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As UNDP's Selective "For the Record" Omits Alberdi Flap, Scandals Proliferate

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

UNITED NATIONS, April 20 -- Alone among UN agencies, the UN Development Program has spent money and time to create a media "fast reaction team" to seek to ostensibly rebut and discredit reporting and reporters critical of UNDP and its high officials. When the coordinator of its Millennium Campaign Eveline Herfkens was accused of taking $7000 a month from the Dutch government while ostensibly working only for the UN system, UNDP's online "For the Record" leaped to her defense. Once the charges were proved, UNDP simply moved on to attack other media reports, stating for example that

On allegations about procurement irregularities in Burundi...In January 2007, UNDP's office in Burundi submitted a request for procurement of $2.3 million worth of medical supplies from Hospital Services (Burundi). After looking into the matter, the request was rejected by UNDP’s corporate procurement review due to a perceived non-transparent procurement process. Contrary to recent allegations, UNDP’s own internal controls identified the shortcomings and halted the procurement action.

            UNDP's seeming rebuttals are selective: the gist of Inner City Press' reporting about UNDP in Burundi is that UNDP refused to give information about the contracting irregularity to representatives of two donor member states who asked -- and then arranged a job for one of the requesters. Despite a track record of refusing to show documents and audits even to its funders, UNDP has now claimed that it would be willing to show anything on its Intranet to interested reporters. But UNDP has delayed and finally declined in answer basic factual questions from Inner City Press, preferring to wait and respond selectively on its "For the Record" blog-like page. UNDP is clearly proud of the page. But what does it choose to respond to?

            Earlier this month, the Associated Press ran articles severely critical of the award, by UNDP, of the top spot at UNIFEM to a Spanish national, over a more qualified candidate from India, in the shadow of Spain giving $700 million to UNDP.  AP reported that "UNDP spokesman David Morrison refused to answer any questions about the selection process." There was no response from UNDP on its "For the Record" page, which is subheaded, "Official responses to inaccurate press reports." Either UNDP agrees that the post award was determined by money, or is afraid to critique what it considers a media outlet more mainstream not only than Inner City Press, but also than Fox News. So "For the Record" should be more accurately labeled, a response to media that UNDP is not afraid of. Or perhaps it is the range of NGO outrage at the selection process -- most recently, opposition has been expressed by, among others,

-the Fiji Women's Rights Movement (Pacific)

-International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic (USA)

-Popular Education Network of Women from Latin America and the Caribbean

-Women's Action for Change (Pacific)

-Women's Development Collective (South East Asia)

-Women in Development Europe

-Young Women Activists (Global)

            UNDP also claims it shares the information on its Intranet with its "NGO partners." We'll see.

UNDP's Dervis in Bangladesh, where staff confidence is lost

Regarding UNDP's claims that it would happily show information from its intranet to reporters, and offer briefings on subjects needing clarification, not only have Kemal Dervis and Ad Melkert not taken questions in months, here after a week's delay was UNDP's response to two simple factual questions from Inner City Press:

In a message dated 4/2/2008 1:03:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, christina.lonigro [at] undp.org writes:

On your questions regarding compensation for the Algiers bombing, due to the ongoing processing of claims and the Brahimi investigation, I have no information to give you at this time.

On your question at the briefing regarding a Fox News story about an alleged "no bid contract" in Venezuela, I encourage you to look at our response posted on our website.   http://www.undp.org/for-the-record/index.shtml   The process for this contract was competitive and the article contained many mischaracterizations and inaccuracies.

            Underlying the still-disputed Venezuela contract issue, and the Algiers insurance question which the UN Secretariat, unlike UNDP, realized it must answer, there are numerous questions to UNDP this year which the agency has chosen not to answer, after promising responses. Ironically, one of the questions involves which media outlets UNDP provides payments to. Now having patiently waited more than a month for responses to factual questions to UNDP, each will be reported in turn. Among many other things, there's lack of confidence in UNDP management in Bangladesh, plagiarism, and another contract controversy, in Trinidad.

            UNDP also recently reached out to take issue with media reports in Malaysia, in a way that may reflect those its "media monitoring" is going --

"In a related development, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) clarified that UNDP national expert in Sarawak for the peat swamp project, Dr Alexander Sayok, is a staff of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) and not a staff of the UNDP and thus Dr Sayok's comments on the lack of enforcement against wildlife abuse in Sarawak was his personal view.

"When contacted, the UNDP Kuala Lumpur spokesman said that the UNDP did not have an office in Sarawak and thus it could not give any official comments on issues in this state. 'However, the coverage by The Star on this endangered animal's issue has been listed as among the top most important articles from among the news events in more than 100 countries monitored by the UNDP over the past few days,' she said."

            So, not only does UNDP monitor "more than 100 countries" every few days -- its goal in doing do is to rebut its own lower-level employees and contractors comments that are critical of any government. That is, UNDP's media monitoring attacks not only reporting and reporters who question UNDP's actions, but its own employees who question any government's or, even worse, UNDP's actions.  It's more clear all the time: UNDP is an agency out of control.

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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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