Zimbabwe withdraws UNDP election cash appeal

Click for this story in full @: http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-10845-Zim+withdraws+UNDP+election+cash+appeal/news.aspx


THE government has withdrawn a request to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for help to finance elections due later this year and will now source the money locally, a cabinet minister said Tuesday.

Zimbabwe had appealed to the UN agency for help to raise about US$132 million needed for the key elections which will choose a successor to the fractious coalition administration.

Did UNDP's inaction killed thousands in cholera case in Zimbabwe?

U.N. IMMUNITY AT ITS BEST !

Click here for this : http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-11-how-zanu-pf-ties-stopped-un-boss-from-acting-on-cholera

It is alleged that due to the warm relations between Agostinho Zacarias, the former United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) chief in Harare and Zanu-PF in 2008, the UN in 2008 ignored internal cholera warnings months before an outbreak that claimed more than 4 000 lives.

This has come to light after a recent tribunal hearing looking into the unfair dismissal in 2009 of Georges Tadonki, who headed the UN humanitarian office in Harare at the time. He was dismissed by Zacarias.

UNDP Scandal in Zimbabwe goes viral, while Helen Clark promotes Agostinho Zacarias ...again !

HELEN CLARK's DEALS

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS IN FULL : http://www.theindependent.co.zw/2013/04/12/zim-un-officials-under-spotlight/

AS Zimbabwe approaches crucial general elections after holding a relatively peaceful recent referendum albeit under a shadow of resurging political repression and violence, the United Nations (UN) — whose focal point for electoral assistance mission is soon expected in the country to assess the political and security situation to see if it could help fund the polls — will be under close scrutiny following revelations its Harare office in 2008 ignored internal cholera warnings months before its outbreak exploded into a full-blown epidemic.


The Atlantic/Staff Writer

A recent UN tribunal 104-page ruling reveals how former United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) chief in Harare, Agostinho Zacarias, who had close links with President Robert Mugabe’s previous Zanu PF regime, was unable or unwilling to take measures to combat cholera — which eventually affected about 100 000 and killed at least 4 000 people.

Zimbabwe, a potential economic powerhouse which critics say has been ruined under Mugabe’s rule, is heading for a potential turning point.

A mostly peaceful, popular referendum on March 16 approved a relatively progressive constitution that includes a theoretically strong bill of rights, and general elections are likely be held later in the year.

But the past couple of months have also seen another, less noted development that adds an additional layer of ambiguity to the country’s future.

On February 26, a UN tribunal in Johannesburg determined that Georges Tadonki, the head of the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) in Zimbabwe in 2008, had been wrongfully fired from the UN after he attempted to warn UN headquarters of an oncoming cholera epidemic, whose severity was compounded by the on-going political violence.

He was fired after Zacarias, then the UN’s country chief in Harare and currently the UNDP resident co-ordinator in South Africa, decided that his own closeness to Zanu PF overrode his responsibilities to the UN’s missions and values.

Yet Zacarias was actively abetted by officials at the UN headquarters in Turtle Bay, a New York neighbourhood around Manhattan, who gave in to his demands, which included the marginalisation and eventual firing of Tadonki, even as conditions inside Zimbabwe deteriorated.

The case raises the question of just how the UN will perform in Zimbabwe if the events of 2008 repeat themselves — or in the event that the country finally experiences its long sought-after democratic transition.

Tadonki filed a wrongful termination claim against the UN after the organisation effectively fired him in early 2009.

The UN’s bulletproof legal immunity necessitates an unusual system for adjudicating such cases. Because the UN cannot be sued, tribunals convened by the UN itself deal with employment claims, pseudo-courts that do not adhere to several important aspects of accepted US and European legal procedure.

Legal immunity

The UN-appointed judges found that Tadonki’s firing was the result of concentric layers of favouritism and bad faith, tendencies that defined not only the country head’s relationship with Mugabe’s government, but Turtle Bay’s apparently backward view of the UN’s entire mission in Zimbabwe.

According to the tribunal, in addition to upholding the egalitarian values of the UN Charter, Zacarias’ job charged him with “speaking out about humanitarian issues and defending humanitarian principles”.

