UNITED NATIONS, August 5 -- Open discontent with the UN's Ban Ki-moon has spread, reflected in a resolution passed on August 5 by the UN Staff Union deploring “the systemic lack of personal accountability and transparency [which] has become more serious since the current Secretary General took office.”
The resolution expresses deep concern about Ban's “apparent lack of interest in seeking a determination of accountability for the numerous deadly incidents involving staff members, including those who died in the terrorist attack on the UN premises in Algiers in 2007 up to the killing of [UN Security officer] Louis Maxwell in Afghanistan in 2009.”
As Inner City Press has exclusively reported, despite the finding in a still withheld UN report that Louis Maxwell was murdered by Afghan National Forces, Ban's top Security official Gregory Starr has said it is hard to push the Afghans to investigate this one death, due to “cultural sensitivity.”
The resolution notes the End of Assignment Report of the former head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services Inga Britt Ahlenius, which among other things criticized Ban's lack of accomplishments in Myanmar and Sudan, and Ban's losses in and lack of cooperation with the UN Dispute Tribunal, where for example his Under Secretary General Shabaan Shabaan has be ordered to pay a $25,000 fine for misconduct.
Unless Ban takes “immediate steps towards real reform,” the Staff Union will consider a “vote of no confidence in the management of the UN and its leadership” in the Fall, the season of the UN General Debate. Click here to see the penultimate draft of the resolution, which was adopted in substantially the same form in a meeting Thursday afternoon. Inner City Press exclusively obtained and is publishing the resolution, here.
UN's Ban and ball, vote of no confidence not shown
This comes as countries in the General Assembly move to require Ban to appear before them to seek a second term as Secretary General. In the past weeks, Ban has deployed his Under Secretary General for Management Angela Kane and his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar to defend his performance.
In light of the expanded and expanding critique, one expects Ban to personally make his case. He is expected back in New York, and to hold a press conference, on Monday, August 9. Watch this site.
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