What UNDP and British Government/DFiD doesn't want you to know about DR Congo and past expenditures of UNDP in that country's elections

La gouvernance

L’objectif principal des interventions du PNUD dans le domaine de la gouvernance est la mise en place à terme d’un système de gouvernance stable et légitime favorisant le développement humain durable.

En tenant compte des Objectifs du Millénaire pour le Développement (OMD) et des défis prioritaires déterminés par le Document Stratégique de Réduction de la Pauvreté (DSRP), le programme « gouvernance » vise à assister le gouvernement dans l’atteinte des objectifs globaux de développement suivants :

A. Améliorer les performances de l’administration et les institutions publiques
B. Améliorer l’accessibilité et la qualité des services publics
C. Assurer la transparence et la reddition des comptes dans la gestion de la chose publique
D. Renforcer la participation citoyenne

Pour la période 2006-2007, les interventions du PNUD/Kinshasa s’articuleront autour de quatre axes stratégiques appelés aussi sous-programmes. Chaque sous-programme est développé dans le but de contribuer principalement à un des quatre objectifs globaux de développement défini plus haut.

Liste des projets par ligne de service

Ligne de service 2.2. :Développement Parlementaire

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Appui aux Institutions de la Transition(AIT)

• 
  

  Appui aux Institutions de la Transition	Etat : Clôturé
  Renforcer les capacités matérielles et techniques de l’Assemblée Nationale, du Sénat et des cinq institutions citoyennes, et des partis politiques de manière à les rendre capables de remplir convenablement leurs mandats, et de contribuer à l’éducation civique de la population.	Lieu: Ensemble du territoire national Période: Juin 2004 - Mars 2007 Chargé de Programme: daniel.stroux@undp.org Somme déboursée: 6.127.825,45 USD
  Sources de financement :	UNDP TRAC, ITALY, DFID,UNDP DGTTF
  Publication
  Fiche du projet
  Rapport d’évaluation

Ligne de service 2.3. :Processus et systèmes électoraux

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Appui au Renforcement des Capacités Institutionnelles des Partis Politiques

Projet d’Appui au Cycle Electoral en RDC (PACE)

Appui à la Sécurisation du Processus Electoral(SPEC)

Support to the Electoral Process in the DRC (APEC)

Appui aux Règlements des Contentieux Electoraux

Ligne de service 2.6: Décentralisation, gouvernance locale et développement urbain/rural

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Assistance Préparatoire à l’Appui à la Décentralisation et au Développement Local

Ligne de service 2.7. : Réforme de l’administration Publique et lutte anti-corruption

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Appui au Système Judiciaire en RDC

Appui au Secrétariat du Comité Mixte de Suivi du Programme Cadre de la Justice

APNURC

Appui au Renforcement des Capacités Institutionnelles des Partis Politiques

• Appui au Renforcement des Capacités Institutionnelles des Partis Politiques en RDC	Etat : en cours
  Le projet cherche à contribuer à jeter des bases favorables à l’émergence d?un système politique représentatif, où les partis politiques remplissent leurs fonctions démocratiques en constituant des relais par lesquels les intérêts de la population s’exprimeraient dans la sphère publique.	Lieu: Ensemble du territoire national Période: Mai 2006 - Juillet 2008 Chargé de Programme: clara.alemann@undp.org Budget Total: 600.000 USD
  Sources de financement :	PNUD, UNDEF
  Publication	Fiche du projet

Projet d’Appui au Cycle Electoral en RDC (PACE)

• Projet d’Appui au Cycle Electoral en RDC	Etat : en cours
  Suite à l’assistance électorale fournie à travers le projet PNUD/APEC entre 2005 et 2006 dans le cadre de la mission intégrée des Nations Unies, le présent projet représente la nouvelle étape de l’intervention du PNUD en matière d’assistance électorale, essentiellement consacrée au renforcement des capacités de la CENI.	Lieu: Ensemble du territoire national Période: 10/2007 au 12/2011 Chargé de Programme: Aissata Dei aissata.de@undp.org Budget Total: 296 988 683 USD
  Sources de financement :
  Publication	Fiche du projet

At UNDP - the humanitarians make more money than Wall Street Traders or Investment Bankers (great world we live in)

Helen Clark

UNDP Administrator

$450,730

(it includes base salary, post adjustment, + perks)

Rebeca Grynspan

UNDP Deputy Administrator

$393,210

(it includes base salary, post adjustment, + perks)

2017: Papandreu the whore of Greece asking support for his candidacy as Secretary-General at UN

The man who destroyed Greece, and who's family is directly responsible for all the pain and suffering the Greek people are now enduring, the head of Socialist International and head of Greek Socialists PASOC - wants to be the next Secretary-General of the United Nations.

