The continuing ear-infection of Sha Zukang and his two ASG's leave honest staff no other options but to contact available member states and inform them on developments inside DESA and provide them with internal documentation in order to open their eyes and allow them to have a transparent look inside DESA's "high society" and it's "pay for play" modus operandi.
a shocking rumor is going thru the halls of UN-DESA. John Mary Kauzya and Catherine Pelluso have shortlisted the candidates that would allegedly take over the post of Head of Economic Branch - (former Adil Khan).Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, November 28 -- The new head of the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Sha Zukang, spoke for his first time to the UN press corps on Wednesday. He addressed it head-on, saying he has been called "bad-tempered... aggressive, emotional and tough." It is "all true in a way," he said. "I hope you like me. If not, I don't mind." He added, "I am incapable of not saying what I think." Here's hoping.
Inner City Press asked for an update on the Office of Internal Oversight Services investigations of DESA: Guido Bertucci, the Thessaloniki Center for "Public Service Professionalism," and consultants' contracts. Sha Zukang pulled out a piece of paper and read out from it. "My colleague provided this, anticipating some questions from you," he said. "Don't ask further questions, I don't know the details."
In sum, OIOS released its audit of the Thessaloniki Center on August 2, 2007. While Sha Zukang said that DESA has fully implemented Recommendations 3 and 4, and part of the first recommendation, it is significant to consider the one still unacted upon:
"The Department should establish accountability for the inefficient use of consultants, including the irregular sign-off of a consultant's contract indicating that deliverables had been provided when no such deliverables had actually been received."
This is as good a definition of corruption as any. But where is the accountability? Sha Zukang said to wait for the end of the year. One month remains. The OIOS report, A/62/176, also says that "[i]n its response to the draft audit report, the Department did not accept responsibility for the failure of the project. In addition, the Department rejected three of the four recommendations made by OIOS." Sha Zukang pointed out that the "OIOS investigative taskforce" did reach a finding of "no inappropriate conduct" with regard to one consultant, Catherine Elizabeth Gazzoli. Good for her. As to the rest of the investigation, Sha Zukang said it is still pending, with "no available timeline for completion." Typical OIOS.
Sha Zukang at WEF, Thomas Friedman not shown
DESA's Johan Scholvinck answered Inner City Press' question about the report being launched, on the "World Social Situation 2007." Scholvinck said that DESA is an "analytical" body, without much of an "operational" side (which may be a blessing, see above), and that DESA does not try to overlap with the International Labor Organization. Rather, DESA works with the ILO, as well as with the World Bank, on such issues as youth employment.
DESA has an implicit recommendation for the World Food Program, tucked into the report on page 140:
"the World Food Programme (WFP) has been a major driver of food-for-work schemes... those engaged in what is often onerous labor end up burning more calories than are gained."
How or if WFP chief Josette Sheeran Shiner will respond is not yet clear. She has yet to speak to the UN Headquarters press corps.
Wednesday, Sha Zukang recited the litany of issues on which DESA works, and said that since he assumed his post on July 1, he has been trying to focus more on the central mandate, "development for all." He said, twice, "it is a lot of work," adding ""without much outcome or productivity." Inner City Press welcomed him -- such candor is rare at UN Headquarters. Here's hoping.
* * *
Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNetpiece 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.
Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540
| Experience | Education |
| 1984-1987 English Instructor Yonsei/Jilin Universities, Changchun, China | 1985 - Associate (Piano pedagogy) Royal Conservatory of Music, University of Toronto, Canada |
| 1989-1990 Legislative Aide, State Senator William Maravitz's Office, Chicago, USA | 1989 - Master of Science (social policy and planning in developing countries), London School of economics, UK |
Dagfinn Knutsen, Director of Internal Audit sent the report (Audit File# 08-01411 and Assignment Nr# AN2007/540/01) to DESA's USG asking Mr. Zukang to properly evaluate and take into account the risk assessment of DESA and ensure that appropriate risk mitigation measures are in place.
Within the framework of United Nations’ efforts to promote economic and social development, the Programme for Innovation in Public Administration in the Euro-Mediterranean region has been established to assist interested governments in improving their governance and public administration systems and to provide policy makers, experts and citizens in general with relevant regional knowledge and information on governance.
Who implements the Programme?
The Programme is implemented by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, through its Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM), with the support of Formez – Training and Research Centre based in Rome, with branches in Naples (Arco Felice) and Cagliari, Italy. It has been launched in mid 2003.
