Yes, on top of Oil-for-Fraud, Sex-for-Food, the car for Kojo, the $500,000 cash prize for Kofi, the tyrant-packed Human Rights Council, and other ventures of this kind, the UN now has a burgeoning scandal over the UN Development Program’s operations in nuclear-happy North Korea. Scroll down to the “related video” inside this UNDP link to watch Ad Melkert, an official of the UN Development Program, explaining to the press why pouring money without adequate oversight into Pyongyang is just dandy. Excerpt: “The assurance that no money may have gone to nuclear programs we derive from the audits that have been put in place in recent years.”
What’s wrong with that statement:
1) Money is fungible. Even food aid is fungible.
2) Shades of Oil-for-Food, the audits of this UN program have been so secret that when the U.S. government asked to see them, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis first said no. When U.S. diplomat Mark Wallace pressed for access, the UNDP finally let U.S. officials look at the audits and take notes at UNDP headquarters — but wouldn’t give them copies. What they saw was anything but reassuring.
So, would you give money for Melkert and his colleagues at the UNDP? If you’re a U.S. taxpayer, you already do — out of the more than $5.3 billion per year the U.S. currently lavishes on the UN system, hundreds of millions go to the UNDP, which in turn pours millions into North Korea.
This is aid that helps sustain the Pyongyang regime, and has done so for years. It is exactly the kind of UN development that worried me back in 1991, when I made a visit to Pyongyangand came away convinced that giving North Korea a seat at the UN was not going to work out well. (Back then, newly democratic South Korea was of much the same opinion. That was before the U.S., at the behest of Jimmy Carter, and under the leadership of Bill Clinton, opened the aid spigot to Kim in exchange for a nuclear “freeze” on which Pyongyang — who’d'a thought? — in short order began to cheat).
P.S. North Korea is one of 36 countries sitting on the UNDP’s executive board, and according to the correspondence released Friday by the U.S. Mission, the UN is paying more than $35,000 for three North Korean officials to fly business class, roundtrip from Pyongyang to New York, to attend meetings including that of the UNDP board this coming week. After U.S. criticism, UNDP officials have said they will change that policy going forward, and leave it to member states to pay for such travel. OK, that’s a small step in the right direction. But what is North Korea doing on the UNDP board at all?
Digg This
del.icio.us
PJM Home
5 Comments
bourne2y:“what is North Korea doing on the UNDP board at all?”
Because it was their turn.
Fitness for the assignment has nothing to do with such things. Since the 1960’s, UN and its programmes (e.g., UNDP) have increasingly been governed by a kind of moral exhibitionism illustrated by the presumption of strict equality regardless of behavior. It’s not likely that this governing principle will be revised:
“NEW YORK — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was forced to drop a key reform proposal that would have merged the important U.N. departments dealing with political affairs and disarmament because of opposition from a powerful bloc of developing countries, U.N. diplomats said.”
http://www.eyeontheun.org/articles-item.asp?a=4032&id=4677
Jan 20, 2007 - 10:10 am spynverzyon:Rumor has it the UN has adopted a new protocol whereby documents can be made public only after Sandy Berger has had a chance to review them.
Jan 21, 2007 - 1:37 am YankeeHobbit:As I read of this latest scandal, I remembered that you wrote a number of articles for the WSJ back in 2002/3/4 on North Korea: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110002617 and http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110001835. The questions you raised and the points you made then have been revalidated (yet again), although with a different UN agency.
This latest scandal shows our State Department representatives at the US Mission to the United Nations have been worse than derelict in their oversight of the spending of our taxes, despite your warnings 5 years ago. They would surely have taken a much closer interest if it was their own money. In fact Congress also seems to have been incredibly lax in overseeing how State spends our money through an organisation which has been proven to be corrupt to the very top. State have been spending $5.3Bn a year on the UN with no oversight - what percentage have they spent on auditing and accounting for this money? Where are the audit reports and why are they not publicly available?
Ms Rosett you lead the pack on exposing the UN and this latest revelation just shows how right you are (and were back in 2002). How many of the other UN agencies are involved in North Korea, how much are they donating to that evil regime and why has State continued to fund them? Is the GAO involved? Please tell us who is responsible (both at the UN and State Department) so we can call for action against them. Responsible politicians and diplomats need to be held to account by us voters.
Jan 21, 2007 - 4:17 pm merkur:Terrifying. The humanitarian community has been propping up DPRK since at least the mid-1990s - even without the whiff of financial scandal, it’s still a moral scandal.
Jan 22, 2007 - 1:04 pm joan:merkur
Without the UN food support to the people of north korea- there would have been thousands , maybe 100s of thousands of deaths.
It is the classic development dilemma- do you let innocent civilians die in a country in order to put pressure/topple a dictator?
From your response it seems your answer to that is yes.
I would disagree, but that could be my christian background speaking, rather than cool logic.
Jan 24, 2007 - 9:12 pm