In these respects, he was a clear failure. He had a tight relationship with members of Mugabe’s then Zanu PF ruling party.

According to Robert Amsterdam, who was one of Tadonki’s lawyers, Zacarias’ testimony revealed that he had known various Zanu PF leaders when they were based in Mozambique during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle in the 1970s.

According to the decision, during his posting in Zimbabwe, Zacarias “would spend most of his social time with Nicholas Goche, a Zanu PF politburo member and current Transport minister. This closeness spurred a wilful ignorance of the country’s deteriorating conditions”.

In the run-up to the bloody 2008 elections, “Zacarias seemed to not take cognisance of the fact that there was likely to be widespread and unprecedented violence”, despite the mobilisation of pro-Zanu PF paramilitary forces.

Even as pro-Mugabe militants savaged the opposition MDC and its supporters, Zacarias did his best to shield himself from the ruling party’s scrutiny, even if it meant discarding commonly-held humanitarian protocol.

“The bottom line,” the tribunal concludes, “is that the political agenda that Zacarias was engaged in with the government of Zimbabwe far outweighed any humanitarian concerns that Ocha (Tadonki’s office) may have had.”

In the report’s most scathing section, the judges explain that Zacarias’ closeness to Zanu PF made it impossible for Tadonki to carry out his duties as the head of Ocha — a stance which had deep consequences for Zimbabweans counting on the UN’s assistance in the midst of a cholera epidemic and political emergency.

“There was a humanitarian drama unfolding and people were dying. Part of the population had been abandoned and subjected to repression. The issue between Tadonki and Zacarias was to what extent these humanitarian concerns should be exposed and addressed and the risk that there was of infuriating the Mugabe government,” reads part of the report.

Zanu PF links

“Matters started to sour when Tadonki started doing his job. Zacarias preferred that he remain quiet. But if he remained quiet, Ocha at (the UN) headquarters would say he was not doing his job. Therefore, while silence would bring him trouble from Ocha, noise would infuriate Zacarias.
“When the applicant started organising a forum made up of the NGOs, the United Nations and the donors to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe with the approval of Zacarias and to achieve a common understanding of the humanitarian situation, Zacarias became angry.”

Tadonki did not stay silent however; he “had the courage to inform the Ocha headquarters in New York that Zimbabwe was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis while Zacarias was pretending to the contrary”.

Zacarias had undermined Tadonki at other points during the Ocha head’s brief yet eventful stint in Zimbabwe, most notably by convincing the Zimbabwean government not to approve residency accreditation for Tadonki’s wife and children, who were living in South Africa during his period of employment.

But Tadonki paid an additional and even deeper price for his willingness to warn Turtle Bay about Zimbabwe’s humanitarian plight — he was fired in January 2009, after he had warned of the potential ravages of the looming cholera outbreak. Tadonki was investigated by a UN bureaucrat at Zacarias’ behest, even when there was no proof of professional malfeasance.

“Part of the reason nobody could take on Zacarias was that his role was unassailable,” explains Amsterdam. UN headquarters was convinced that in terms of their Zimbabwe operations, “Zacarias was the absolutely critical pivot, and everything could be sacrificed to him.”

Tadonki’s two predecessors were also fired after brief and tumultuous postings to Harare, and Amsterdam believes that the UN knowingly sent his client into an extremely hostile work environment.

“That they could have put anybody into the situation after Zacarias had savaged the prior two occupants of that post was just inhumane. It was like they were setting him up for exactly what transpired,” said Amsterdam.

Still, the UN has stated that it is appealing its own tribunal’s decision.

For Amsterdam, the decision to appeal reveals just how little the UN has learned from the Tadonki affair.

“If you had a normal organisation, heads would roll,” he says. “Structures would change. But clearly this is not a normal organisation. This is an organisation that’s pathological in its respect for its employees.”

The events in the Tadonki case mostly happened in 2008, but they are less distant than they seem — and not just because of the UN’s plans to appeal.