As happens all the time, failed politicians are always parked at the U.N. Now confidential sources inside the International Socialists say that Papandreu is rallying support and is already looking pas-Ban Ki-moon at 2017.

The United Nations have already been a total failure under the South Korean regime of Ban Ki-moon, imagine now Papandreu at the helm of the U.N.. Same sources say that a very powerful non-for-profit Institute close to Democratic Party in US is behind the scenes orchestrating the support.

Will see what will happen !

FoxNews: UN computer shipment to North Korean regime violates US manufacturer’s ban

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ON FOXNEWS

By George Russell

A United Nations agency that quietly shipped computers and computer servers to North Korea several months ago apparently was violating restrictions on the equipment’s use imposed by Hewlett-Packard, the U.S.-based maker of the computers and computer servers, which bars any HP equipment from being sent to the communist dictatorship as part of its supplier agreements.

Those agreements oblige distributors to comply with U.S. export laws, which also forbid electronics exports to North Korea, in support of UN sanctions that were levied in the wake of the regime’s illegal explosion of nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.

“HP is thoroughly investigating the matter,” a corporate spokesperson told Fox News in a statement Monday. “Compliance with U.S. and international trade laws is a high priority for HP. HP investigates any credible breaches of contractual obligations by our partners and resellers.”

The company’s export ban applies to suppliers regardless of where they are located and whether they are international organizations.

In addition, two former members of a UN-appointed panel of experts monitoring the North Korean restrictions have told Fox News that they found the technology transfer by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization “horrible” and “egregious” in the words of one -- “somewhat incompetent and possibly shady,” in the words of the other, in light of the sanctions the UN and its members are supposed to be enforcing.

News of the under-the-radar computer shipment -- and now, the revelation that it was delivered in violation of the manufacturer’s rules -- comes on the crest of heightened tensions between the UN Security Council and the nuclear-ambitious, rogue North Korean regime.

Hours before HP delivered its statement to Fox News, the Security Council had “strongly condemned” the government of newly installed leader Kim Jong Un for its latest provocation, a failed ballistic missile launch that North Korea said was intended to put a satellite in orbit.

The rest of the world viewed the launch as a test of the nation’s ability to deliver nuclear warheads, and a “severe violation” of the previous UN sanctions that ordered the regime to cease and desist its nuclear military ambitions. Even North Korean supporters China and Pakistan joined in the condemnation.

The Security Council -- currently headed by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – is to announce additional sanctions covering new “entities and items” within the next two weeks.

The latest UN-North Korea standoff underlines the strange nature of the earlier computer shipment to Pyongyang carried out at the behest of WIPO.

Fox News brought the cash-for-computers incident to light after WIPO’s director general, Francis Gurry, held a closed-door meeting with concerned diplomats, including a U.S. representative, in Geneva on March 29.

Click here for for the original report.

The diplomats, in turn, learned of the shipment after WIPO’s staff council voiced concerns about it.

The cash-for-computers deal was orchestrated in a way that made its discovery difficult. Procurement and payment for the WIPO goods was arranged between WIPO’s Geneva headquarters and a shipper in China, facilitated by UN offices in Beijing. The deal apparently bypassed UN offices in North Korea.

Those offices operate under a special oversight regime established after a major scandal in 2008 over financial and technology transfers in North Korea, to ensure that money and goods do not end up in the regime’s nuclear programs.

Click here for original report.

