Zapatero of Spain, Donor to UNDP, Calls for Transparency, While UNDP Cashes the Checks

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

UNITED NATIONS, September 25 -- In December 2006, Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced that Spain was giving $700 million to the UN Development Program. On September 25, Inner City Press asked President Zapatero about the scandals that have come to envelop UNDP since that time. "All public resources need to be subject to utmost transparency," replied President Zapatero, saying of "systems of control" that Spain is "always prepared to have th[em] be strengthened."  Video here, from Minute 19:48.  But since UNDP appears to dominate or withhold information from even its donors and Executive Board members, it remains to be seen if Spain can bring about the lacking transparency or strengthen UNDP's dubious "systems of control."

            Since Spain retained the power to co-manage the expenditure of the $700 million, it was widely speculated that Spain's philanthropy might not be unrelated to a desire to stem immigration from Africa.

            Since then, UNDP has become besieged by scandals based on a lack of transparency, financial and otherwise, on a pattern of retaliating against whistleblower employees and, perhaps most pertinently, of ordering the diversion of money meant for Africa to contractors based elsewhere: in Europe or North America. While attempting to create the impression that these scandals began and end with North Korea, UNDP has for example refused to substantive respond to claims by Ivorian Mattieu Koumoin that he was retaliated against for resisting UNDP order to divert $8 million of $30 million raised for anti-climate change work in West Africa to companies in France and Canada.

            Rather than respond to these troubling issues, or address in any way the analysis that has UNDP spending $1.3 billion in Latin America versus only $536 million in needier Africa, UNDP Administration Kemal Dervis at his Town Hall meeting with UNDP staff earlier this month said that UNDP

"announced the Committee of Three, which will be led by the former prime minister of Hungary and will investigate DPRK matters not covered by the Board of Auditors.  I hope we can get a report before the end of the year, so we won't have to spend too much time on DPRK anymore."

            This ignores the range of UNDP scandals from West Africa through Turkey, from Zimbabwe to the Philippines, and also in Latin America. There are ever reports of adverse, and still hidden, audits of UNDP's operations in Afghanistan, on which Dervis will be briefing if not taking questions on Wednesday. (The briefing is scheduled from outside of the UN, and at exactly the same time as the UN's noon briefing.)

Zapatero and orchestra; UNDP is out of tune

   Similarly, while Dervis told reporters that he would on September 21 be addressing his refusal to allow the UN Ethics Office to proceed with its inquiry into its prima facie finding of retaliation against a whistleblower, days later nothing has been said. Dervis has reported dined with the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, but it is not clear what if anything came out of that meeting. On Tuesday, Khalilzad sat behind President Bush, whose speech to the General Assembly "call[ed] on member states to work for an institution that adheres to strict ethical standards."

            Does UNDP adhere to such standards? No, it claims exemptions from them. Developing.

  Again, 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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