BILL GATES' GFATM IS BANKRUPT
THANKS TO HELEN CLARK'S UNDP
9:51PM GMT 24 Nov 2011
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said that it could no longer afford to pay for new programmes to meet an international drive to prevent new infections.
The UN-backed fund has been beset by allegations of mismanagement and accusations that it has failed to detect corruption among local officials. An internal investigation found grave misuse of its resources had resulted in $73 million worth of fraud.
That prompted several donor states, including Germany, Sweden and Denmark, as well as the European Union, to suspend their contributions and demand reform of its practices. Meanwhile, other states such as Italy have failed to make payments they had pledged because of their own financial problems.
Now the fund has been forced to announce a freeze in its spending until 2014, meaning no new projects to tackle diseases in the most vulnerable parts of the world will receive funding before then.
Publicly, the fund blamed the economic downturn, rather than corruption, for the freeze. It said it faced a double blow of slower donations and lower interest rates reducing its income from its investments.
Hanz Sayami discusses the work he did in Afghanistan in a halting voice. He talks about the school for boys that he built six years ago in Char Gul Tepa, a town in the northern part of Kunduz province, after painstakingly gathering funding. "The place means 'Four Flower Hill,'" he says. A girl's school went up a year later there, though this time with the help of German development aid funds. Everything was going well, with Sayami and his assistants paying regular visits to the schools.
But, a few months ago, they dissolved their "Schools for Afghanistan" initiative. "The situation on the ground doesn't allow us to visit the projects anymore," Sayami says. "So we can no longer ask donors in good conscience for money because we can't monitor expenditures in person."Sayami, 52, has an Afghan father and a German mother. His main occupation is working as an art director for SPIEGEL ONLINE. Shortly after his birth, his family left Germany for Kabul, where Sayami spent his childhood. "I wanted to do something for Afghanistan after the war broke out there," he says.
For years, Sayami has been living in Hamburg, but over the last several years he has regularly spent vacations in Afghanistan. He is pained by the end of his work there. "But," he says, "the current situation makes it impossible to keep going."
Growing Fear and Despair
Sayami is one of the few aid workers who will openly discuss such matters for fear of attracting the attention of extremists. For this reason, organizations such as GIZ, the German development organization, forbid their employees from speaking with the press. But overwhelming frustration still compels some to vent their frustrations to journalists, albeit anonymously.
Indeed, little has been accomplished since the beginning of the war against the Taliban, and what has been achieved is now in danger. Once Western troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the country is at risk of falling under the control of extremists.
"Everything is at stake," says Heinz,* who works for an education-related project for the GIZ. "When we're gone, you can pretty much assume that the establishments we helped set up will sooner or later be closed," he says. "There is no lobby for education here, and those who benefit from our work will not dare to stand up for us in public." The development worker will not name his location for fear of attacks. "The Taliban's growing strength has been perceptible for three years," he says. "Since then, we've been working as inconspicuously as possible."
Another GIZ employee, Claudia,* reports that, behind closed doors, some thought has been given to abandoning its projects there. "At the latest, the discussion got into full swing after the deaths of two German aid workers in Parwan province," she says, referring to the two German men who disappeared in August and were found shot to death a few weeks later. Claudia also says that the security situation has gotten "creepingly" worse in recent years and that, more than anything, there has been a "dramatic increase" in fears of falling victim to attacks on Westerners, of being kidnapped or robbed.
Misery Unaltered by Billions in Funding
Since 2002, Germany's federal government has been supporting Afghanistan through economic cooperation aimed at improving the living conditions of average people. Each month, almost €40 million ($55 million) in development aid is channeled to Afghanistan, though that is still only about 5 percent of what the government spends for its military deployment there. Due to worries about corruption, not all of that money is paid out, though. Experts believe that millions have disappeared into dark channels in recent years.
Claudia, who helped rebuild Afghanistan's public administration, believes that development aid has been successful in some places. For example, she notes that there is electricity, clean drinking water and new streets, bridges, schools and hospitals. But, all things considered, nothing has changed in terms of the Afghans' basic living conditions. "There continues to be a small upper class that is super-rich and corrupt," she explains. "The normal population is poor."
Still, Claudia believes that it isn't just a paucity of funds that is keeping aid efforts from being successful over the long term. She also thinks it's too hard to find people in Germany with the right training who are willing to live in Afghanistan for extended periods of time. Many of them can only be attracted by large paychecks -- but, given their relatively meager budgets, that just isn't feasible for many aid organizations. "American aid organizations already pay young aid workers $20,000 a month," Claudia says. "No German organization can afford that."
The Biggest Mistakes
Claudia also admits that she's given some thought to quitting and returning to Germany. "We are hardly allowed to move," she says. "I've seen practically nothing of this country except for my office and my small apartment."
For its part, the GIZ will not respond to questions regarding planned changes to the work it does in Afghanistan or even whether it will be withdrawing from the country. "But we will naturally reflect on the situation after an incident such as the death of a GIZ employee and see which conclusions we draw from it," says Anja Tomic, a spokeswoman at GIZ headquarters near Frankfurt. However, Tomic did say that GIZ safety regulations would remain unchanged, as they have so far been found adequate.
