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By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UN GATE, April 10 – Now in Paris UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay is misusing the official UNESCO vehicle to avoid the Macron government's movement restrictions. This as Antonio Guterres' personal UN Security guards and thugs run their gym in violation of NYC rules, scoop here. The UN is corrupt and should be defunded.

  For more than two years, Inner City Press has been reporting on the embezzlement schemes proliferating under the French administration of DG Audrey Azoulay. Since the beginning of her mandate, following a totally unanticipated election, the French DG and her team deal with the organization as if it were her private shop or her family property.

   Despite the exposure and criticism by a limited number of member states, the majority of them remain tone-deaf to the legitimate requests to redress this state of affairs. However, the governance vacuum and the passivity of member states allowed DG Azoulay to continue undisturbed her privatization deals. 

  During DG Azoulay's term in office, corruption is spreading around unpunished. Not only have measures not been taken to fight fraud, but even worse, those involved in the corruption schemes are getting generous UNdeserved promotions and cushy jobs, while those exposing the corruption are under constant threat of punishments like in the UN of Antonio Guterres. 

  Following the exposure by Inner City Press of several internal scandals, the administration of the French DG Azoulay got severely shaken. But definitely not enough. Neither the corrupted UN nor the discredited WHO by the current political scandal and the attacks against its Director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, must deflect the attention from the unacceptable situation at UNESCO. The whole UN is corrupted and if Antonio and Tedros are guilt-ridden for systematically misleading member states, the same is valid for Audrey Azoulay at UNESCO.  A fish rots from the head: Guterres.

In reality, the COVID-19 crisis accelerated the processes of Azoulay’s privatizing grasp over the organization. The Executive Board of UNESCO being postponed because of the lockdown in France, DG Azoulay was allowed a free hand for more than a month now.

Following her explicit request, the Assistant DG for Management, Nicholas Jeffreys, approved the use of the official car that is a UNESCO property by DG Azoulay in the lockdown period so that madam can drive the car herself every day, do shopping and take her children out without the risk of getting fined by the French police since the car is with the “CMD” plate granting full diplomatic immunity. 

  This is an unprecedented breach of the rules and a serious misconduct both by DG Azoulay and by the Assistant-DG for Administration Nicholas Jeffreys who enthusiastically put his head on the block in order to please his boss.

It is the first time in the history of the organization to witness a DG driving the UNESCO official car alone, without the driver who is also her security officer. How low can UNESCO still go in its rampant privatization and how numb can member states be to accept it?    

  Another major professional mistake and breach of the rules is the use for private meetings of the UNESCO official residence that is given as function apartment to all Directors general. While DG Azoulay preferred to stay in her comfortable private Parisian flat instead of using the UNESCO residence, she still insisted on preventing the organization from renting it using the pretext that she wants to hold confidential meetings in it. Keeping the residence for her private and family meetings is another breach of the rules for which Azoulay is yet to be held accountable by member states. 

   Furthermore, the UNESCO programs that DG Azoulay decides to implement are reviewed and adapted in order to align with the French priorities. A few weeks ago, the major priority was climate change as promoted by president Macron. Now it’s COVID-19 that is used to communicate more on invented coordination activities than to serve member states.  “Nowadays UNESCO is not anymore about education, science or culture. It is about advancing the narrow interests of France”, said a high official from UNESCO.  “It is an open secret that the Quai d’Orsay and the Elysée are ruling the organization in place of the good-looking marionette”, he added. 

 The Program of the organization adopted by its General conference is ignored and all efforts are directed towards communication and public relations. The recent joint statement by DG Azoulay and the actress Angelina Jolie was a farce by all intergovernmental standards. In time of historical crisis, UNESCO needs a Hollywood star to get his messages across to the public?

“Before that role was given to Nobel Prizes”, underscored our contact.   This is mainly due to the current anti-intellectual conditions in the UN Agency. What else to be expected when the Sector for Sciences of UNESCO is totally moribund. In the current brutal and relentless sanitary and scientific crisis, the only Sector in the UN System dealing with Sciences is located at UNESCO but is utterly deaf dump. Not a single concrete action since the eruption of the pandemic, but an online meeting of ministers organized as a talk shop with no decisions taken at the end whatsoever.

What else can be expected indeed when the head of the Sector Shamila Nair-Bedouelle is engulfed in ignorance and keeps overpowering her colleagues who know how to initiate major initiatives, manage staff and big programs but are not allowed to do so.    

 Some member states are questioning this chaotic discreditable situation of UNESCO. Others, mainly from the European Union, support blindly DG Azoulay in dilapidating for no result their tax-payers money. This political stance is actually immoral as it allows keeping up with reprehensible practices. We will have more on that. Watch this site.

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