Asma al-Assad is UNDP's champion of reform in Syria
Showing posts with label Asma al-Assad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asma al-Assad. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Asma al-Assad is pregnant: What you think Helen Clark will bring to her baby-shower ?
Click here for story: http://undpwatch.blogspot.com/2012/09/foxnews-uncovers-special-relations.html
Monday, November 26, 2012
UNDP's champion of reform in Syria: Asma al-Assad is.... PREGNANT..... and she is looking for new Christian Louboutin heels to celebrate !
Known as the power behind the throne, Asma al Assad, wife of the Syrian President, Bashar, is a force to be reckoned with. The glamorous and much maligned First Lady has been keeping a low profile of late.
Her last public appearance in Syria was in January when she appeared
with her husband and children at a pro-regime march in Damascus.
Since
then, Syria has descended into civil war and concrete evidence of the
torture measures that her husband's regime routinely used on his people
has emerged. In the present day, Bashar al Assad's forces continue to
use cluster bombs and TNT on Syrian civilians and rebel troops alike.
But for Asma, the world is a much softer place
of family gatherings and shopping trips to London for the latest pair
of Louboutin heels. This week news emerged that amidst the death and
destruction in their country, the Assads have found time to plan some
new life of their own.
According to online
newspaper, 'Akhbar Shabab Soriya' (Syria Youth News), Asma al Assad is
five months pregnant with her fourth child. The 37-year-old British born
and educated First Wife will be looking forward to some more time on
London's high streets, dressing up the latest addition to the
controversial Syrian family no doubt.
-----------
You remember this Fox News story on UNDP and its special relations with the Syrian Lady in Louboutin heels?
UNDP's special relations with dictators and terror is well documented. Yet, they continue to operate covered by UN Immunity. Click here for Fox News story.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Should Jens Wandel resign over Rami Makhlouf scandal in Syria?
Resign ? Why?
Yesterday Fox News published a story supported by documents showing that in 2011 the UNDP Syria was dealing with Rami Makhlouf, who is blacklisted by U.S. Treasury since 2008.
This morning finger-pointing began with the Office of Administrator Helen Clark dodgin responsibility to Legal Office and Bureau of Management, who are both under Jens Wandel's domain.
But is it fair to target Jens Wandel (who is a new ASG/BoM ) for deals his predecessor (Akiko Yuge) made in 2011?
Instead of transferring the responsibility, why not ask the questions of:
1. Who approved SyriaTel as vendor ?2. Who approved Syrian Computer Society as vendor and granted them a non-bid contract to supply local UN/UNDP offices in Damascus with Internet access?3. Did the Legal Office of UNDP do due diligence and ask from UN/OLA and Host Country Committee and EU Brussels clearance on Syrian vendors ?4. Who approved the decision NOT TO INCLUDE the UN Offices in Syria under VSat (Satellite) services, but rather rely on Bashar Al-Assad infrastructure (i.e. Syrian Computer Society and SyriaTel)?5. Who approved the programme outline for Syria that called for partnership with SyriaTel, knowing far well that SyriaTel was blacklisted by US Treasury and European Union since 2008 ?6. Was this a deliberate action from UNDP to undermine US/EU sanctions against al-Assad Regime?
Monday, October 8, 2012
Is UNDP a criminal organization? "Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are" !
Fox News EXCLUSIVE: UN-sponsored group in Syria included Assad kin cited as corrupt by US, documents show
In May 2011, as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was moving to crush a growing tide of anti-government demonstrators, the United Nations was extolling a group of Syrian companies, including one owned by Assad’s cousin, for their admirable adherence to ethical principles.
According to documents from the U.N.’s private sector partnership, known as the Global Compact, one of the Syrian companies that met its high standards of social and ethical responsibility was Syriatel, a mobile phone company whose owner, Rami Makhluf, is an international poster child for the opposite of those avowed U.N. principles.
Makhluf was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury since February 2008 -- and still is -- because he “improperly benefits from and aids the public corruption of Syrian regime officials.” The sanctions mean that any assets from Makhluf’s sprawling business empire discovered in the U.S. would be frozen, and Americans forbidden to do any kind of business with him.
Syriatel was explicitly added to a Treasury list of blocked Makhluf properties in July 2008, though the prohibitions already applied de facto.
Makhluf is, by general agreement, the most powerful businessman in Syria, and according to a European Union sanctions website, “no foreign companies can do business in Syria without his consent. “
His brother, Hafiz, one of the most feared military intelligence officials of the brutal Syrian regime, has been under similar U.S. sanctions since August 2007 for “acting on Syria’s behalf to undermine the sovereignty of Lebanon.” (In July 2012 Hafiz was one of four top officials of Assad’s regime who were either killed or seriously injured in a massive Damascus bomb blast set off by forces resisting the regime’s brutal repression.)
