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UN's Responsible Investment Dodges Rights, Dervis Guns for
DSG Slot and Takes Tax Break on Dinner: Charity Begins at
Home?
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 16 -- Only at the UN, it
seems, could a discussion of "socially responsible investing in
Africa" take place with nary a mention of controversies surrounding
investing in companies doing business in such countries as Zimbabwe, or
Equatorial Guinea, or post-coup Mauritania. On Tuesday, fully seven
speakers
extolled the virtues of "SRI" in Africa, occupying 25 minutes of what
was supposed to be a 30 minute press conference. Nevertheless, Inner
City Press
managed to ask the speakers what definition of SRI they were using, and
how it
relates for example to a range of divestment campaigns in the U.S. and
elsewhere. Video here,
from Minute 25:10.
Eventually,
only because he was reminded, the moderator of the event, from Africa
Investor,
answered only obliquely, that the definition of SRI being used is "in
line
with that of the UN Principles of Responsible Investment," and the
NEPAD
has a "peer review mechanism." Video here,
from Minute 31:18.
Those
bureaucratic buzzwords don't cut it. If the goal of the conference,
held in a
closed meeting in the UN's basement on Tuesday, is to increase volumes
of
investment in Africa without regard to human rights, fine. Just don't
call it socially responsible investment...
UNDP's Dervis in South Africa: maybe to
invest, but not to pay taxes
How this relates to social
responsibility
remains to be seen -- Kemal Dervis, head of the UN Development Program,
dined
on September 15 at a trendy Japanese restaurant on Manhattan's Irving
Place,
Choshi, according to an Inner City Press correspondent. He and his
companion
ordered Soba beer and sake; Dervis had beef and scallions. At the end
of the
meal -- it is Ramadan -- Dervis pulled out a tax exempt card to escape
from
eight percent of the bill. This on a day when New York's economy
teetered from
the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy to a stock market fall. Economic
development
begins at home?
For the
record, two weeks ago Inner City Press asked UNDP for simple factual
information about Mr. Dervis' compensions, none of which has been
received. Nor
has requested information about fees UNDP receives in Kosovo, to
administer
prisons and military barracks, and to "top-off" government officials'
salaries.
And finally, Inner City Press
sources peg Deputy Secretary General Asha Rose Migiro are leaving in
February 2009 when her two years are up -- and Kemal Dervis gunning for
the DSG slot, as previous UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown got it.
That's what there's saying -- and as noted, UNDP is not answering, not
for two weeks. Things seem to be going backwards again
with UNDP. So a promotion should be out of the question -- but this is
the UN....
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
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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