NyTimes: Review Panel Judges See a Culture of U.N. Secrecy

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — Independent judges appointed to revamp the way the United Nations reviews decisions on matters like hiring, firing, promotions and raises are accusing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of shielding an unhealthy culture of secrecy and trying to undermine the new system.

The United Nations Dispute Tribunal, inaugurated last July to replace a process so deteriorated that employees challenging employment decisions sometimes waited years for answers, has succeeded in shrinking a backlog of about 300 cases.

But some of the decisions issued by the tribunal contend that Mr. Ban and the highest levels of management are determined to preserve a system in which their personnel decisions remain absolute. One judge even characterized their lack of cooperation as “an attack on the rule of law.”

Diplomats, lawyers and others tracking the cases describe the United Nations’ stance on the tribunal as contradictory, if not hypocritical, given the organization’s role in promoting the rule of law globally. “The organization has to decide from the S.G. on down whether this is an organization that respects the rule of law or not,” said George Irving, a former president of the staff union and a lawyer who has worked on administrative cases at the United Nations for more than 30 years. “What you are witnessing essentially is a power struggle. It is all about control, who is going to control the system.”

In several instances, the United Nations has ignored a judge’s orders to produce documents or have officials testify about how decisions were reached. In one case, the judge ordered the organization to pay $20,000 in compensation for the mistreatment of a translator who questioned why he was not promoted.

“Sometimes there may be some cases of decisions which are not totally in line with what the Secretariat has been doing,” Mr. Ban said at a news conference last month. “But we will try to respect all the decisions.”

Mr. Ban and his advisers believe they have the prerogative to make decisions in some administrative matters, which has become an issue with the court, he acknowledged. He declined to discuss specific cases.

Critics suggest that the secretary general is violating at least the spirit and possibly the letter of the rules approved by the General Assembly.

The old system was completely internal. There were no hearings, and the secretary general essentially served as his own judge and jury. It was deemed too slow and too haphazard to cover the needs of about 60,000 United Nations employees globally.

The new system, which the internal literature describes as “independent, professionalized, expedient, transparent and decentralized,” is run by independent judges whose decisions are binding. United Nations employees cannot sue the organization in national courts, so the tribunal is their sole route to address grievances. New York, Geneva and Nairobi, Kenya, each have a judge, with some extras appointed to deal with the case backlog. A three-judge appeal panel will begin hearing appeals in New York on Monday.

Without the power to declare someone in contempt of court, the tribunal judges rely on the Secretariat to engage with them in good faith. But some judges believe accountability goes only so high. Part of the problem stems from the rigid hierarchy of the United Nations, lawyers and other experts say. The judges were assigned an administrative rank that puts them below an assistant secretary general, so those who rank higher often feel that answering the tribunal is beneath them, they said.

Noting that an employee was fired despite a pending tribunal hearing, a May order from the Nairobi tribunal said that the decision “is significant for the contempt it shows of these proceedings.” It said that the United Nations’ response “does not bode well” for a system supposedly based on international law and due process.

“You have to look at the culture here,” Judge Michael F. Adams, an Australian judge, said at the end of his stint on the dispute panel in New York. “Someone in the position of under secretary general is never confronted with the requirement that particular questions be answered.”

Judge Adams has been notably scathing in his written decisions about the lack of due process in the tribunals. “The United Nations legal system may be an island, but it does not inhabit its own planet,” he wrote in one.

The outcomes of three appeals of Judge Adams’s rulings are being watched with particular interest to see what power the higher panel grants the tribunal.

In one case of an employee passed over for a promotion, Susan Maddox, the lawyer representing the secretary general, refused to produce any of the crucial documents requested or even identify the person who made the decision to refuse to cooperate. The secretary general, like a head of state, had to be allowed to make some decisions in private, the United Nations maintained.

Judge Adams dismissed the idea that the secretary general is akin to a head of state, calling him the chief administrative officer. The tribunal is not examining whether the decision was right, he said, but whether it was arrived at in the right way.

In another case, James Wasserstrom, who now serves as the anticorruption officer at the American Embassy in Kabul, is seeking $1 million in lost wages, compensation for defamation and mental distress, plus legal expenses. He contends that he was fired from his job with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Kosovo after reporting his suspicions of corruption. He said his mistreatment included being arrested at the border, having his house searched and having posters bearing his picture hung around the headquarters to bar his admittance.

Because he had been identified by internal investigators as a whistle-blower, he should have been protected from losing his job, he contends. But an Ethics Office investigation found no link between his allegations of corruption and his dismissal. Judge Adams ruled that the United Nations turn over that report and the evidence behind it, but Ms. Maddox refused.

In a third case, Samer Abboud, a senior translator, said he was passed over for promotion, the victim of discrimination by Egyptian officials who dole out plum jobs to their inner circle.

Shaaban M. Shaaban, an under secretary general and the most senior Egyptian official at the United Nations, initially testified to the tribunal, but then refused any further dealings pending the appeal. Judge Adams found that Mr. Shaaban’s testimony lacked credibility, calling him “an unreliable witness in respect of every important issue of fact.” The judge also found that Mr. Abboud was “subjected to insult, patronizing comments and retaliatory threats,” and ordered the United Nations to pay him $20,000 in compensation. The decision is under appeal.

U.N. Is Faulted as Lacking Coordination of Aid and Security in Haiti

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Women in camps for displaced people in Haiti have reported an increase in sexual violence.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: March 2, 2010

UNITED NATIONS — Humanitarian efforts by the United Nations inHaiti have lacked sufficient coordination with local organizations in delivering aid and establishing security, according to an independent assessment released on Tuesday.