WIPO’s payment of $52,638 to a Chinese supplier and installer for the computer shipment, however, did not go through. It was blocked at the beginning of March by Bank of America, the host bank for UN accounts in China, on grounds that the money transfer for goods shipped to North Korea was a possible violation of U.S. Treasury rules.

The computer equipment itemized in WIPO’s work plans for the installation was manufactured by Hewlett-Packard.

In a legal memorandum delivered to the diplomats in Geneva, WIPO said the shipment was nothing more than “part of WIPO’s technical assistance program” with North Korea, which is completely above board and consisted of “general computer technology” that “does not violate any UN Security Council sanctions.”

The memo acknowledged that payment for the shipment had been stopped due to U.S. laws “enacted in part to implement” the binding UN sanctions.
But it also declared that WIPO, “as an international organization, is not bound by the U.S. national law in this matter” and was still looking for ways to pay for the shipment.

The agency has since said it found a way to pay for the goods through other channels that did not involve U.S. banks.

The WIPO legal memo made no mention of contact with or notification of UN sanctions committees that monitor the restrictions on North Korea before the shipment was delivered.

The most recent Security Council resolution, passed in June 2009, specifically calls on “all States, relevant United Nations bodies and other interested parties, to cooperate fully” with the sanctions committee and its panel of experts, “in particular by supplying any information at their disposal on the implementation of the measures imposed by resolution 1718 (2006) [the previous sanctions measure] and this resolution.”

According to George Lopez, a professor of political science at Notre Dame University, who served on the North Korea sanctions panel of experts from November 2010 to July 2011, WIPO’s lack of communication with the sanctions committee is a puzzle.

"Were I still on the panel of experts,” he said, “I am sure some of us would insist that the UN secretariat issue a memo to all agencies reminding them that no movement of goods or individual experts into a sanctions state should occur without some exchange of ideas and views with the panel and/or the UN sanctions committee for that case.”

Lopez also pointed out that the UN sanctions against North Korea prohibit the shipment of “luxury goods” to the regime and even if they did not qualify in any other way, the computers sent to Pyongyang fit that description.

“The Japanese have actually arrested and indicted people who have illegally exported computers to the DPRK in at least two instances,” he said, citing reports of a shipment to a North Korean computer center believed to be a focal point for hacking attacks on South Korea.

According to Victor Comras, member of a UN panel of experts from 2009 to 2010, “something is not kosher when a UN agency takes advantage of being immune to knowingly violate U.S. laws.”

“They are walking through the cracks and loopholes of the sanctions regulations,” he told said. “There should be some recognition that international organizations themselves are obliged to follow the rules.”

“It clearly has hurt the credibility of the U.N. and its sanctions. To what end?”

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News and can be found on Twitter@GeorgeRussell

PJMEDIA-Rosett Report: Guess Who’s Buying Flowers for Pyongyang (With Photos)

CLICK HERE FOR CLAUDIA ROSETT STORY ON PJMEDIA.COM

At the best of times, North Korea’s regime ranks among the most vile on the planet, and this past week has not been the best of times. The totalitarian Kim dynasty carries on, and on, from grandfather to father to son — a brutal regime sustained by proliferation, extortion, and counterfeiting rackets abroad, and grotesque repression at home. This is the regime that targeted an estimated one million or more North Koreans for death by famine in the 1990s, and continues to eradicate dissent by means of such atrocities as incarcerating hundreds of thousands of people in Stalinist prison camps, as described in the recently updated report on “The Hidden Gulag.”

With the late Kim Jong Il now exalted as “general secretary for eternity,” his son, new ruler Kim Jong Un, has just reaffirmed the regime’s “military first” policy, and celebrated the advent of the 100th birthday of Kim Junior’s dead totalitarian grandfather, Kim Il Sung, by conducting a ballistic missile test — which North Korea’s propaganda organs dutifully translated for us as being an attempted satellite launch. There are signs that another North Korean nuclear test may be right around the bend, and this one may be uranium-based, which would be potentially more helpful to North Korea’s business pals in Iran than North Korea’s previous plutonium-based tests, in 2006 and 2009. North Korea’s regime collaborates with Syria and Iran on weapons development. And for its record of kidnapping alone — many of its victims never returned or even fully accounted for — North Korea deserves to be put back on the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Yet, even beyond Tehran and Damascus, Pyongyang’s regime has its fans, and receives its share of tribute, including floral wreaths and letters, which the state’s Korean Central News Agency loves to report. For instance, KCNA tells us this week that the communist parties of Peru and Norway sent delegates, bearing gifts, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung (what the gifts are, KCNA does not explain).