In August 2011, Syriatel came under further, explicit U.S. sanctions as a Makhluf property; it also allegedly has helped security forces locate and eavesdrop on dissidents opposed to the feared regime.
None of those activities are in synch with the lofty aims of the U.N. Global Compact, whose members swear they will “support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights,” as well as “make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses”—and will work against “corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.”
The Compact is intended to create a privileged relationship between the U.N. and the businesses that sign up for it -- and, on the other hand, give an impressive U.N.-approved gloss to the corporate image of those companies. For the U.N., it is also an opportunity to enlist the business sector, with its money and expertise, in a variety of U.N.-endorsed projects, including support for the world organization’s widely-touted Millennium Development Goals, an anti-poverty effort whose finish line is 2015.
For its part, the U.N.’s Global Compact offices in New York flatly denied, in response to queries from Fox News, that Syriatel had ever participated in the organization. There is no mention of Syriatel in the current Syrian membership list on the Global Compact’s website.
The flat-out denial, however, is hard to square with the Syrian Global Compact documents in Fox News’ possession.
These include a Global Compact recruitment brochure that hails, among other things, the arrival on May 18, 2011, of a delegation from the 36-nation Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s anti-poverty flagship that was instrumental in creating the Syrian Compact network.
The Executive Board delegation’s arrival is noted on page 18 of the brochure; Syriatel’s membership in the local Global Compact is included on page 16, in a graphic entitled “Syria Network Membership Update: May 2011.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE BROCHURE
Syriatel’s Global Compact membership also is noted on page 7 of a PowerPoint presentation created by a UNDP local staffer in Syria, as part of a Global Compact “private sector focal points meeting,” held in Paris from April 11-13, 2011.
The meeting’s title: “Transforming Partnerships: Moving to the next stage of U.N.-business collaboration”
Overall, the presentation extols a “win-win situation” in Syria in which UNDP and the Global Compact play the role of “broker” between the regime and its private sector to create “public-private partnerships” for “achieving inclusive growth, enhancing civic engagement and corporate citizenship.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE PRESENTATION
The presentation was noted in the New York-based Global Compact’s annual report for local chapter networks for 2011, which said the Syria chapter was singled out as “a case study on partnering with the private sector” at the Paris session.
CLICK HERE FOR THE ANNUAL REPORT CITATION
Even without Syriatel, the local Global Compact chapter has some questionable members. One of them is the Syrian Trust for Development, founded and headed by Asma Al-Assad, glamorous wife of the country’s dictator. She has been under European Union sanctions since March of this year as a beneficiary and financial supporter of the regime.
The Syrian Trust is not only a local Global Compact in Syria, but has been an important participant in UNDP’s local social development programming, where it was used to help create an elaborate structure of reform initiatives to demonstrate that Assad was moving toward a more modern, liberalized regime. That effort fell apart as Syria’s bloody toll of repression rose higher.
Assad’s Syrian Trust is currently listed on the Global Compact headquarters website as “non-communicating,” meaning that it has not forwarded a scheduled statement on its progress toward meeting the Compact’s ethical and developmental goals.
As for UNDP’s programs in Syria, including those involving the Trust, they were described weeks ago as “stalled” by a UNDP spokesman in response to questions from Fox News. Last month ,UNDP’s executive board approved a renewal of the organization’s Syrian program and operations “to support humanitarian assistance, livelihoods and coordination activities.”
According to a UNDP spokesman, only programs related to refugee relief, repairs of water systems and medical facilities, emergency food assistance and “psychosocial support” for victims of the current violence are going forward. The previous UNDP program of activities will formally expire in December.
Syriatel’s presence in the Global Compact — denied or not — as well as the inclusion of Mrs. Assad’s private foundation, highlight some troubling issues for the Global Compact, which is one of the fastest-growing U.N. initiatives in a world of shrinking government foreign aid resources—as well as for UNDP, which is the world organization’s spearhead in most of the 169 countries in which it operates.
The Global Compact describes itself as an initiative that “seeks to combine the best properties of the U.N., such as moral authority and convening power, with the private sector’s solution-finding strengths, and the expertise and capacities of a range of key stakeholders. The Global Compact is global and local; private and public; voluntary yet accountable.”
One question is whether UNDP’s unique relationship with the governments it serves — often undemocratic and/or corrupt -- also gives it unique opportunities to favor and cooperate with companies and individuals, like Makhluf, that are influential precisely because of their insider connections, and can wrap themselves in the U.N.’s high-minded principles while continuing more unsavory business as usual.