In a plausible worst-case scenario, this year might bear a similarity to the crisis of 2008. With elections planned for an as-yet-unannounced date later in the year, the country could be heading towards another inflection point, or even another explosion — situations in which international organisations must take on heavy humanitarian and moral responsibilities.

New elections

“The UN was being asked, and will be asked in the future, to play a key role in the transition in Zimbabwe, and they have been completely contaminated by their behaviour,” says Todd Moss, a senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development, and an official in the US State Department’s African Affairs office during the 2008 election crisis.

“It comes down to trust. Who is the UN supposed to be working for?

The signals were pretty clear that parts of the UN office in Harare were working very closely with Zanu PF,” he said.

The successful constitutional referendum raises the possibility of elections that are at least procedurally sound.

In addition, Zimbabwe and Zambia are co-hosting the UN World Tourism Organisation’s general assembly in August, raising hopes that some within Zanu PF genuinely want to re-integrate the country with the rest of the region and the international community more generally. A clean vote would be an ideal place to start.

But Moss sees little reason to believe that the party’s brutal electoral calculus has changed.
“There’s no prospect of an opposition victory as long as Mugabe is alive,” he says.

There is evidence that Zanu PF is already going after opposition and civil society organisations in the run-up to elections.

Police have of late targeted civil society groups and activists, including human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, while the MDC parties are complaining of resurgent violence.

“There’s an impressive level of political direction and assertiveness by ordinary citizens, human rights defenders, and civil society,” says Jeff Smith, an advocacy officer for the Robert F Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights. “What’s worrying is that the Zanu PF regime has really been able to keep these social forces in check.”

This year’s vote could be no more legitimate than 2008’s. The question however is still whether Mugabe will allow the opposition to win — and whether it is possible to have any kind of democratic process in a country where the government is so determined to hold onto power.

After $$Billions lost in transactions by UNDP - Bill Gate's Global Fund decides to "trust UNDP" again with hudreds of millions for Zimbabwe

Click here to read this article on HIV/AIDS Zimbabwe

Global Fund commits more grants to Zim

September 5, 2012 . - Leave a Comment

by Paidamoyo Chipunza | The Herald
The United Nations Development Programme will continue to receive and disburse grants from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Zimbabwe. Global Fund senior fund portfolio manager for High Impact Africa 11, Mr. Perry Mwangala said the fund’s secretariat would continue to require assessment reports from the UNDP and the sub-recipients by a local fund agent.
He was speaking in an interview after a three-day visit to Zimbabwe last week.
Mr. Mwangala said the decisions were based on the findings of an independent review conducted in June this year, on the additional safeguard policy to grants in Zimbabwe.
“Global Fund has decided to retain its right to select a principal recipient, and for now that is UNDP,” he said.
“Secondly, the secretariat will continue to require the local fund agent to conduct enhanced PR and sub-recipients assessments.”
The Global Fund introduced additional safeguard measures in 2008, which led to the appointment of UNDP as the PR of Zimbabwe’s grants.
These measures are meant to ensure that grants are not diverted to other services other than those listed in the country’s proposal.
Mr. Mwangala said although Global Fund had retained some of the safeguard measures, the majority of them had been lifted.
Those that have been removed include disbursements of grants quarterly to twice a year.
Mr. Mwangala said the new arrangement was meant to enable programmes to focus more on implementation rather than reporting.
“Having recognised the significant progress the programmes in Zimbabwe have made, including efforts to reach universal coverage for anti-retroviral treatment, and moving towards malaria elimination in a large number of districts, the secretariat has decided to shift disbursements from quarterly to semi-annual,” Mr. Mwangala said.
He noted that flow of funds to programmes in Zimbabwe was erratic owing to late disbursements.
“The year 2012 proved to be a challenging year for Zimbabwe grants as many of them were going for renewal, which was the main reason for delay in disbursing to programmes,” he said.
Mr. Mwangala said most of the Global Fund-supported projects in Zimbabwe reflected positive impact in the fight against diseases.
He said with the recent support from the US government and the DFID, the Global Fund was able to accelerate support for anti-retroviral treatment in Zimbabwe.
“This effort will ensure the HIV treatment programme has a six-month buffer for drugs to ensure and prevent treatment disruptions as well as realise universal coverage for anti-retroviral treatment,” he said.
Mr. Mwangala said they were in discussions with malaria programme officials and other partners to assess the possibility of universal coverage of treated mosquito nets for the entire country.
However, this would require the national malaria programme to conduct a thorough gap analysis before the Global Fund could support the realisation of universal coverage for mosquito nets.

