UNDP's Top Official for Africa Refuses Any Financial Disclosure, As Burundi Cover-Up Is Dodged

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

UNITED NATIONS, February 16 -- The UN Development Program, which preaches transparency to developing countries, has a Director for Africa who has rebuffed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's request to make public financial disclosure. Gilbert Houngbo, who oversees 1500 UNDP staff members and 43 sub-Saharan African counties, has written on his form filed with the UN Ethics Office that "I have chosen to maintain the confidentiality of the information disclosed by me." Click here to view.

            The stated purpose of the UN's financial disclosure program is to "demonstrate that UN staff members understand the importance of the general public and UN Member States being assured that, in the discharge of their official duties and responsibilities, staff members will not be influenced by any consideration associated with his/her private interests." It would seem that Mr. Hougbo disputes the importance of provide any such assurance to the public or even to Member States and funders.

            Controversies have surrounded UNDP's Africa operations in recent months, from Kenya to Sierra Leone to Zimbabwe. On these topics and others, on October 16, 2007, Inner City Press questioned UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis and Mr. Houngbo about UNDP's relative paucity of funding for Africa, which receives significantly less than Latin America. Video here. More recently, last month Inner City Press published leaked documents showing that UNDP in Burundi gave one bidder's information to another, then refused to inform two funders of the underlying medical equipment purchase, the UK and Belgian, of the specifics of what UNDP after the report acknowledged as the "non-transparent procurement process."  Click here for Inner City Press' January 17 story, which detailed how UNDP's affiliate the UN Office of Project Services, headed by another non-filer Jan Mattsson, quickly offered a senior post to Geert Vansintjan, the Belgian member of the joint UNDP / UNOPS Executive Board who had demanded information. UNDP on February 12 uploaded its own online spin, that

"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."

            Even assuming that were true -- in fact, the bidder whose information was improperly shown to another filed a protest -- UNDP has not even purported to address the obvious conflict of interest of its affiliate UNOPS hiring the Executive Board member who was asking questions about UNDP. Click here for the Jan. 17 Inner City Press story, which also noted that a request had been made for the UK's comment on demonstrably not getting the information. On February 15, a UK diplomat told Inner City Press that his government is not interested in speaking publicly about the "non-transparent procurement process" in Burundi, although it involved UK money. Asked what UK minister Mark Malloch Brown, previously the head of UNDP (when Gilbert Houngbo was his chief of staff), was doing in UN Headquarters, he listed three initiatives, including disarmament, Darfur and the millennium development goals.

UNDP's Gilbert Houngbo at right, clutching files, financial disclosure not shown

            While Kenya was not listed, that is another locus of UNDP controversy. Despite spending funds in the recent disputed election, including on monitoring and "improving" the media, UNDP afterwards downplayed any role in the election's problems, and even claimed the World Bank was misquoting UNDP officials as saying behind closed doors that Mwai Kibaki won and should continue to be supported. In Kenya itself, which Malloch Brown visited, the UK like UNDP is notably closer even post-election with Kibaki than other donors like Canada and Australia. UNDP's near-slavish praise of and provision of irregular services to governments in power, whether North Korea's Kim Jong-il or, as recently noted by the UN's own public information office in Freetown, Sierra Leone's Ernest Koroma. And still, UNDP's top official for Africa refuses to make any public financial disclosure.

   UNDP's retaliation against whistleblowers has extended to Africa, where after protesting the no-bid diversion of funds for the environment in Africa to Canadian and European-based firms, Mathieu Koumoin was fired and has since twice been rebuffed by the UN Ethics office, based on UNDP's argument that it should review its own ethics. Click here for last story on this. Since then, Koumoin has urged the UN's Joint Appeals Board to speed up its review. We'll continue to follow this, JAB case 2007-015, set for April, not March, as this UN Ethics Office letter has it, also adding that "the Ethics Office does not have jurisdiction over staff of UNDP."

         UNDP's senior official for Africa Gilbert Houngbo was quoted by China's Xinhua news service on May 3, 2007 that "reforming the United Nations is not an end by itself." Clearly not, to UNDP. It's easier just to seek to retaliate against those who raise questions. Developing.

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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

  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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