Curious to see who else was sending tribute to the Kim dynasty during this fraught week, I was scrolling through the KCNA site, and lo! What to my wondering eyes should appear but a KCNA report that on Friday — the same day as the missile test (which United Nations sanctions forbid) — “The dear respected Kim Jong Un received congratulatory letters from the offices of the World Food Programme and the United Nations Development Programme.”

Congratulatory letters? For what?

KCNA does not elaborate. To be fair, we can reasonably assume that the World Food Program and UNDP were not congratulating Kim on the missile launch (which was in any event not a successful launch, though such are the hazards of missile tests). And, of course, this is a report from KCNA, a state propaganda organ, prone to such paroxysms as its description Friday of Kim Jong Un as “a great statesman of literary and military accomplishments, who is possessed of outstanding wisdom, distinguished leadership ability, matchless pluck and noble revolutionary comradeship.” It would be unwise to trust entirely to KCNA’s reports.

Except I can find no account of either the World Food Program or the UNDP hustling to deny any such congratulatory letters. If they would like to do so, I would cheerfully write that up. In the meantime, here they are, both these august UN agencies, described by KCNA as orbiting the firmament of Kim Jong Un, the man of matchless pluck and noble revolutionary comradeship. Were they perhaps congratulating him on pioneering a third generation of totalitarian dynastic rule in North Korea? Or applauding the accomplishments of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, in founding this family enterprise?

It gets worse. Scrolling further down the KCNA roster of Friday’s doings in North Korea, there’s a more detailed account of UNDP “staff members” laying “a floral basket before the equestrian statues of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il.” Apparently, after the UNDP staffers laid the floral basket before the statues of the two dead totalitarians, they “paid tribute,” according to KCNA.

Tribute? What does that mean? Did they bow? Toss coins? Drop off a few dual-use items, of the kind the UNDP got caught in 2007 importing into North Korea? Both these UN outfits have a troubling record in North Korea. The UNDP pandered so shamelessly to Kim Jong Il — dispensing cash, buying him dual-use equipment, and storing counterfeit U.S. $100 banknotes in its office safe — that in 2007 it was forced by the revelations of the Cash-for-Kim scandalto close its Pyongyang office for a while. And according to a report this past December by George Russell of Fox News, the World Food Program “may be helping the Kim regime stay afloat” — allowing the North Korean regime to insert itself as overpaid middleman in the supply chain of relief cargoes, with numerous “lapses” and “anomalies” turning up once the aid arrives in North Korea.

Whatever the World Food Program and the UNDP just wrote, or did, to congratulate Kim Jong Un, or pay tribute to his monstrous ancestors, one might have hoped the UN officials running these organization would have more sense. No doubt while operating in North Korea the UN comes under constant pressure from the regime to bow down, pay tribute, and thank the Kim dynasty for the privilege of sending other people’s money and goods its way. But surely we should also expect from the UN at least some slight grip on a basic moral compass.

For that matter, both the World Food Program and the UNDP are entrusted with taxpayer dollars meant to provide resources for helping hungry and impoverished North Koreans — not to be spent buying flowers and writing letters to glorify mass-murdering tyrants. Would the UN condone sending flowers to honor the memory of Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao?

And if the KCNA reports were dead wrong, if the World Food Program sent no such letter, if the UNDP did not purchase flowers and pay tribute to Kim Il Sung, it should not require the questions of a reporter to persuade them to issue a public denial of these KCNA stories. They should be calling press conferences at their headquarters, in Rome and New York, to explain they would never engage in such acts. Swathed as they are in diplomatic immunity, they might even try calling a press conference to this effect in Pyongyang — provided they’re not too busy penning love notes and buying bouquets for this third generation military-first regime still starving its people while readying its next nuclear test.