Who funds the Programme?
The Programme is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Italy through Funds in Trust to UNDESA.
Adriana Alberti, Chief Technical Adviser
Programme on Innovation in Public Administration in the Euro-Mediterranean Region
Governance and Public Administration Branch
Division for Public Administration and Development Management
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
Email: alberti@un.org
Phone: 212-963-2299
Laila Fala, Governance Specialist
Programme on Innovation in Public Administration in the Euro-Mediterranean Region
Governance and Public Administration Branch
Division for Public Administration and Development Management
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
Email: falal@un.org
Phone: 917-367-5012
WHAT'S NEW?Upsss - There is nothing new (Click here)REGIONAL INFORMATION ON GOVERNANCE?Upsss - a blind copy of CIA country profile with UNDP links (Click here)INNOVATORS NETWORKS?Upps - words but there are not networks - the links are bogus and lead you no-where...(Click here)BEST PRACTICES?please don't even go there - is like buying a designer bag in Naples - its so fake and empty and lead to no where.. (click here)PILOT PROJECTS?Uppsss...after 5 years there are not pilot projects....(Click here)
In closing, let me briefly return to the theme of my address to you last year – a stronger UN for a better world. The foundation of all our work is accountability. The UN Secretariat, including myself, is accountable to you, the Member States. And that is why I push so hard, so strongly for UN reform.
We need to change the UN culture. We need to become faster, more flexible and more effective and more modern. In the coming weeks, I will ask you, the Member States, to support my proposals for a new human resources framework. We need to replace our current system of contracts and conditions of service. It is dysfunctional. It is demoralizing. It discourages mobility between UN departments and the field. It promotes stagnation, rather than creativity. It undercuts our most precious resource – the global, dedicated corps of international civil servants that is the backbone of the United Nations.
Accountability? "Ideally the UN, foreshadowing a future world government, ought to be run by a global meritocracy -- rule by the best. In practice, it is the opposite. Any state that can be legally defined as one can join the UN -- it is a club having no rules of probity or morals. … The result is failure and graft. UN officials are not answerable to bodies like Congress or the U.K.'s Parliament, which would be sure to track down, expose and punish gross abuses and manifest failures. No senior UN official has ever gone to jail. It's rare for anyone to be sacked or removed. The top brass resist any kind of investigation, on principle. The oil-for-food inquiry is unique in that it has taken place at all and seems to be garnering results. But will any punishment be meted out? Will any serious reforms be pushed through? Of course not. …"
Paul Johnson, "The UN is for talk, not actions," Forbes (US), March 14, 2005.
Accountability’s importance, then and now “[A free people has] an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the character and conduct of its rulers.”
John Adams, second American president, 1797-1801
“Adams had in mind the ministers of the British crown in the reign of King George III, and presumably he knew that the knowledge in question was interactive, moving mostly in the direction of the man being discovered as a thief but also toward the man afraid of finding out that he’s been robbed.”
Lewis Lapham, “Uncle Sam”, Harpers’ Magazine (US), January 2007, pp. 7-9.
after eight months of a prolonged and secretly held vacancy announcement, shortlisting and selection process (which took 5 months) for replacement of Chief of SEGM Branch of DPADM in DESA, and which process led to the temporary appointment of Jay De Vera's as Chief of SEGMB (only so he could retire at D1 salary) - a confidential source reports that the decision about the replacement of Adil Khan as Chief of SEGMB has been made. His replacement will allegedly be a Mexican - an outsider. Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, January 5 -- As Ban Ki-moon kicked off his third year as Secretary General, reviews Monday by UN staff outside Ban's town hall meeting were less than glowing. "It was like a Soviet event," one well-placed staffer quipped to Inner City Press, "complete with pre-selected questions and answers read out of a book." Another marveled how "it's a new day every day in Ban's UN," constant reinvention with no memory of previous new beginnings not followed up on.
Other Headquarters employees grumbled that other duty stations, from Geneva and Vienna to Nairobi, were given questions first. The head of the New York Staff Union, who had been asked to disclose his question in advance, inquired into the elimination last month of the UN's permanent contracts, and whether this violated the UN Charter. Union officials complained that no real answer was given.
Also from New York, a General Service staff member asked Ban why not extend educational benefits to General Services as well as Professional level staff. Ban answered that the limitation comes from the General Assembly, and that American citizens will not get such stipends unless they move and serve in Geneva or elsewhere. At least there was one seemingly unscripted question. The broader unfairness and waste of talent occasioned by the wall between Professional and General Services staff remains unaddressed.
Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesperson at Monday's noon briefing to respond to this Charter-based argument. The Charter doesn't require or provide for permanent contracts, she responded. The new term is "continuing." But what about whistleblower protection? And what about Article 101 of the the Charter's reference to staff being "permanently assigned"?
Inner City Press spoke with a number of senior UN officials on their way in and out of the town hall meeting. One demanded off the record treatment, when discussing Team Ban's crack down on the Press. Others, however, to their credit made no such request.
Peacekeeping chief Alain Leroy, walking in with his colleague Susana Malcorra, replied about the Lord's Resistance Army that the UN Mission in the Congo must focus in the Kivus, and cannot provide protection to the North. Click here for more on that.
The current Special Advisor on Africa may not long retain that title. "I started with Small Islands," he said, adding that he'd prefer not to be too identified with the Continent. So if Ban in fact complies with the stated wish of the General Assembly, expect a new Africa Advisor.
Controller Warren Sach confirmed that for a time he had been officer in charge of the Department of Management, but not on the day for replying to a report of UN retaliation. The resulting letter to the editor was by Catherine Pollard, "that was December 26," Sach said, "she was in charge." And as the Arab League meeting about Gaza droned on the basement, Ms. Pollard held court in the Delegates' Lounge. Every day is a new day.
Footnote: the Town Hall meeting was closed to the press. Even member states were not, at least as of Monday night, able to access the video. Delegates' link to the UN's intra-net had not been undated so far in 2009.
Is this any way to run the so-called World's Body? We may have more on this.
UNITED NATIONS, -- The number of staffers employed by the UN from the 15 member states on the Security Council continued to rise in 2008, even as the global financial crisis set in and Ban Ki-moon appeared to call for cost-cutting. The just-published List of Staff, supposedly confidential but obtained by Inner City Press, compared to the previous year shows that the number of U.S. nationals employed by the UN rose 134, of six percent, between mid-2007 and mid-2008. France rose by 44 jobs, or 3.8%. The UK gained 27 posts, 3.6%. Russia rose by 11, or 2.4%.
China had the sharpest percentage increase of the Council's Permanent Five member, fully eight percent, but this constituted only 27 jobs, as China began with the fewest of the so-called P-5. UN insiders tied China's eight percent increase to Chinese national Sha Zukang taking the reigns at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which the Group of 77 and China is now trying to further expand.
Two non-permanent Security Council members saw their number of staff members decrease, Indonesia and Belgium, while Vietnam and Libya stayed the same, at eight and four posts in both 2007 and 2008, respectively. Italy, on the other hand, rose from 390 to 417 posts, having more jobs in both periods than much more populous China, and larger contributor Japan.
UN's Ban and staff: through often withheld List of Staff, patterns emerge
Japan, the second-largest contributor to the UN budget, rose by 3.4% from 237 to 245 positions. Rising faster were Germany, from 422 to 450, and Canada, from 550 to 598 (8.7%). Australia grew even more rapidly, at an eighteen percent clip, from 245 to 289.
Leaders in the Group of 77 Brazil and Egypt, currently proposing many more jobs for the UN's Department of Economic and Society Affairs, themselves had only 135 and 164 posts, respectively. Incoming Security Council member Turkey declined from 51 posts to 50. Other decliners included Iceland, from 16 to 13, and Greece, from 56 to 52.
The pattern that emerges from the data is that the UN's employment of nationals of the Security Council's Permanent Five members continues to rise, even as posts for some of the Council's non-permanent members declines. Whether this is because the P-5 actively demand the jobs, or those who do the UN's hiring see the value of pleasing the System's most powerful countries, cannot be determined from the data. On that, our inquiries continue, as well as analysis of certain countries not listed in this first report. Watch this site.
Click here from Inner City Press' December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner City Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on Security Council and Obama and the UN.
by Claudia Rosett at PajamasMedia.Com
Or is he simply a fool, dutifully reciting excerpts from the UN’s Moral Equivalency Manual and Guide to Validating Tyrants and Terrorists of the Middle East. (Seems like they must have one … Maybe Kofi Annan left his dog-eared copy to Ban?)
Or maybe it all amounts to the same thing. Whatever might be going through the Secretary-General’s head as he pops up to opine about Israel and Gaza, he sounds like he’s either pro-Hamas (which, with Iranian backing, is dedicated to destroying Israel) or living on Pluto.