These are the exactly the regulations that Robert,* an energy expert who has been in Afghanistan for five years, finds fault with. "The regulations enormously limit aid workers' freedom of movement," he says. "I'm not even allowed to go shopping at the bazaar. We are losing our sense of the country, of the people, of life here."As Robert sees it, the aid workers' sense of estrangement is also part of the problem. The more the Afghans believe that neither foreign troops nor development workers can help them, Robert explains, the more they're convinced that weapons are the only means of effecting change. "The biggest mistake was linking development aid with military assistance," he says. "Aid workers and soldiers would occasionally make joint appearances. But this civilian-military collaboration is an absolute taboo-breaker that hurt our reputation among the Afghan population."
Hoping from a Distance
The last time Hanz Sayami visited Afghanistan was almost a year ago. And he isn't planning more trips to the Hindu Kush any time soon. "At the moment that would hardly be responsible," he says. Still, he does hope that the bleak predictions being made about the country do not come true and that, at some point in the future, he'll be able to continue work on his school project.
*Name changed to protect source anonymity
BERLIN (AP) — Germany is unblocking half of the funding it withheld from a multibillion-dollar fund that fights three killer diseases following revelations of corruption earlier this year.
Development Aid Ministry spokesman Sebastian Lesch says Berlin has decided to release euro100 million ($145 million) of the euro200 million ($290 million) that it originally pledged for 2011 to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The money was blocked amid a donor backlash in January.
Lesch said Monday that Berlin wants to ensure that aid can be released but used in a "corruption-free" way.
Germany is stipulating that its money be used in countries where the fund tasks international organizations, such as the U.N. Development Program, with delivering aid.
Today intensive discussions were held with the Global Fund Secretariat at the invitation of the BMZ. Given the allegations of corruption and misuse of funds that have been directed towards the Fund, the German government called on the Secretariat to clarify the situation regarding the possible extent to which funds have been misused by widening the circle of cooperation countries already being reviewed to include the remaining 112 countries receiving support from the Fund. Moreover, the German government asked the Fund to quickly take steps that would ensure that everything possible was done to prevent corruption and misuse of funds.
"We will support these efforts by the Fund by arranging for an independent external review to determine the nature and the extent of the misuse of funds based on a representative sample of countries," said German Development Minister Dirk Niebel. "This sample will focus above all on countries that are particularly affected by corruption. Also to be examined is the degree to which the implementing and financing modalities used by the Fund – which often include the direct transfer of funds to recipient countries – may favour corruption and the misuse of funds. The focus will be particularly on areas that have been shown to be especially susceptible to corruption, for example expenditures on training measures, per diem allowances, the reimbursement of travel costs or the procurement of medicines. I also want us to find ways of boosting the Fund’s results orientation."
The German government is seeking to find ways of including other concerned donors in the review, involving the Bundesrechnungshof(Federal Audit Office) and also German and European institutes specialising in development policy. It invites the Global Fund Secretariat and its Board of Directors to make suggestions regarding the concept and scope of the review.
"The German government will make a decision about its contributions to the Global Fund for 2011 based on the findings from the special review, which will be available by the summer, and on the measures that the Fund has taken by then to address the susceptibility of its activities to corruption," said Dirk Niebel. "The Fund has given an assurance that the ongoing treatment of sick people will not be compromised at any point by the enquiries."
Given the wide-reaching allegations of corruption and misuse of funds directed towards the Global Fund, German Development Minister Dirk Niebel had announced on 25 January 2011 that all German payments to the Fund were to be suspended and a special review undertaken.
At the end of her first visit to UNV headquarters in Bonn, Germany, Helen Clark (right) receives gifts from Yasmin Khalil (centre) and Jake Kaberia (lower left), children of UNV staff members. (P. Sen/UNV) (Click here for this)
By Daniel Hannan
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK (CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY)
Politicians sometimes use the word "crisis" vaguely. Crisis is, appropriately, a Greek word. It means a moment of decision, a crossroads.
The EU faces now a crisis in the most exact sense. There are two ways in which it can treat the economic cancer that has taken hold in Greece, and which now threatens to metastasise across the Mediterranean. One is through amputation. Greece could be allowed to leave the euro and devalue, thereby pricing itself into the market and winning time to carry through economic reforms.
Another version of amputation, runs the rumour in Brussels, would be for Germany and its neighbours to create a new, hard currency among themselves, bequeathing the legal carcase of EMU to southern Europe. The effect would be the same: Greece and the other Club Med states would benefit from an immediate economic stimulus, and northern taxpayers would be excused having to fund a bail-out.
Most Eurocrats, however, regard amputation as a final resort. Instead, they prescribe a lengthy, debilitating and uncertain course of chemotherapy. The 16 members of the eurozone are putting up vast sums in what are euphemistically called loans, though few expect them to be repaid. German taxpayers, who were assured when the euro was launched that such aid would be illegal, are understandably furious.
