accredited, was the subject of criticism concerning its
unaccredited nature and quality of its programs. In May 2004 the US Government
Accountability Office presented the results of an eight-month
examination titled "Diploma Mills: Federal
Employees Have Obtained Degrees from Diploma Mills and Other
Unaccredited Schools, Some at Government Expense" to the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs"
Inner
City
Press
on
August 25 asked UNDP spokesman Stephane Dujarric
“please
confirm that this Ph.D [is] from the then- Brentwood-based (and since
re-name, after scandal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Miramar_University;
”please
provide UNDP's and Ms. Clark's comment on the information in the
above link, that the institution was an unaccredited diploma mill;
and
“What
due diligence does UNDP do, and did it do in this case?”
Dujarric
asked
for
a
day to produce an answer, and Inner City Press agreed and held
off publication. But then Dujarric responded to the specific
questions above with this statement:
Subject:
Press
questions
re
Beat Rohr and Pacific Western University, on
deadline, thanks in advance
From: Stephane Dujarric [at]
undp.org
To: Matthew Lee [at] InnerCityPress.com
Date: Thu, Aug
26, 2010
Matthew,
Below is my answer to your question. Please print in full.
“Beat
Rohr’s academic credentials and years of professional service with
UNDP and other organizations including UNHCR and CARE go above and
beyond the requirements for the post of head of UNDP’s Programme
of Assistance to the Palestinian People.”
Before
publishing
this
non-responsive
answer, Inner City Press asked again, adding
“what do you say about the public reports about that university?
What does Beat Rohr say? On what basis did he list this university,
and what weight did UNDP give it?”
If
and when UNDP, the UN,
Ms. Clark or Mr. Rohr provide answers, they will be published.
Helen Clark & UN's Ban, PAPP & Beat Rohr'
discredited Ph.D not shown
For
now, the public record shows that Ms. Clark's Special Representative
to the Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People is listing a
Ph.D from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Miramar_University
Pacific Western University, prior to an ownership
change, changing its name and becoming accredited, was the subject of
criticism concerning its unaccredited nature and quality of its
programs.
In May 2004 the US Government
Accountability Office presented the results of an eight-month
examination titled "Diploma Mills: Federal
Employees Have Obtained Degrees from Diploma Mills and Other
Unaccredited Schools, Some at Government Expense" to the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.[10] According to
the report the investigation was conducted to determine whether the
federal government had paid for, or governmental officials possessed,
degrees from unaccredited schools. After the passage of the Homeland Security Act,
Section
4107
of tile 5, U.S. Code was amended. After this act became
law in 2002, the federal government could pay for the cost of academic
degree training for federal employees only if the college or university
providing that training was accredited by a nationally recognized
accrediting body. As the basis of the report, the GAO searched the
Internet for nontraditional, unaccredited post-secondary schools that
offered degrees that met their search criteria. Pacific Western
University in Los Angeles was one of the unaccredited schools on which
the GAO found online and mentioned in the report. Of these schools
mentioned in the report, California Coast
University and Pacific Western University - California, were
California State Approved institutions[11][12] at the time
this report was presented. Although unaccredited at the time, both of
these Universities have gone on to gain national accreditation[13] since the
report was originally submitted.
Later that year, investigative
reporters from television station KVOA
of Tucson, Arizona, stated that PWU was one of seven schools
identified as diploma mills by the GAO report.[14][15] The station
reported that Pima Community College
in Tucson had reduced the salaries of two faculty members who
previously had been paid at the Ph.D level based on their degrees from
PWU.[14] In a
subsequent clarification of the original article KVOA
reported that one of the two professors contacted the station and
disagreed that PWU was a diploma mill. The professor did not feel
misled by Pacific Western, as the station reported, because the
professor said it was approved by the California Department of
Education to be an educational institution and to award degrees.[15]
Internationally, the media responded similarly to
Pacific Western University and the GAO Report.[10][16][17] It was
reported in the Irish Independent on
9 October 2005 that the Chief Science Advisor to the government of Ireland, Barry McSweeney, had been
found to have advanced his career using a degree obtained from Pacific
Western University.[18][19] The newspaper
report stated that McSweeney had obtained his Ph.D.
in biotechnology and biochemistry from PWU in 1994 after just 12 months
of study. The article went on to say "There is no question that Mr
McSweeney has anything other than a distinguished track record in
business. He has a degree in biochemistry from UCC and a Masters degree
in clinical biochemistry from TCD. He was also in charge of the Marie
Curie Fellowships, an EU-wide programme which has been credited with
helping more than 35,000 scientists develop their careers. Mr McSweeney
has been widely praised for his role in expanding this programme." It
further described PWU as having "no merit or standing in the academic
world" and having been "the subject of numerous official
investigations, state bans and media exposés" during its 28
years of operation.[18] McSweeney was
forced to resign his position as a result although the article stated
that McSweeney had made no attempt to conceal the details of his
education and that he was "proud" of his doctorate and "stood over it"
and that he considered PWU California to be a "respected" and
recognized body." Mr McSweeny's spokesperson went on to add: "Barry
stands over his doctorate.....He has a degree from UCC, significant
life experience, and was the director-general of the Joint Research
Institute. I can't believe you're writing this." [20] In Australia, a lecturer at the University
of Southern Queensland was banned from using the title of "Doctor"
after it was discovered that his Ph.D. had been obtained from Pacific
Western University.
And UNDP? Watch this site.
, 