Click here to read this article on HIV/AIDS Zimbabwe 

UNDP and FAO promises to assist Zimbabwe to regain breadbasket status

DICTATORS BECOME BILLIONAIRES 

WHILE UNITED NATIONS FEED THEIR PEOPLE

Click here to read this on Financial Express

HARARE, July 18 (Xinhua): The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Tuesday said it is prepared to work with Zimbabwe in ensuring the country regains its breadbasket status.

Visiting FAO Director General Jose' Graziano da Silva said this when paying a courtesy call on Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara. They discussed issues to do with food security in Zimbabwe and the region as well as financing of the agricultural sector by financial institutions.

Dr da Silva said Zimbabwe has the potential to become the breadbasket of the Southern African region, adding that the country can also emerge as one of the biggest exporter if government takes value addition seriously. "We have discussed at length issues that will improve Zimbabwe's agricultural sector," he said.

Mutambara said Zimbabwe has a lot to learn from FAO and Brazil on issues to do with food security, adding that stakeholders in the agricultural sector should take a holistic approach in addressing challenges that have bedeviled the sector

UNDP Zimbabwe - Delays Global Fund Disbursement

Middle East North Africa Financial Network

Nov 22, 2011 (The Herald/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- AllAfrica editors' note: The Minister of Health and the UNDP have disputed this report. ...

CLICK HERE FOR THIS STORY

UNDP ResRep in Zimbabwe informs on Mugabe's Health

Mugabe met UN expert on health woes

BY OUR STAFF (click here to view this article on www.thestandard.co.sw)

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe consulted a United Nations (UN) specialist about some of his medical problems, a leaked United States diplomatic cable has revealed. The claims by former UN resident representative Victor Angelo contained in the cable publicised by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks might be the most credible information yet about the octogenarian’s health, which is a closely guarded secret.

Angelo spoke to the former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Joseph Sullivan.“According to Angelo, Mugabe’s ailments include periodic convulsions and stroke-like episodes (perhaps ischemia) brought on by diabetes and a lipid disorder which affects the covering of the brain,” Sullivan said in the dispatch.

“He apparently suffered one of these episodes several weeks ago, although he never left the country. “Mugabe can be revived rather quickly on such occasions, but does not need to be under constant observation since he can fall or suffocate during the episode.”

There have been reports of Mugabe collapsing in the past. In 2000, Mugabe fell and cut his head near the right eye during an international conference in Malaysia.
He needed six stitches to close the cut, which he suffered after slipping and bumping against a rail on arrival on the island.

Despite wide speculation about Mugabe’s health, the 88-year-old Zanu PF leader has always managed to appear alert and healthy for his age in public. But the American diplomats believe he makes a lot of effort to look healthy during his public appearances.

“In any event, Mugabe’s public appearances and reports of his behaviour suggest that he generally remains lucid and assertive, albeit apparently frail at times in discharging the duties of his office,” reads Sullivan’s cable in part.

Sullivan said the information he had gleaned from Angelo and friends of the Mugabe family depicted “an ailing, egotistical family man interested in leaving office but gives no indication of when he would be prepared to leave”.

Recent US diplomatic cables have suggested that Mugabe has advanced prostate cancer. The cable also gives an insight into the First family where there are claims that Mugabe was always at loggerheads with his wife over matters such as raising their children.

Other cables also show that the Americans have over the years unsuccessfully tried to ascertain Mugabe’s wealth.
All they could do was to speculate that Mugabe’s fortune could be in excess of US$1 billion.

