As Scandals Multiply, UN Development Program's Oversight Board of Sleeps Through Speeches, as Senate Hearing Looms

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

UNITED NATIONS, January 21 -- Three days before a rare U.S. Senate hearing into irregularities with the UN Development Program, the Executive Board of UNDP gathered in Conference Room 3 in the UN's basement to hear a one-hour speech from Administrator Kemal Dervis. Unlike at a January 17 press conference, where reporters' questions to Dervis ranged from UNDP's improper contracting with Corimec, a firm barred as a UN vendor due to bribery, to impermissible housing subsidies of $7000 paid by the Dutch government to its former Labor Party official Eveline Herfkens, while UNDP paid her $225,000 a year for part-time work for the Millennium Development Goals for the poor, in Monday's speech Dervis did not mention any of these problems, nor the upcoming Senate hearing. He spoke of macro-economics and climate change -- always the last refuge of an embattled Administrator, one wag opined. He did not defend the omission of human rights from UNDP's strategic plan, which caused Sweden to cut $10 million from UNDP's budget, nor the even less-noticed omission of "civic engagement."

   While in the member states' speeches that followed, UNDP's late-provision of information and waiving of competitive bidding rules were raised, Dervis did not even mention these issues in his purported rebuttal or response to the speeches. Inner City Press sought, after the morning session, to ask a question of the head of UNDP's Bureau of Management, Akiko Yuge, who had sat the whole session next to Messrs. Dervis and Ad Melkert. Ms. Yuge rather than saying "no comment," as Dervis once did, rather tried to literally run from the question, up to the second floor, then to pretend to use her cell phone so as to ignore simple questions. This picture of senior official non-accountability at UNDP is one reason for the upcoming January 24 hearing in the U.S. Senate.

UNDP's Dervis: no mention of scandal in one-hour long speech

            Despite the expose last week of UNDP's refusal to provide documents to two funders, the UK and Belgium, of a botched procurement of medical equipment in Burundi, the speech by UK Permanent Representative John Sawers did not mention this issue, but rather effusively praised UNDP. The UK Mission to the UN was asked last week to explain if they ever got the initially withheld information, but reportedly their response was to call UNDP and ask how the underlying letter got leaked to the press, rather than to explore the irregularities in procurement and information-provision, and the hiring of the Belgian mission's development counselor by UNDP's sister agency, the UN Office of Project Services. Click here for more on that story.

  Just as last year there was no discussion of the UNDP Resident Representative thrown out of the Gambia for publicly disagreeing that AIDS can be cured by the laying on of hands, Monday there was no mention of major UNDP development in 2007, the expulsion of Resident Coordinator Charles Petrie from Myanmar. Petrie is said to be in France writing up his Burmese days, in preparation of a re-focus on Africa, which was another of the un-responded to requests Monday from the floor.

            The first day of the UNDP Executive Board meeting ended with a reception in the UN's Delegates' Dining Room, attended by Dervis and Melkert, Controller Darshak Shah, and head of UNDP Asia, David Lockwood, who will be attending Thursday's Senate hearing. We'll have more on this -- watch this site.

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These reports are 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

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

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