Even angrier are the people of Ireland. Unlike Greece, Ireland has tightened its collective belt, with everyone from the Taoiseach to welfare recipients taking cuts. Irish voters now learn that, had they been less self-denying, they might have qualified for a bail-out of their own. Worse, they find themselves, as eurozone members, having to join the rescue consortium. At a time when their public-sector workers face pay reductions of between 5 and 20 per cent, the Irish must borrow an extra 800 million euros to send to Greece.
EU leaders know that they won't get away with this again. It will be politically impossible to ask the voters of Germany, Ireland or anywhere else to fork out for a second rescue package. So they are devising a mechanism where such fiscal transfers will happen automatically. On Friday, the European President, Herman Van Rompuy, will chair a meeting of EU finance ministers aimed at establishing what he calls "European economic governance".
Part of this governance involves creating a reserve account: a European Debt Agency, or European Monetary Fund. Part involves the harmonisation of financial supervision: a process especially damaging to Britain, and one which began last week with the almost unanimous approval of a new scheme to regulate investment funds, which are overwhelmingly based here.
Above all, though, Eurocrats want more moolah. Although Brussels has considerable executive, legislative and judicial power, it lacks fiscal clout. The EU budget accounts for 1.24 per cent of Europe's GDP, the US federal government for around 35 per cent of America's. The key ambition of most Euro-enthusiasts is to make themselves financially independent of the national governments through what they call "own resources": that is, money levied directly by Brussels. Own resources already exist, in that the EU automatically receives a component of VAT revenue from its member states, but almost every Euro-integrationist regards the amount as insufficient.
How to get the money? Some federalists dream of a pan-European income tax, to be levied by MEPs: the policy of, for example, the European People's Party. Other ideas include a levy on emails and a duty on international phone calls. Several member states like the idea of carbon taxes, or other green imposts.
In the present mood, there is especially strong support for a tax on financial transactions. Most EU financial transactions, of course, take place in London, which makes the scheme attractive on the Continent. Rather as happened with the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain would find itself disproportionately filling a pot from which others could draw.
Until now, our decision to keep the pound has sheltered us from the worst of the storm. (Isn't it time, by the way, that those who supported euro membership in the 1990s apologise to William Hague? His determination to see the single currency working "in good times and in bad " suddenly seems eerily prescient.) Being outside the eurozone, however, won't shield us from the negative consequences of Mr Van Rompuy's economic governance. EU supervision of financial services, a larger Brussels budget, a Europe-wide tax on banking transactions: these things will fall more heavily on Britain than on the states that abandoned their currencies.
What we are seeing, 11 years after the launch of the euro, is a vindication of what opponents of the single currency – and, indeed, its more honest supporters – argued all along, namely that you can't have monetary union without political union. If a state can't accommodate an economic shock in its interest rate or exchange rate, it will need to be bailed out. Common taxes mean common government – or, as Romano Prodi, the former head of the European Commission, put it last week, "fiscal federalism".
The EU has a way of thrusting itself uninvited into our affairs. Most ministers would gladly do without the distraction, but the ambitions of Brussels directly threaten the coalition's newly agreed domestic programme. Last week, for example, Nick Clegg spoke about the need to diffuse and democratise power in Britain, starting with a Great Repeal Bill. I cheered him lustily, having proposed precisely these things two years ago. The trouble is that his agenda will run up against the brute fact of the supremacy of EU law.
You can't decentralise power in the UK while centralising it in the EU. You can't object to the quango state while submitting to the biggest quango of the lot, namely the unelected European Commission. You can't ask for across-the-board budget savings while increasing our net contributions to Brussels by 60 per cent. You can't strengthen parliamentary control over the executive when orders-in-council simply implement EU rulings. You can't, in conscience, give people a referendum on how to elect their MPs while denying them a referendum on whether those MPs are sovereign.
When the Lisbon Treaty was adopted, many thought that the EU would try to digest it before consuming additional powers. But the crisis in Greece has whetted its hunger anew. Satisfying that appetite will be expensive for all of us.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and writes every day at
Mandated by governments worldwide, IRENA's mission is to promote the widespread and increased adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy. With the global population projected to reach 10 billion in 2050, abundant renewable energy sources worldwide can make a significant contribution to the world’s growing demand for energy.
IRENA was officially established in Bonn (Germany) in January 2009 and 142 states and the European Union have now signed its statute. It is headquartered in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates).
The Memorandum of Understanding signed by Hélène Pelosse, Interim Director-General of IRENA, and Jan Mattsson, Executive Director of UNOPS, is aimed at ensuring that the agency can quickly and efficiently begin implementing its mandate. Speaking at the signing ceremony at UNOPS headquarters in Copenhagen, Ms. Pelosse said: "The unique expertise of UNOPS in the area of service provision will enhance the capabilities of IRENA and boost the take-off of its activities dedicated to renewable energy.”
UNOPS will provide services such as the recruitment and administration of personnel, financial management, procurement and legal functions. On request it will also provide other consultancy and management services.
"This is an excellent example of where UNOPS is able to support an agency, with each partner focusing on its comparative strengths. We are delighted to be able to assist IRENA so it is in a position to quickly deliver on its important mission," declared Mr. Mattsson.
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