Urgent Meeting of UN-DESA's NGO Section shows tension and fear

In late friday upon request of Office of Legal Affairs a selected group of NGO section staffers had an urgent meeting to discuss on a number of NGOs who either are ECOSOC affiliated or are registered as "doing business with U.N.".

The meeting was extremely tense, since the OLA seem to have requested an in-house review of a number of files and their status with the organization.

Another issue discussed was the NGO ID's endorsed and issued form UN-DESA's NGO section, on this matter the NGO section found out that files on ID's issued are not in order and that many DESA's interns and short term "consultants" who either held or are still holding UN ID's have been registered as NGO staffers in order to avoid the "lengthy process of OHRM's clearance for Interns and special consultancies". OLA called this process illegal.

No one seems to be clear on why this urgent "review" but it seems that someone is in trouble and seem to have facilitated the endorsement or the clearance of certain NGOs whom otherwise should not have had any business with the organization.

The OLA seem to have finger-pointed DESA's NGO section as the problem for not having appropriate controls in place to select, screen and clear NGOs or institutions whom should be doing business with the UN.

On monday another urgent meeting is scheduled upon request of a member state of UN.