One consequence was a surge in the sexual abuse of women and girls living in camps for the displaced, with some young girls trading sex for shelter, said Emilie Parry, an aid consultant who helped write the evaluation of the United Nations’ effort for Refugees International, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of refugees.

“Women reported to us that there has been a lot of violence and sexual abuse at nighttime,” Ms. Parry said, noting that there is no system of nighttime patrols in the makeshift camps where many displaced people have been living.

“By all accounts, the leadership of the humanitarian country team is ineffectual,” said the report, based on 10 days of evaluations in February. The report, titled “Haiti: From the Ground Up,” also acknowledged that the scale of the disaster made the response a singular challenge.

Closer work with Haitian organizations, as well as better knowledge about conditions, would also enhance the ability of local groups to deal with problems long after the international groups left, Ms. Parry said.

The report suggests a number of ways to improve the delivery of aid, including allowing more participation by Haitian organizations whose leaders are now living among as many as several million displaced earthquake victims.

While the United Nations does not actively discriminate against such groups, it effectively bars them through a lack of advertising and the system of passes that are needed to attend meetings, Ms. Parry said. Appointing liaison officers dedicated to such groups would help, the report suggests.

It also recommended that the United Nations appoint one person responsible for leading the team distributing humanitarian aid in the country, rather than have the responsibility be among many tasks taken on by senior management.

Finally, it suggested that the United Nations’ assessments had not delved adequately into the heart of all the temporary camps, where hundreds of thousands of people still lack shelter and other basic needs. The report recommends that the United States government beef up its budget for disaster assistance and that it, too, should coordinate more with local groups.

“There is too much of a gap, too many people are being left out of the response,” Ms. Parry said.

Human Rights Watch issued a similar report two weeks ago, noting the lack of adequate shelter and saying that it had documented three rapes connected to poor security. Asked about the reports then, Anthony Banbury, a senior United Nations official in Haiti, was criticized for saying that the number of rapes “almost elates me.”

Mr. Banbury issued a statement later saying that he had not meant to minimize the seriousness of the three rapes, but to suggest that efforts to maintain some security were working because the number was relatively low.

The United Nations has given shelter materials to more than 523,000 people, or 40 percent of those in need, said Martin Nesirky, the spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, with 232,000 additional tarpaulins and 22,000 tents en route. The World Food Program and partner organizations have delivered food assistance to 4.3 million people, Mr. Nesirky said.

Catherine Bragg, the deputy humanitarian coordinator, said the scale of the destruction in Haiti, as well as the death of 100 United Nations staff members, including the most senior officials, had initially hampered relief efforts.

“It is the most complex humanitarian response we have ever had to deal with,” said Ms. Bragg, adding that the United Nations had brought some order to utter chaos. “It would be very easy to make negative comments about how things are coordinated.”

John Holmes, the departing United Nations humanitarian coordinator, has said publicly that the organization’s response was uneven. He demanded that United Nations staff members do a better job of coordinating relief efforts.

The United Nations has tried not to discriminate between Haitian and international organizations, with local groups accounting for about 15 percent of the groups participating in the effort in Haiti, said Stephanie Bunker, the spokeswoman for the humanitarian aid office. “We would like to increase the balance,” she said.

North Korean Military Parts Were Intercepted, U.N. Says

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: February 25, 2010

UNITED NATIONS — Two shipping containers loaded at a Chinese port and bound on a ship for the Congo Republic carrying what the manifest called “bulldozers” were found to be transporting North Korean tank parts and other military equipment in violation of international sanctions, diplomats at the United Nations said Thursday.

South Africa, which made the discovery in November, presented a rough summary of the episode in a two-page letter sent this week to the special Security Council committee focused on sanctions againstNorth Korea.

China is North Korea’s largest trading partner, and one unanswered question about the episode involves how the parts escaped notice when they were loaded behind sacks of rice at the northeastern Chinese port of Dalian.

China’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately return a telephone call and an e-mail message seeking comment.

China supported a unanimous Security Council decision last June imposing financial restrictions and an arms embargo against North Korea after it conducted a second nuclear test, which was prohibited under United Nations resolutions.

The cargo seizure, which took place at the South African port of Durban, represents at least the third time that North Korean arms shipments have been halted under the new sanctions imposed last year.

Security Council diplomats, anticipating tough negotiations over a new sanctions regime against Iran, noted that a variety of countries — the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and now South Africa — had been involved in seizing North Korean shipments, and they said that was an indication that sanctions could work internationally.

The two containers containing parts for T-54 and T-55 tanks, shipped by a North Korean company, were loaded in Dalian onto a container ship operated by a French company and sent to Malaysia, where they were transferred, according to diplomats, who read details from the confidential report.

The ship stopped to refuel in Durban on its way to the Congo Republic, but it was initially turned away. After it left Durban, however, South African officials ordered it back to port, where they found the military equipment hidden behind stacks of rice, the report said. They could not confirm the value of the shipment, but estimated it at $770,000.

The two containers are now in a secure storage area in Durban port, the report said, while an inquiry continues. Investigators have been contacting every country involved in the shipping route or transport and asking them to explain what occurred.

The sanctions resolution passed by the United Nations extended the authority for countries to search any ships, including those on the high seas, if they were suspected of carrying weapons from North Korea.

In December, Thailand seized an airplane with a crew of five from Belarus and Kazakhstan that contained 35 tons of North Korean weapons, including rockets, fuses, rocket-propelled grenades and missile components.

A document on board the plane indicated that the weapons were headed to Iran, Thai officials said, but it was unclear whether that was the flight’s final destination.

The shipment was seized while the airplane was refueling in Thailand. Thailand deported the crew this month.