Malloch Brown Will Face a Zimbabwe Question

Turtle Bay
By BENNY AVNI April 14, 2008

Here is a question I plan to ask Britain's Minister Mark Malloch Brown, who will visit his old Turtle Bay stomping grounds this week: Are the U.N. Development Program's representatives in Zimbabwe too close to the dictator Robert Mugabe?

President Mugabe, who for decades has held back his country's potential for success on the pretext of fighting colonialist ghosts, is justly one of Britain's least favorite world leaders. He is currently involved in a fight for his long political life, attempting to steal the recent election. Mr. Malloch Brown, whose role for the British government includes responsibility for Africa and the United Nations, would score a victory for British Prime Minister Brown — and for himself — if he gets the Security Council involved in Zimbabwe during this week's summit of world and African leaders here. But more about that later.

Prior to joining Britain's government, Mr. Malloch Brown was the U.N.'s deputy secretary-general. Before that, between 1999 and 2005, as the UNDP's administrator, he was hailed by admirers as a forceful leader who made sweeping changes at the agency, and created practices and policies that govern its activities to this very day.

It was therefore entirely appropriate for Baroness Park of Monmouth to address Lord Malloch Brown during an April 3 debate on African issues in Britain's House of Lords. "Unless the present head of the UNDP" — Agostinho Zacarias — "is withdrawn, there will not be very much confidence in the U.N.'s role in the future of Zimbabwe," Ms. Park was quoted as saying by Zimbabwe's Sunday news. "Two successive UNDP leaders" — Victor Angelo and Mr. Zacarias — "have been far too close" to Mr. Mugabe.

A UNDP spokesman, David Morrison, told me the agency has looked into the matter of whether its officials ever accepted land from Mr. Mugabe and has determined that the charge is unfounded. Privately, UNDP officials wonder how they could ever operate in dictatorships without being considered "too close" to the local dictator.

Zimbabwe's crisis is not expected to be on the agenda of Wednesday's special Security Council meeting on Africa's relations with the United Nations, called by Prime Minister Mbeki of South Africa, which holds the rotating council presidency in April. Mr. Brown will represent Britain, and will be accompanied by Mr. Malloch Brown.

Currently, issues involving Sudan-Chad, Somalia, Kenya, and other African crises are expected to be discussed only "at the margin" of the council's summit, as a Western diplomat put it last week. Mr. Mbeki was hoping to raise Africa's profile in general, and to stress international coordination on the continent. He certainly did not intend to embarrass Mr. Mugabe. On his way to this weekend's emergency meeting of southern African leaders, Mr. Mbeki defied some of his neighbor's wishes, stopping by for a visit with Mr. Mugabe in Harare. There is "no crisis in Zimbabwe," Mr. Mbeki announced, indicating no change in his long-held opposition to international intervention in his neighbor's affairs.

The London Times reported over the weekend that to soften such opposition, Mr. Malloch Brown is conducting a "discreet" visit to Beijing, where he would try to leverage worldwide anger over China's policies in Tibet and Sudan to convince the Communist regime to drop its support for Mr. Mugabe. China has long insisted that problems in places like Burma and Sudan — not to mention Tibet or Taiwan — do not add up to threats to international peace and security, the threshold for Security Council action. getting Beijing, a veto-wielding council member, in this case to drop such opposition could help pave the way for a British-led action on Zimbabwe.

The British prime minister is the highest-ranking official among the Security Council's permanent members planning to attend Wednesday's council meeting and the press in London will laugh at him if he returns home without action on Mr. Mugabe. Conversely, Mr. Malloch Brown will be crowned a hero if the council does issue at least a statement on Zimbabwe. But first, Mr. Malloch Brown will have to field a question about the role there of the UNDP he once led.

British House of Lords denounces secret deals among UNDP Res Reps and Zimbabwe's Mugabe - demands their immediate dissmisal

Sunday News Reporter


THE British House of Lords has vowed to pressure its government to expeditiously press for a regime agenda change in Zimbabwe and has pledged to move in if “chaos” erupts in the country after harmonised polls despite its other commitments in war torn Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been learnt.

