In
Corrupt UN of Guterres UNESCO Vanishing
Governance Enriched as of May 15,
Shamili-gate
By Matthew
Russell Lee &
sources,
Exclusive
UN
GATE, May 10
– UNESCO,
like the whole
UN system
under Antonio
Guterres is
falling apart
in corruption
and fraud.
Inner
City Press has
been reporting
on serious
malfeasance by
the French
Audrey Azoulay
administration
at UNESCO in
Paris, almost
as bad as
Antonio
Guterres'
corruption in
and of the UN
in New York. A
fish rots from
the head.
We
concluded our report of May 1 on UNESCO by
underscoring that despite all the wrongdoings
duly exposed by Inner City Press, little
progress has been made in cleaning up the
Agency, mainly due to the criminal complicity
of the member states. Their political attitude
is in fact a green light given to DG Azoulay
to continue these practices and even intensify
them in the last two years of her tenure. The
member states are therefore entirely
responsible for the collapse of UNESCO, as of the
wider UN under Guterres.
Since the beginning of Azoulay's mandate,
following a totally unexpected election, the
French DG and her team have treated the
organization as if it were her private store
or her family property. The reason
why this continues to happen has a simple and
direct explanation. At UNESCO, the governing
bodies are inaudibly observing, instead of
governing or administering. Anyone who
still wonders why the deterioration has
occurred at such a rapid pace should keep this
in mind.
As a new plenary meeting of the Executive
board begins next Monday, May 15, the pathetic
situation of UNESCO, which reflects the
impotence of the entire UN system, is
recapitulated again below. Of the 58
members of the Executive board, one third will
praise the DG despite the flagrant absence of
major achievements, one third will maintain
total neutrality and will never understand
what is going on at UNESCO, as these
representatives are so out of touch with
reality and will never have the slightest
interest in the organization, and one third
will wonder what needs to be done to repair
and control the damages following the pressure
exerted by the respective capitals to put an
end to the wastage of public money.
The Executive Board has lost it all under the
last two presidencies of the African Agapito
Mba Mokuy and the Serbian Tamara Rastovac
Siamashvili. Both have abdicated governance,
allowing the situation to deteriorate to the
point of making UNESCO unrecognizable. They
have actively contributed to the abandonment
of the institutional prerogatives of the Board
in order to allow DG Azoulay to complete with
impunity the work of dismantling the remaining
effectively working units within the agency.
Every instance of mismanagement has been
exposed by Inner City Press. Every
misappropriation, every unfounded appointment
of parents and mistresses, every element that
could have led to an investigation and
sanctions. But this cannot happen at UNESCO
with such weak governing bodies and
incompetent representatives of member states.
Thus, as a new session of the Executive Board
opens, we will be attentive to the number of
cases exposed that will be raised by member
states challenging the administration. We will
only mention here the last two developments
brought to our knowledge:
1) The case of Shamila
Nair-Bedouelle. In our edition here
we exposed “her blatant incompetence, her lack
of any managerial skills and her total absence
of political connotation”. Since then, several
complaints against her have led to the recent
sanctions imposed by DG Azoulay following an
IOS investigation. Still, the decision to
demote Shamila to D1 and continue to pay her
salary for a year without giving her
permission to come to work is appalling. Will
member states allow a D1 salary to be paid for
not working and staying home until mid-2024?
We will be watching this closely. The
second highly disturbing element is the double
standard applied by the administration against
Shamila Nair-Bedouelle. For similar
misconduct, another high official of the
organization has been simply moved to another
post. The former UNESCO Director for Morocco
and representative for the Maghreb, the
Lebanese Golda el-Khoury, was found fault with
her management and consequently dismissed from
her post of Director of the Rabat UNESCO
office after inappropriate remarks towards the
Moroccan members of her staff. Moroccan
employees lodged an internal complaint,
accusing Golda el-Khoury of having created a
"hostile" working environment.
Shamila was investigated on the basis of the
same allegation but in her case, she lost any
chance to work at UNESCO as a result of a
totally discriminatory decision by DG
Azoulay. More worryingly, the same
allegations of moral harassment and hostile
environment against two other ADGs - for
culture and for social sciences - were simply
buried by the administration. DG Azoulay again
broke the rules and ordered the investigations
stopped, reinforcing the sense of impunity of
the two ADGs and proving once again the
discriminatory decision against Shamila
Nair-Bedouelle. In our exclusive article of
February 13, we highlighted the unacceptable
situation in which Ottone Ramirez in the
culture sector or Gabriela Ramos in the SHS
sector can exercise totalitarian control over
staff, including through intimidation and
harassment that forces staff members to fear
and obey. But in both cases, DG Azoulay did
not give an IOS investigation or sanctions a
chance. Are any member states concerned about
this?
2) In addition, a word about those who hold
the highest governance position on the
Executive board. We learned this week that the
former Chairman of the Executive board,
Agapito Mba Mokuy, successfully negotiated
placing his son at UNESCO in the financial
services of the agency. This goes against all
rules and independence of Member States in
their relations with the Secretariat and
raises serious concerns about the impartiality
of those elected to preside over the good
governance. The same applies to Tamara
Rastovac Siamashvili. We have repeatedly
denounced her for the aborted attempt to
appoint her friend at UNESCO as Secretary of
the Appeals Board. Have the Member States
asked questions about this? Not yet obviously.
Questions about her unacceptable attitude to
please DG Azoulay by hastily closing the list
of speakers at the last session of the Board
just after the Turkish ambassador's
intervention– here
)?
No member state, except Azerbaijan, was
allowed by the Chair of the Board to speak
after the Turkish ambassador. And Tamara is
still there, as the poodle of the DG, plotting
with her to shorten the private session of the
Board that is to take place on May 16. With
Sachin Bhatt, the Secretary of the Board,
several options have been put on the table to
allow Azoulay to choose what to do and escape
embarrassing questions from member states. The
most viable solution now seems to be to
organize a "very crucial mission for the
future of UNESCO" at the last minute that will
force DG Azoulay to leave the room early and
end the debate in the private session. Games,
gambling and betting...
UNESCO is no longer a UN body but a cheap
casino. One European diplomate underlined off
the record: “By playing Azoulay’s dirty games,
Tamara is undermining her job as Chair of the
Board. She is becoming a liability for the
member states and a disgrace for the
organization. Her country, Serbia, risks being
punished for that in November by not getting
the so much expected re-election to the
Board”.
This is where UNESCO stands today, a UN Agency
propitious to the flourishing of corruption,
embezzlement, abuse of power and nepotism. We
will have more on that. Watch this site.
***
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