Ban has by now established himself as a knee-jerk subscriber to the UN formulation of “disproportionate force” — the term which is never applied by the UN to Hamas (or Hezbollah) terrorists launching rockets indiscriminately into Israel, or kidnapping Israeli solders, or gunning down and blowing up Israeli civilians. But “disproportionate force” is habitually howled out by the UN when Israel — having negotiated and conceded and warned — finally strikes back, targeting terrorists in its own defense. In practice, this means that terrorists attacking Israel get a ritual and meaningless tut-tut from the UN, usually while UN aid trucks keep rolling in to keep them resupplied. But when Israel attacks terrorists, that warrants emergency Security Council meetings and special press briefings at the highest levels, and repeated, lengthy statements aimed at generating genuine, massive pressure for Israelis to lay down their arms and let the terrorists carry on. Thus Kofi Annan’s histrionics when Israel struck back after Hezbollah, unprovoked, attacked Israel out of Lebanon in 2006.
And so, since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27th, to stop the attacks out of Gaza, Ban has been preaching full-throated Moral Equivalence from the UN pulpit, demanding an “immediate ceasefire,” calling on “all parties” to “fully uphold humanitarian law,” and insisting that all border crossings into Gaza should be flung open “to ensure the continuous provision of humanitarian supplies.” He got worked up enough about it to make a rare appearance in person at the UN noon press briefing this past Monday.
You can toil through some of his recent effusions here, and here; or for a bit of earlier history, here is Ban’s statement of September 19,2007, in which he pronounced himself “very concerned” that the government of Israel had declared the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity,” and called on Israel not to interupt essential services to Gaza. Ban did allude to the reason for Israel’s action — calling for a stop to “the continued indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.” But how did he propose to make that happen: “I call for it to stop immediately.” (Note: Ban did not mention the word “Hamas,” or call upon any specific actor firing the rockets; he called for “it” to stop. And, thousands of rocket and mortar attacks later, Ban might have noticed that “it” didn’t give a damn).
OK, so what could Ban do? As Secretary-General, he enjoys the opportunity to provide statements and advice to the Security Council, and of course he can order up a press conference and find an instant world audience. And though it might be something of a departure from custom, he could try finding the backbone to speak the truth — that the UN member state of Israel is under relentless attack out of Gaza by a terrorist group, Hamas, dedicated to its destruction. That another terrorist group, Hezbollah, which infests Lebanon is also dedicated to “Death to Israel.” That both are backed and provisioned and trained by Iran, where the president, who is overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, has called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Ban could even throw in a few footnotes, about the role of Syria as a cohort and enabler of all this destructive activity and intent, and Saudi wahhabism in all its ruinous manifestations. He might even add a note about a subject which, as a former foreign minister of South Korea, he ought to know very well — the collaboration of Syria and Iran with nuclear-armed, missile vending, totalitarian North Korea.
Ban might also want to mention a name which, as far as I can see on the UN web site, has not passed his lips in any public setting since a September press conference in which he read out a Quartet statement that included a fleeting reference: Gilad Shalit. Actually, it would be fitting for Ban to devote an entire press conference (and then some) to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped two-and-a-half years ago into Gaza. If Ban is genuinely concerned about humanitarian traffic through the border crossings, would he care to explain why he has been so publicly insistent on the flow of free goods into terrorist-run Gaza, and so apparently uninterested in whether Gilad Shalit might finally be released to travel back out?
All this would be a great help in clarifying the problems in the Middle East. It would be salutary for the UN as well. True, the organization still has no official definition of terrorism, so Ban might find himself venturing into what is, for UN officials, exotic terrain. But there is nothing to prevent the Secretary-General from saying “terrorist,” if he wants to. It might bother the finely tuned sensitivities of actual terrorists, or states that support them. But there’s not much they could do about it. The UN has no procedure for removing a sitting secretary-general. It would be a move of great integrity were Ban to re-focus the UN debate right now, away from the inane formulations about “disproportionate force,” and toward the genuinely germane issue of terrorism.
So that’s what Ban could do, were he willing to stand up for the actual peace-and-human-dignity charter causes of the UN, or even for simple decency. And if he cannot find it in himself to do that, then the least he could do right now is stop making statements that sound like the utterances of a UN-trained parrot. Give it a rest. Take a holiday, Mr. Ban. It will make for a better world.
