Furor Erupts at United Nations At Seminar on Terror Victims

By BENNY AVNI, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 9, 2008

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UNITED NATIONS — A one-day seminar organized by the United Nations to highlight the plight of victims of terrorism is coming under heavy criticism from Arab diplomats and reporters who say the process of selecting the participants is flawed.

The inclusion of the father of an Israeli girl who was killed in a 2001 suicide bombing in Jerusalem among the 18 victims of terrorism in today's seminar set off a volley of questions yesterday from U.N. reporters, who accused a top aide to Secretary-General Ban, Robert Orr, of bias against Muslims and of ignoring the victims of "state terrorism."

In one of the most pointed criticisms of the seminar, Arab diplomats wondered aloud how the organizers could have chosen a list of terror victims when the United Nations has not yet managed to settle on a definition of terrorism. The failure of the U.N. General Assembly to decide on a comprehensive definition, however, is widely seen as a result of Arab countries' insistence that Israeli civilians who die in attacks be defined as casualties of a just war against a "foreign occupation," not as victims of terrorism.

"The holding of a symposium for victims of terrorism and not for other victims, such as those of foreign occupation, raised numerous questions," the Egyptian ambassador to the United Nations, Maged Abdelfattah Abdelaziz, told the General Assembly last week. "Moreover, the criteria for selecting victims, in the absence of an agreed legal definition of terrorism, could lead to the politicization of the event."

The list of seminar participants includes Arab victims of the 2003 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and terror attacks in Jordan and Algeria, as well as Muslim victims of a bombing in Bali, Indonesia, and victims from Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Americas. Mr. Orr said that in composing the list, the organizers relied on definitions of terrorism found in 16 international "legal instruments."

The definitions include acts of violence directed at civilians, aimed at promoting political goals, and perpetrated by non-state actors. State acts of violence are covered by a number of international treaties and pacts, including the Geneva Conventions.

Even without a comprehensive definitions of terrorism, its victims should not be ignored, Mr. Orr said. "These people do not have a voice," he said.

As the seminar has neared, the criticism of the organizers has grown louder, and now includes accusations that the four countries that underwrote the cost of the $300,000 event — Italy, Spain, Britain, and Colombia — got a say in its content. Some also complained of an "imbalance" to the seminar after the head of the Palestinian Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, was reported not to have been invited initially to contribute.

Mr. Orr said yesterday that the organizers had sent an invitation to the Palestinian Mission to contribute to the seminar at the same time the other U.N. missions received their invitations; the organizers apologized for not including Mr. Mansour's name on the letter, he said.

According to several diplomats, the sensitivity of the Israeli-Arab dispute led the United Nations to add a Gaza-based activist on the psychological effects of the conflict, Marwan Diab, to a list of "presenting experts" who will talk about terrorism at today's seminar.

"There was tremendous pressure to create 'balance' between Israeli terror victims and so-called Palestinian terror victims," an Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, said. "The fact is that the United Nations could not find even one Palestinian terror victim because there is no such thing. While there are Palestinian victims of the dispute, the only victims of terrorism on that side are those hurt by Arab-on-Arab terrorism."

Official: U.N. Lost $10M in Burma

By BENNY AVNI, Staff Reporter of the Sun July 29, 2008

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations lost at least $10 million as it carried out humanitarian relief efforts in Burma because it complied with a plan allowing the country's ruling junta to control foreign currency, according to the top U.N. humanitarian coordinator.

Storm victims stand outside their shacks after they rebuilt them with tarpaulin and leftover pieces from the river after Nargis cyclone at Ohnpinsu village near Labutta town at the Irrawaddy delta on July 10, 2008.

John Holmes's disclosure yesterday raises questions about how funds donated by well-meaning governments and private entities are spent by the United Nations in countries such as Burma, where a dictatorial regime controls every aspect of life, and whether the international effort unwittingly helps such regimes further tighten their grip on power, Burma watchers say.

U.N. officials had downplayed the scope of the losses accrued as a result of the junta's distorted exchange rate. But Mr. Holmes acknowledged yesterday that the amount was "significant," calling it "unacceptable." He promised to raise the issue with Burma's government to ensure that losses could be cut down in the future. But evidence emerged yesterday that the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which he heads, was aware of the problem even as it was appealing worldwide for additional funds for Burma.

An economic professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, Sean Turnell, said yesterday that the figure of $10 million in Burma losses is "not inconsistent" with his own estimate. "But why is the U.N. handing any foreign currency to the Burmese regime anyway?" the economist, who was one of the first to expose the loss, said, adding that such handouts only strengthen the ruling junta.

International organizations were quick to offer assistance and donations to the victims of Cyclone Nargis after it hit the Burmese coast on May 2, killing 140,000 people. OCHA appealed internationally for $200 million, of which $180 million was quickly raised, Mr. Holmes said. A third of those funds was spent inside the country in kyat, the local currency, he told reporters yesterday.

The conversion from dollars to kyat is done through Foreign Exchange Certificates, which are issued by government-licensed local vendors according to what the government claims are market rates. The difference between the official conversion rate and the FEC rate has fluctuated between 10% and 25%, Mr. Holmes said. According to his office's calculation, $10 million of the initial $200 million appeal funds was lost through such conversions.