In Syria, at least, the local private-sector network is very much a creation of UNDP, in close collaboration with the Syrian regime.
A project document signed in February 2008 between UNDP and Syria’s State Planning Commission makes UNDP responsible for the creation of the local Global Compact network while declaring that the regime “attached a great importance to the role of the private sector in the socio-economic development process as strong partners.”
“UNDP’s practical role in launching the Global Compact is catalytic to the process and involves initiating the building of a viable, self-sustaining local network that is business-led,” the document says. “UNDP strategy will be to fulfill different roles that will change over time as the process gets under way and specific, depending on the local context.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE PROJECT DOCUMENT
A management chart on page 14 of the densely worded document shows that UNDP is a joint partner with the planning council, some Syrian ministries, and the local chambers of commerce and industry in oversight of the creation of the Compact network. A UNDP project officer is specifically charged with hiring the staff to make the project work, under UNDP rules and regulations.
Among other things, the document notes, “Anti-corruption will also be a major concern considering the sensitivity of the topic and the malpractices that are presently exercised on the part of the public and private sector.”
Then it adds: “While the project might not be able to reach to tangible results, however raising awareness on this topic using media, academia and NGOs [non-government organizations] would help in bringing this important issue to the attention of the public.”
Whether the Syrian public needed that kind of ineffectual assistance is, at a minimum, debatable. Syria ranked No. 147 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index in 2008.
UNDP’s continuing role in the Compact Project is underlined in the 2011 recruiting brochure obtained by Fox News, which continues to call it “a partnership between the Syrian Government represented by the State Planning Commission and the UNDP.”
The brochure cites such accomplishments as an agreement to fund the country’s first cancer research center, a venture with a local bank to support child cancer treatment, and a project to rehabilitate a provincial marketplace. It also offers support to the U.N.’s anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals.
It also cites “global and local opportunities” for Syrian companies to leverage “the UN’s global reach with governments, business, civil society and other stakeholders.”
“The Global Compact is doing well in Syria because it is a societal norm to give to others,” the brochure quotes Muhammad Agha, the local project director, as saying, “We have a giving private sector. The Global Compact gives a framework to that.”
George Russell is executive editor of Fox News and can be found on Twitter @GeorgeRussell
Click for more stories by George Russell.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Helen Clarks brags about "Rule of Law" and how UNDP does it in 100 countries - forget to mention Syria and its past/current partnership with al-Assad regime
Read this in full here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42973&Cr=rule+of+law&Cr1=#.UGC3uBjy_6s
The Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark, whose organization works on rule of law related programmes in over 100 countries by helping to train judges and lawyers and to strengthen national police forces, stressed the fundamental role the issue plays in national development by protecting women from discrimination and righting the wrongs inflicted on the poor and the marginalized.
“Thus rule of law is at the very heart of what is needed for development efforts to be effective,” she said. “Conversely, shortcomings in the rule of law underlie the exclusion, suffering, and poverty of many people.”
The Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark, whose organization works on rule of law related programmes in over 100 countries by helping to train judges and lawyers and to strengthen national police forces, stressed the fundamental role the issue plays in national development by protecting women from discrimination and righting the wrongs inflicted on the poor and the marginalized.
“Thus rule of law is at the very heart of what is needed for development efforts to be effective,” she said. “Conversely, shortcomings in the rule of law underlie the exclusion, suffering, and poverty of many people.”
FoxNews: Before Assad unleashed violence, UN showcased wife Asma as a 'champion' of reform
Friday, September 21, 2012
FoxNews uncovers the special relations between Asma al-Assad and Helen Clark. UNDP called her "a champion of reform".
Before Assad unleashed violence, UN showcased wife Asma as a 'champion' of reform
Published September 20, 2012
| FoxNews.com
Read this on Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/20/before-assad-unleashed-violence-un-showcased-wife-asma-as-champion-reform/
One major element: creating a high-profile role for Asma al-Assad, the glamorous wife of the Syrian dictator, as a champion of greater citizen participation in the dictatorship’s anti-poverty and social programs.
The process quickly proved to be a façade. As soon as demonstrators took to the streets in March, 2011, demanding a larger say in how Syria was ruled, the UNDP-sponsored reform movement crumbled as President Assad responded with a campaign of arrest, torture and bombardment.
The multi-million dollar U.N. program, followed by a failed peace effort led by former Secretary General Kofi Annan, demonstrates how the U.N.’s densely written successes on paper can turn to dismal failure once an authoritarian government casts aside everything in favor of keeping a grip on power.
For its part, UNDP insists through a spokesman that its elaborate development plans in Syria are merely “stalled.”
