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| U.N. now in 'a process of decay,' memo says |
| 2010-07-21 |
| The departing leader of the United Nations agency that battles internal corruption issued a scathing assessment of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's record on accountability, fueling defensive remarks from Ban's spokesman Tuesday. In a confidential memo to Ban obtained by the Associated Press, outgoing Undersecretary-General Inga-Britt Ahlenius accused Ban of systematically undermining her authority and weakening the U.N.'s oversight functions so much that it is becoming irrelevant. Her criticism represents an unusually vociferous though not unprecedented attack on the U.N. chief's leadership and his unfulfilled pledge to restore a U.N. reputation tarnished by financial corruption and sexual abuses by U.N. peacekeepers. "There is no transparency, there is lack of accountability," said Ahlenius in her end-of-assignment report to Ban upon the end of her five-year term as head of the U.N.'s Office of Internal Oversight Services. The office, set up in 1994, is supposed to operate independently and has three main divisions for investigations, audits and inspections. "Rather than supporting the internal oversight, which is the sign of strong leadership and good governance, you have strived to control it, which is to undermine its position," the former Swedish auditor general wrote to Ban. "I regret to say that the Secretariat is now in a process of decay. It is not only falling apart. ... It is drifting into irrelevance." Ahlenius also said Ban and his senior advisers have blocked her efforts to fill key vacant posts within her office, causing "damage to the integrity of a core process" at the U.N. and have taken other steps, such as trying to set up a competing investigations unit, that undermined her tenure. "I am concerned that we are in a process of decline and reduced relevance of the organization," she wrote in the memo, which was first reported by the Washington Post. "This inevitably risks weakening the United Nations' possibilities to fulfill its mandate." Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, said "many pertinent facts were overlooked or misrepresented" in Ahlenius' memo. "This secretary-general, like his recent predecessors, has had to strike a balance between acting as a chief administrative officer of the United Nations on the one hand, and providing truly global leadership on the other," Nambiar wrote in a response. "So he has chosen the third path of his predecessor, encouraging nepotism, corruption, lubricious hypocrisy and a singular focus in creating world-wide taxation to pay for it." |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |
| #9 AAAAAAAWWWWW, no "STARSHIP TROOPERS" SIDE PIC of MICHAEL IRONSIDE teaching on the FAILURES OF DEMOCRACY??? D *** NG IT, "RICO", YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-07-21 20:19 |
| #8 Sec Gen cannot come from a permanent security council member. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2010-07-21 16:01 |
| #7 It would be nice to have an American or allied Secretary General for once. Good luck! List of former UN Sec Gen |
| Posted by: Lumpy Anguting2786 2010-07-21 15:10 |
| #6 Sometimes I think the US is in a similar process of decay, partly due to the Iron Law. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-21 14:22 |
| #5 Then there's the Iron Law at work (from Wikipedia) American science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has proposed a theory he refers to as "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy", which states: "In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely." This robust tendency is purported to operate to the effect that: "...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions." |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-21 14:21 |
| #4 Is this suggesting that the anti-israeli posture is really just an advertising front to garner revenue donations... Chip in anti-America and you've described how AI and HRW stay in business. The problem for the UN is that there's not a large enough world economy to sustain 'donations' large enough to keep it in a manner it thinks it should be accustomed to. Shrinking down to a manageable NGO is not in their plan for empire building. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-07-21 14:01 |
| #3 Good! Decay? It should die, NOW! Get the UN out of the US, and the US out of the UN. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2010-07-21 13:54 |
| #2 Whaddaya mean "in the process"? The U |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-07-21 13:43 |
| #1 Is this suggesting that the anti-israeli posture is really just an advertising front to garner revenue donations in order to fund the graft and corruption of the UN employees which is now so widespread it eats the operational budget to the point the UN can no longer troll for dollars? I guess when an entity can no longer pay off the cambodian boys club it is in trouble. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2010-07-21 13:01 |