Heritage Foundation: - The History of the Bloated U.N. Budget: How the U.S. Can Rein It In

By Brett Schaefer

Click here to view this article on Heritage.org

Abstract: The 2012–2013 U.N. regular budget is historic because it marks the end of a decade of unprecedented growth of the U.N. budget. However, the U.N. budget process suggests that this will likely be an aberration and that irresponsible budget growth will resume shortly. Until the disconnect between financial obligations and influence over the U.N. budget process is overcome, the U.N. budget will likely continue to grow unchecked. The U.S. should seek to adjust the U.N. scale of assessment to more equitably distribute the costs of the organization among the member states, grant large contributors more influence in budgetary decisions, promote U.N. budgetary restraint by coordinating with other large contributors and, whenever necessary, enforce budget restraint by withholding U.S. contributions..”

Analysis of the history of the United Nations regular budget unequivocally confirms that the growth in the U.N. budget over the past decade has been truly extraordinary, outstripping the previous period of rapid growth in the U.N. regular budget during the mid-1970s and early 1980s. In a welcome development, the sharp increases in the regular budget over the past decade have been arrested, even slightly reversed in the 2012–2013 biennial budget. Regrettably, this does not necessarily indicate a fundamental shift in U.N. budgetary practices. On the contrary, the conditions contributing to budgetary constraint are likely to be transitory. Congress and the Administration should work together to strengthen U.S. influence and secure further U.N. budget reductions.

The U.N. Regular Budget

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration announced that the initial U.N. regular budget for 2012–2013 of $5.15 billion is $263 million lower than the final expenditures for the 2010–2011 budget and nearly $44 million lower than the 2012–2013 budget originally proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. claimed in December that this was “only the second time in the last 50 years that the General Assembly has approved a regular budget level below the previous biennia’s final appropriation.”[1]

Although U.N. budgetary information is posted in the organization’s document system, it is difficult to find and its format is not user-friendly. The lack of comprehensive budget data presented in a consistent format in one place has inhibited research and informed policymaking. This paper rectifies this problem by presenting comprehensive data on the U.N. regular budget, compiled by the U.S. Mission to the U.N., in nominal and real terms for the entire history of the organization.

Based on U.N. regular budget data since 1946, the recently adopted 2012–2013 biennial budget is the third initial U.N. regular budget since 1960 that was lower than the final appropriation for the previous budget.[2]

The regular budget is only one of many U.N. budgets to which the U.S. contributes on a yearly basis. Indeed, it is not even the largest budget. The U.S. is assessed 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and more than 27.1 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget. The U.S. also provides additional billions in assessed and voluntary contributions to other organizations in the U.N. system each year. In FY 2010, total U.S. contributions to the U.N. system reached record levels for the third year in a row, exceeding $7.691 billion.[3] This is $1.3 billion more than the previous record of $6.347 billion in FY 2009 and $1.6 billion more than the U.S. contributed in FY 2008.

Nonetheless, instilling some budgetary constraint at the U.N., even if only on one budget, is no small feat, especially considering that the U.N. regular budget grew by an astounding 114 percent from the final appropriation of the 2000–2001 budget ($2.53 billion) to the final appropriation of the 2010–2011 budget ($5.42 billion).[4] The rate of budget growth over this period was truly extraordinary, rivaled in the biennial budget era (since 1974) by only the 166 percent increase from the final 1974–1975 appropriation of $606 million to the final 1984–1985 appropriation of $1.61 billion.

However, measuring the U.N. budget in constant dollars reveals its truly extraordinary growth over the past decade. In constant 2005 dollars, the budget grew by 72 percent from 2000–2001 to 2010–2011.[5]By comparison, the budget grew by only 36 percent from the 1974–1975 budget to the final appropriation for the 1984–1985 budget. In other words, inflation accounted for roughly three-quarters of the growth in the regular budget from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. By contrast, the budget grew by more than 70 percent in real terms from the final 2000–2001 appropriation budget to the final 2010–2011 appropriation budget.

Thus, the increases in the regular budget over the past decade are unprecedented since the U.N. moved to a two-year regular budget in 1974–1975. In fact, when inflation is taken into account, recent increases basically double any previous budgetary decade since the U.N. moved to a biennial regular budget.