Before the “stall,” the UNDP program in Syria was budgeted for extension beyond its five-year life-span between 2007 and 2011 into 2012-- months after the Assad regime began its long campaign of harsh domestic repression.
The Syrian fiasco also shows the limits of UNDP’s preferred method of “national execution” of development projects, meaning that it leaves most of the real work to the governments of most of the 169 countries where it operates, with UNDP offering financial and technical assistance and the veneer of U.N. prestige, while encouraging the international community to provide money.
In the case of Syria, according to documents obtained by Fox News, UNDP played a key role in creating a reformer’s aura around Asma al-Assad, the country’s fashionable First Lady, who was also the founder and chairman of an organization known as the Syria Trust for Development.
Starting in 2007, Mrs. Assad became a special partner of UNDP in a five-year program known as the National Platform for NGOs [non-governmental organizations] aimed at creating in Syria “an empowered civil society involved in local community development and implementation of public policies, planning and programs.” The Syria Trust, which she created in 2002 as a personal charity vehicle, was reorganized that year into a foundation that incorporated a number of additional social programs.
The Syria Trust-UNDP partnership was intended, among other things, to forge a “National Platform for Syrian NGOs,” which would “enhance civil society and the private sector in the socio-economic development in place.” Along with providing technical support to the project, UNDP helped provide financing, which totaled more than $570,000 by 2010.
Mrs. Assad is described in the Syrian Trust’s 2009-2010 annual report—the only one publicly available—as an “active champion and sponsor of civil society activities in Syria.” (The Trust also served as an “incubator” of additional NGOs, which presumably would have access to the National Platform.) The financial report shows that her efforts at the Trust were supported by a variety of principally Western European governments, a welter of Syrian state and local governments, and a few U.N. agencies, including UNDP.
CLICK HERE FOR THE ANNUAL REPORT
In the end, however, the “civil society” program provided little more than cover for the regime’s brutal methods of control—even after the Assad government began to escalate its violent onslaught against its own people.
The other partners in Mrs. Assad’s UNDP-organized “National Platform” effort included the Syrian State Planning Commission, the country’s Interior Ministry, and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, according in the annex to a “Country Program Action Plan,” or CPAP, signed between Syria and UNDP in June 2008.
CLICK HERE FOR THE CPAP
The CPAP also includes a collaboration between UNDP and the Syrian Computer Society, an organization once run by President Assad himself, before he took political office.
According to the UNDP-Syrian document, the computer society was a partner of UNDP in an effort to build a “National Knowledge Society,” through “dissemination of community-based IT tools and facilities with special attention to vulnerable groups (disabled people).”
CLICK HERE FOR THE SYRIA TRUST AND COMPUTER SOCIETY REFERENCES IN THE CPAP
The Syrian Computer Society has been accused by non-Syrian NGOs of monitoring their activities and “keeping tabs” on their personnel. It also hosts UNDP’s websites in Syria.
In response to questions from Fox News last month, UNDP declared that it “does not have any shared programs with SCS and never has,” even though the computer society is also listed not only in the CPAP but also in another UNDP “country program document” for Syria as a partner in two additional UNDP programs, involving trade and youth employment.
The computer society is also deeply involved with Mrs. Assad’s Syrian Trust. A five-year Syrian Trust Strategic Plan, dated December 2010, says that the computer society is the sole donor of technology funds for the Trust’s “Communications and Knowledge Management Division (CMK).”
According to the strategic plan, the CMK’s role is to “help the Trust create and promote its identity and brand, define its desired image, reconcile its reputation with its image, articulate and communicate its mission and objectives, set guidelines for fundraising and partnering, set standards to bring consistency across publications and services, and maintain the technical infrastructure to support automation and knowledge sharing.”
In other words, the Knowledge Management Division, with SCS technical help, is largely the Trust’s propaganda arm.
A March 2011 evaluation commissioned by UNDP itself to examine the initiative centered on the glamorous Mrs. Assad declared the program a qualified success—even while it also noted that nothing really had changed.
The report observed that the regime had made “no significant legal changes” to empower civilian organizations, despite promises to do so. It also noted that for all the effort, “few mechanisms exist to hold constructive dialogues between government and local communities and consultation is minimal.”
The evaluation also observed that a new government five-year plan made “little mention of strengthening civil society’s capacity and role in contributing to government policies, planning and programs.”
On a more positive note it declared that “while difficulties remain, NGOs are clearly rising to the challenge and pushing for more space to achieve their development objectives.”
By then, in fact, civil protests against the Assad regime were growing rapidly in southern Syria and the government was preparing to send in tanks to begin the butchery that continues today.
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