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UN's Hiring from Permanent Five Grows, China by 8%, US by 134
Jobs, Japan Slower While Others
Lose
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
December 22 -- The number of staffers employed
by the UN
from the 15 member states on the Security Council continued to rise in
2008,
even as the global financial crisis set in and Ban Ki-moon appeared to
call for
cost-cutting. The just-published List of Staff,
supposedly
confidential but obtained by Inner City Press, compared to the
previous year
shows that the number of U.S. nationals employed by the UN rose 134, of
six
percent, between mid-2007 and mid-2008. France rose by 44 jobs, or
3.8%. The UK
gained 27 posts, 3.6%. Russia rose by 11, or 2.4%.
China had
the sharpest percentage increase of the Council's Permanent Five
member, fully
eight percent, but this constituted only 27 jobs, as China began with
the
fewest of the so-called P-5. UN insiders tied China's eight percent
increase to
Chinese national Sha Zukang taking the reigns at the Department of
Economic and
Social Affairs, which the Group of 77 and China is now trying to
further
expand.
Two non-permanent Security Council members
saw their number of staff members decrease, Indonesia and Belgium,
while
Vietnam and Libya stayed the same, at eight and four posts in both 2007
and
2008, respectively. Italy, on the other hand, rose from 390 to 417
posts,
having more jobs in both periods than much more populous China, and
larger
contributor Japan.
UN's Ban and staff: through often withheld
List of Staff, patterns emerge
Japan, the second-largest contributor to the
UN budget, rose by 3.4% from 237 to 245 positions. Rising faster were
Germany, from
422 to 450, and Canada, from 550 to 598 (8.7%). Australia grew even
more
rapidly, at an eighteen percent clip, from 245 to 289.
Leaders in
the Group of
77 Brazil and Egypt, currently proposing many more jobs for the UN's
Department
of Economic and Society Affairs, themselves had only 135 and 164 posts,
respectively. Incoming Security Council member Turkey declined from 51
posts to
50. Other decliners included Iceland, from 16 to 13, and Greece, from
56 to 52.
The pattern that emerges from the data is
that the UN's employment of nationals of the Security Council's
Permanent Five
members continues to rise, even as posts for some of the Council's
non-permanent members declines. Whether this is because the P-5
actively demand
the jobs, or those who do the UN's hiring see the value of pleasing the
System's most powerful countries, cannot be determined from the data.
On that,
our inquiries continue, as well as analysis of certain countries not
listed in
this first report. Watch this site.
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
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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