This came out in a full text of the United Kingdom's House of Lords debate on Zimbabwe held on Thursday 3 April 2008 and was presented by UK Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown. The House of Lords had a lengthy debate on Zimbabwe’s harmonised elections and the need to put the right people in the right places in order to effect regime change in the country. The lords could not wait to see an MDC Tsvangirai government taking over in the country which they described as good news and pledged to assist the new government as they were a major donor to the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Baroness Northover in her contribution to the debate, said the situation in Zimbabwe was fragile and there was need for Britain’s position on the country to be clarified, likening the happenings in the country with Iraq and Afghanistan..
“We cannot let Zimbabwe slide into chaos. Could the Minister assure us that, even though we have pressing concerns in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will not let Zimbabwe slide down the agenda.

“I did not anticipate that Mugabe might be removed, as now seems possible, by peaceful, democratic means. That makes me feel incredibly optimistic about development in Africa. However, we must make sure that the citizens of Zimbabwe, who are not resorting to violence, are supported and reinforced in their exercise of democracy. We are still in very dangerous and fluid circumstances and the present crisis is far from over,” she said.

The House of Lords was unanimous that although the harmonised elections were held within the confines of the country’s electoral laws and Southern Africa Development Community’s principles and guidelines governing the conduct of democratic polls, the political playing field was still tilted towards the ruling party.

“The conditions for free and fair elections were not in place. The playing field was tilted heavily in favour of Zanu-PF.

“ We will probably never know how many dead people on that roll cast ghost votes. But we do know that, in spite of those problems, millions of ordinary Zimbabweans still queued peacefully and voted. Now they are holding their breath: will their country reverse the spiral of decline or exacerbate it,” she said.

The house confirmed that a heft package was already in place to rescue the MDC Government if it win the Presidential poll.

“I welcome the Minister’s confirmation that a $1 billion package is being discussed. I hope that it will be further discussed at the IMF spring meeting in Washington later this month,” said Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The house also agreed to put more pressure on the region, mainly the South African leader, Mr Thabo Mbeki to put pressure on President Mugabe to step down.

Contributing to the debate, Baroness Park of Monmouth, argued that for change to take place in Zimbabwe, there was need for what she called right people being put on “the right places.”

“Unless the present head of the UNDP (Agostinho Zacarias) is withdrawn, there will not be very much confidence in the UN’s role in the future of Zimbabwe. Two successive UNDP leaders (Victor Angelo and Dr Zacarias) have been far too close to (President) Mugabe and indeed, in one case, have taken land from him.

“It will be extremely important to create confidence among the people of Zimbabwe by telling them that the international community is going to come to help them, but it will be the right people. I propose having Anna Tibaijuka as the UN commissioner. She would have their total trust - she reported honestly on the (Operation) Murambatsvina.

“Her role in the UN is to do building and that is what is going to be necessary. She understands the situation, she is respected and she understands women’s issues. She would make an excellent UN representative,” she said.

Dr Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian was dispatched by the UN to access the impact of Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Hope in June 2005, but later produced a damning report on the country. The Government of Zimbabwe however dismissed the report as flawed as it did not also input the steps by the Government to construct house for affected people under Operation Garikai/Hlalani Khuhle.

Baroness Park said Britain had left the decisions to resolve Zimbabwe’s crisis too long to the Southern African Development Community (SADC.)

She argued that Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth in 2004 because President Mugabe took the country out - not because the people wanted to leave. She argued that it was time that the country was re-admitted.

“…Therefore, I hope that the Secretary of State, who said that he would be approaching the new head of the Commonwealth at the appropriate time, will regard this as the appropriate time. It is a time when the Commonwealth can do a great deal,” she said.

Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth after the 2002 Presidential election which the Commonwealth observer mission argued was flawed inspite of the fact that other observers said it was free, fair and legitimate.

Zimbabweans went to the polls on March 29 to choose President, Senate, Lower House Assembly and Councillors. The results of the council, Senate and House of Assembly polls were made public at the command centres. So far the out of the results of announced Zanu-PF got 97 seats, MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai 99 seats and MDC led by Aurthar Mutambara 10 seats. Professor Jonathan Moyo, an independent got one seat in Tsholotsho.