A Tale of Two Growth Spurts

As Chart 1 illustrates, the U.N. regular budget has grown rapidly since the adoption of the two-year budget in 1974, especially from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s and since the early 2000s. The relatively flat growth from the mid-1980s through the 1990s was precipitated by the U.S. policy of insisting on zero growth in the regular budget and an agreement among the U.N. member states in 1986 to approve the budget by consensus. This agreement was driven by America’s adoption of the 1985 Kassebaum–Solomon Amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 1986 and 1987, which withheld a portion of U.S. funding to the U.N. regular budget unless major contributors were granted increased influence over budgetary decisions.[6]

The post-2000 budget surge was facilitated by the U.S. abandoning its zero-growth policy and, later, abrogation of the consensus budget agreement.[7] The U.S. insistence on zero growth in the U.N. regular budget broke down in the early 2000s when the U.S. sought U.N. political missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The missions were expensive and opened the door to other increases in the U.N. regular budget sought by other U.N. member states in return for their support. Contrary to some claims, the Afghanistan and Iraq missions did not drive the increase in the budget over the past decade. As noted by the U.S. Mission to the U.N., the increases to other parts of the regular budget were substantial and, in dollar terms, outstripped the costs of the political missions:

In 2000–2001 the regular, two-year budget—not counting special political missions, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan—was $2.4 billion. In 2010–2011, it was $4.2 billion. That is a 75 percent increase, over a period that included a major post-9/11 economic contraction and a global recession.[8]

The cut in the U.N. regular budget for 2012–2013 is a welcome check on the unprecedented growth of the past decade. However, unless significant changes are made, the U.N. budget will likely resume growing for several reasons:

• In December 2011, the G-77, which includes more than two-thirds of the states in the General Assembly and therefore enough votes to pass the budget, sought to increase the regular budget by more than $600 million. Although temporarily defeated, they clearly support expanding the budget. The G-77 led the effort to violate the consensus-based budget agreement in 2006 and 2007.[9] If they wish to approve budget increases over the objections of the U.S. and other major donors, they may do so again.
• In the context of ongoing global financial difficulties, the U.S. was able to secure support from the other major U.N. contributors, which historically have been less interested in pressing for U.N. budget constraints when their economies were healthier. Unless the U.S. can convince them of the long-term need to restrain growth in the U.N. budget, these nations—particularly in Europe—will likely return to their historical ambivalence toward budget restraint once they recover from their current budgetary and economic woes.
• The latest U.N. regular budget, while superficially smaller than the previous budget, made no fundamental programmatic or structural adjustments—e.g., reducing permanent staff, freezing or reducing salaries and other benefits, and permanently eliminating a significant number of mandates, programs, or other activities—that would lower the baseline for future U.N. budget negotiations.[10]Despite the Secretary-General’s proposal to eliminate 44 permanent posts, the 2012–2013 budget actually increased the number of permanent posts by more than a score compared with the previous budget. The failure to arrest growth in U.N. employment, salaries, and benefits is especially problematic because personnel costs account for 74 percent of U.N. spending according to the U.N.’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ).[11] Without a significant reduction in the number of permanent U.N. posts or a significant reduction in staff compensation and related costs, real and lasting reductions in the U.N. regular budget will remain out of reach.

What the U.S. Should Do

With these factors in mind, the Obama Administration and Congress should work together to place America’s diplomats in a stronger position to hold firm on U.N. budgetary restraint and reform. Specifically, the U.S. should establish a stronger relationship between budget decisions and financial contributions by:

• Establishing a coalition of major U.N. contributors specifically dedicated to budgetary restraint and reform. Other large contributors to the U.N. budget, as exemplified by the Geneva Group,[12]often share U.S. concerns, but rarely stand firmly and consistently with the U.S. on budgetary matters. Current financial and economic pressures focused the major contributors’ attention on restraint during the 2012–2013 budget negotiations. The U.S. should try to forge this ad hoc coalition into a more permanent caucus of countries focused explicitly on budgetary restraint in addition to U.N. reform and improved management and oversight.
• Demand more influence for major contributors on U.N. budgetary decisions. Although imperfect, the easiest way to accomplish this goal would be to restore the 1986 agreement, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, that budgetary decisions must be adopted by consensus.[13] Better still, the U.S. should seek agreement among the U.N. member states that budgetary decisions, in addition to the U.N. Charter provision of approval by two-thirds of the member states, must also be approved by member states contributing at least two-thirds of the total contributions to the U.N. regular budget.
• Using America’s financial leverage. The only time the U.N. has exercised sustained budgetary restraint since 1974 is when the U.S. adhered to a policy of a zero-growth budget backed by the threat of financial withholding in the late 1980s and 1990s. This period began unraveling in the early 2000s and broke down entirely in 2006 and 2007, when a large majority of U.N. member states broke the 20-year agreement to adopt the U.N. budgetary decisions by consensus, which culminated in the adoption of the 2008–2009 regular budget over U.S. objections. The U.N. faced no repercussions for this action because the Kassebaum–Solomon Amendment had been rescinded in the 1990s. Congress should give legislative heft to U.S. budgetary positions at the U.N. by reinstating the zero-growth budget policy goal and mandating withholding if the U.N. adopts budgetary decisions over U.S. objections.
• Review and adjust the U.N. scale of assessment to more equitably distribute the costs of the organization. The bulk of the U.N. member states simply do not pay enough for growth in the U.N. regular budget to trouble them. For instance, Sierra Leone is assessed 0.001 percent of the U.N. regular budget. The U.S. is assessed 22 percent. Therefore, while Sierra Leone and the dozens of other countries with the same assessment will pay less than $26,000 this year for the U.N. regular budget, the U.S. will pay $567 million. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that the U.S. cares about the size of the U.N. regular budget, while most countries do not. The 128 countries with the lowest assessments pay less than 1.3 percent of the U.N. regular budget combined, yet those countries could approve a budget over the objections of countries paying nearly 99 percent of the budget. This disconnect between financial obligations and voting power makes it very difficult to constrain growth in the budget or enact reforms intended to improve effectiveness, accountability, and oversight without the use of financial withholding. Unless a stronger relationship between budget decisions and financial contributions is achieved, the U.S. will remain a lonely voice calling for budgetary restraint. The U.N. scale of assessment is scheduled for adjustment this fall, and the U.S. should explore options for adjusting the scale to ensure that more countries have an increased financial stake in the budget.[14]

Conclusion

For decades the U.S. has fought a difficult battle for U.N. budgetary restraint and management reform in an effort to ensure that American taxpayer dollars are not wasted. The U.S. and other major contributors deserve credit for halting the trend of unprecedented increases in the U.N. regular budget over the past decade and adopting a budget for 2012–2013 that is lower than the previous budget. However, the circumstances that led to the current climate of budget restraint are not likely to be repeated. History shows that diplomatic efforts often fall short in U.N. budget discussions unless Congress supports the efforts. The U.S. should promote U.N. budgetary restraint by coordinating with other large contributors and, when necessary, supporting its diplomatic efforts to enforce budget restraint by withholding U.S. contributions.

—Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. He is editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009).

FoxNews Video: U.N. violating own sanctions on North Korea?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO ON FOX NEWS

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO ON FOX NEWS

UNJUSTICE.ORG: A Serbian retaliated for blowing the whistle at UN Habitat - Justice denied at United Nations.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS ARTICLE ON UNJUSTICE.ORG

UNJUST: WHEN AN OUTSTANDING FEMALE STAFFER LOSES HER JOB AND PENSION ENTITLEMENTS FOR BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE UNITED NATIONS

3 April 2012

UNJustice is gravely concerned with the information received regarding the situation of Vesna Dzuverovic, 62, of the Republic of Serbia, a fully qualified former UN-Habitat professional staffer whose contract was not renewed only five months short of qualifying for a UN pension, purportedly in retaliation for reporting a case of suspected misconduct.