Although OCHA has said conditions on the ground have improved significantly, on July 10 it appealed for additional international funds — up to $480 million — to aid Burma. OCHA has already received $200 million of this second flash appeal, Mr. Holmes said.

Inner City Press, a Web site focusing on U.N. reporting that has investigated the foreign exchange losses extensively, yesterday published a internal memorandum from June 26 that showed OCHA was aware at that time that the foreign exchange conversions had caused losses of 20%. None of the losses, however, were disclosed to potential donors when OCHA launched its additional appeal in July.

"Presumably the government is benefitting somehow" from the exchange rate, Mr. Holmes said yesterday, though he acknowledged that he could not calculate how much of the $10 million that had already been lost went directly to top generals or their associates. A similar foreign exchange plan led to losses of U.N. funds in North Korea.

A sudden influx of funds to dictatorial countries such as Burma creates the potential for an inflationary effect, Mr. Turnell said. Such an effect "increases the power of anyone who controls the country," he said. Meanwhile, he added, the junta has enough resources to handle the relief efforts, if it cared to do so, without foreign funds.

The Bush administration has spent $47.2 million so far on assistance to Burma, according to government documents. "We're against any waste of resources that taxpayers around the world and member states provide to meet the needs of people around the world," the American ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said. "We also do not want any diversion of it to unintended goals, and that applies to this case."

Independence of U.N. Probes in Doubt

Turtle Bay
By BENNY AVNI | March 31, 2008

There are troubling signs that two ongoing U.N. investigations may be less thorough and independent than advertised.

The events the two U.N. teams are examining could hardly be more different. One was a vicious terrorist bombing in Algiers that targeted the United Nations as a symbol hated by jihadists and resulted in allegations of U.N. and Algerian security lapses. The other surrounds reports that the main development arm of the United Nations violated its own rules by cozying up to the North Korean regime and its leader, Kim Jong-Il.

The U.N. Development Program’s cooperation with the government of a country known at Turtle Bay as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea seemed so cozy, in fact, that detractors begun calling the joint operation “UNDPRK.” As more and more articles appeared in the press on the UNDP-North Korea relationship, which the Wall Street Journal dubbed “Cash for Kim,” Secretary-General Ban, the UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, and the UNDP board of directors launched a full investigation.

In September, the “Independent Investigative Review of UNDP Operations in DPRK” was established, headed by a former Hungarian prime minister, Miklós Németh. The team was supposed to submit its report “if at all possible before the end of 2007.” It quickly dropped this ambitious deadline, however, and earlier this year promised to deliver its results by the end of March. But as the investigators pored over the documents and data, they realized they needed another postponement. The target date is now “before the end of May.”

Is procrastination or thoroughness to blame for the delays? Let’s hope it’s the latter. Privately, however, some are raising questions about at least two team members who may have UNDP ties. Agency officials have dismissed those ties as “tenuous,” saying they don’t violate the team’s mandate.

That mandate says team members should “not seek nor accept supervision or guidance” from anyone at the UNDP or the United Nations, and should “at all times avoid any conflict of interest or appearance of conflict with UNDP or its officials or personnel.” By definition, they should have no U.N. ties.

The team’s chief of staff, Ji Mi Choi, has never worked directly with UNDP or the United Nations, the agency’s spokeswoman, Christina LoNigro, said. But Ms. Choi did serve as chief of staff at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and was top assistant to the institute’s director, Jeffrey Sachs. A prolific writer on development issues, Mr. Sachs has advised a former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, and has worked with Mr. Annan’s deputy and former UNDP administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, on such cornerstone UNDP projects as the U.N. Millennium Project.

Another member of the independent team investigating the North Korea program, Mary Ann Wyrsch, is chairwoman of the UNDP’s Audit Advisory Committee, created in 2006. Did the body Ms. Wyrsch heads do a good job overseeing and advising the UNDP on its North Korea program? Ms. Wyrsch may face that question during the team’s investigation.

In the aftermath of the December 11, 2007, suicide attack on the U.N. headquarters in Algiers, Mr. Ban appointed a retired Algerian-born U.N. official, Lakhdar Brahimi, to lead an “independent panel on the safety and security of United Nations staff worldwide.” Skeptics wondered whether Mr. Brahimi, known to be loyal to his former bosses both at the United Nations and in the Algerian government, could ever find fault with either. But he may not need to: His mandate, carefully arranged between Turtle Bay and Algiers, might be too broad to investigate the specifics of the December attack.

“Without accountability, there is impunity,” the president of the U.N. Staff Union, Stephen Kisambira, told Mr. Ban in a letter expressing U.N. staffers’ dissatisfaction with the makeup of the Algiers investigative team. “We ask that you not be complicit in a cover-up,” he added. “The staff is sick and tired of the impunity extended by the office of the Secretary-General to senior managers for their failings.”

To allay such concerns, the two investigative teams will have to show that their efforts have not added up to a cover-up, as usual. Despite the worrisome signs, let’s wait for the outcome of both.

bavni@nysun.com