In particular, UNJustice is concerned with the decision to transfer the woman the week immediately after she reported wrongdoings in recruitment and procurement within her Unit to the Office of Internal Oversight Service (OIOS). The transfers continued each year for four years until Ms. Dzuverovic's contract expired and they appear to have been decided by the same manager who is responsible for the non-renewal of her contract.

UNJustice is disturbed by the fact that the Chief of the Investigations Section at OIOS finally dismissed Ms. Dzuverovic's report on the irregularities in her Unit, citing arguments which strain credibility and logic, such as "financial restraints and limited resources".

UNJustice is also alarmed that, since her contract expired in 1999, Ms. Dzuverovic, who has more then ten years of experience working with the United Nations, has been trying for years to find another post with the Organization. However, she has been unable to obtain any work in a UN position, including posts in hardship places or posts for which she is over-qualified.

During her time working at UN-Habitat, Ms. Dzuverovic doubled the delivery rate of her Unit. A native speaker of Serbo-Croat, she has passed the UN Language Proficiency Examinations in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Prior to joining the Organization as a UN staffer, she worked as an economist, journalist, diplomat and as a UN Volunteer for about five years.

As a UN official has warned Ms. Dzuverovic, she may have been illegally "blacklisted" in the UN System for reporting the misconduct and for exercising her right to bring her grievance before the formal system of administration of justice of the United Nations.

UNJustice deeply regrets learning that the strong ethical elements of Ms. Dzuverovic's case have also repeatedly been brought to the attention of the Panel on Discrimination and Other Grievances, the Staff Committee, the Ombudsman's Office, the Ethics Office, Office of Staff Legal Assistance, the Management Evaluation Unit and the Administrative Tribunal of the United Nations. However, they have been unable to ensure that Ms. Dzuverovic obtains any meaningful redress and the case is now pending before the UN Dispute Tribunal.

Unfortunately, an appeal in favour of Ms. Dzuverovic, sent by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) to the UN Administration in May 2011, also seems to have gone unheard.

The improper treatment of Ms. Dzuverovic's case has put her health at risk, destroyed her career and damaged her livelihood, pushing her into a struggle for survival with the Organization.

"The wrongdoings in my office were serious, like granting subcontracts to some anonymous firms without the bidding procedure and then asking me to approve it with my signature, or buying the most expensive air-ticket (instead of the most economical one) for a consultant because he thought it would be great to combine a mission with a visit to his wife who lived in a neighbouring country.... and then asking me to sign for it.

However, the worst part of this whole ordeal, as far as I am concerned personally, regarded my father. He was with me at the duty station in Kenya. He had a stroke and was in a wheelchair; he was 82. Because of my conflict with my boss, who turned my two-year contract into countless one-month contracts, my father could not be treated as my dependant although he was completely dependent on me. When I lost my UN job, I could not take him home to Belgrade because of bombardments there and the war; the airports were closed. I had to stay in Nairobi where I was, and nobody wanted to give me any UN job whatsoever; everybody was afraid of my opponent, he was so powerful. Can one highly-positioned manager overrule the recommendations of a panel on discrimination, gender unit, staff association...?

A woman who lost her employment with the UN in her fifties and is trying to find a new one in the UN in her sixties as an external candidate, with the reputation of a whistleblower - could never find a new post in the UN without the assistance of an internal ombudsman or some other body in charge. Such a person in that age group cannot get any employment anywhere; hence the UN's obligation to take responsibility for the fate of such a former staff member if it was the UN to put that person in that difficult situation, as in my case.

This is an old story which I cannot let go of because I feel that the UN owes me something and because my future depends on it. However, I truly believe that it is the UN that has a bigger problem here than I have. I wish somebody at the UN would analyse this case and draw the conclusions.... ", says Vesna Dzuverovic.

We can't but note that this case raises serious issues about effective whistleblowing protection at the United Nations, with very complex and far-reaching legal and humanitarian implications. No-one with a modicum of sensitivity can remain indifferent to Ms. Dzuverovic's situation and we hope that the UN Administration will treat this case, and other similar cases, with the fairness they deserve.

Please take action to demand justice and effective protection for whistleblowers at the United Nations.

Related information:

Chief, Investigations Section, OIOS, to Ms.Vesna Dzuverovic -letter, 28 August 1996-