525a.    “The United States has started a new initiative to force dozens of U.N. independent agencies to publish detailed budgets in an effort to see how U.S. contributions are being spent. …         The initiative is called the U.N. Transparency and Accountability Initiative, or UNTAI. …

            The U.N. system includes some two dozen agencies of varying independence. … Most fund their programs with voluntary contributions, and [U.S. diplomat Mark Wallace] hinted that Washington may be reluctant to continue funding programs that reject the suggestions. The U.S. pays close to $3 billion annually to U.N. entities. …

            The latest initiative grew out of frustration with the [UN Development Program], which has been running … operations in dictatorial countries … of undisputed need, but [where] Washington suspects their leaders demand kickbacks and favors in exchange for allowing relief work. …

            U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has spoken often of renewing the United Nations and building trust … [However,] he has not decreed that Secretariat standards will apply to [the other bodies, which irks some U.S. lawmakers and accountants concerned about recent procurement and administrative irregularities.]

            … But the agencies and programs say they are independent of the Secretariat and intend to remain that way.”

Betsy Pisik, “U.S. presses U.N. agencies on budget transparency”, The Washington Times, November 1, 2007.

525b.    “The initial UN management reforms authorized by world leaders at the September 2005 Summit have began to take shape through the introduction of a number of initiatives relating to increased transparency and accountability in the UN Secretariat affairs.  Unfortunately, the UN Funds and Programs have lagged far behind in the adoption of any such reform measures. …

            Many of these transparency and accountability reforms … already exist in some form within the UN Secretariat.  UNTAI is therefore a practical effort to begin to establish within the UN Funds and Programs a similar or greater level of transparency and accountability to ensure that the billions in international aid contributions are delivered efficiently and effectively to the world’s neediest peoples.”

“United Nations Transparency & Accountability Initiative”, United States Mission to the UN, available at www.usunnewyork.usmission.gov/Issues/reform_untai.html.    [Note: the  UNTAI provides considerable information on relevant guidance, reports and fact sheets and an extensive set of OIOS reports.  It is now tracking the status of transparency and accountability reforms in the various UN funds and programs.]

525c.    “After the UN Chief Executives Board meeting … [where] availability of program audits to member states was to have been resolved, U.S. Ambassador Mark D. Wallace called the outcome ‘disappointing.’  He analogized it to members of a corporation’s board of directors being denied information about how the company is run.  ‘It’s been bounced from individual’ funds and programs ‘to the CEB back to individuals and back to the CEB, it’s not clear what’s coming out yet.  I think that’s disappointing.’ …

            The lack of clarity … is emblematic of continuing … lack of focus on real UN reform.  … If it is always the U.S. leading the charge for reform, with countries like the UK saying that issues of transparency in procurement are issues ‘for the UN’ Secretariat and not for them … then when the US for various reasons steps back … UN reform is blocked.  … Some say that without … [reforming the Security Council veto system] the UN is destined to go the way of the League of Nations.  In the interim, there should be availability of audits, protection of whistleblowers, and transparency in procurement.  There is a long way to go on each of these.”  

Matthew Russell Lee, “UN reforms still ‘disappointing,’ secret audits and also no-bid contracts blamed”, Inner City Press, October 31. 2007.    [Note: this sorry situation of UN agencies’ perpetual resistance to transparency and accountability in 2007, not only after the 2005 Summit reforms but  in light of the management accountability called for by the UN General Assembly repeatedly ever since 1993, is an  insult to the world’s taxpayers and those in urgent need of  effective UN services.  “Perhaps someday” is not a proper response, unless indeed the UN is heading toward the League of Nations’ fate.  For much more on this core issue, see inter alia the IO Watch sections on UN Lives on the Dark Side, first paragraph, UN Management Accountability Struggles, The Six “Black Holes” of UN Non-accountability, Accountability and Transparency in the UN, and The UN management accountability crisis in perspective.]

526a.    “The parking lot of any up-market restaurant in any African capital … [contains many four-wheel drive vehicles] emblazoned with the logo of some donor agency or children’s charity. … [Their millions grant] them considerable power and influence.  … Recent events in Chad over alleged orphan smuggling by an NGO illustrate … the degree of suspicion such relative power produces. …

            [Those previously performing humanitarian roles in Africa] … suffered hardship, disease, and violence … [and] had at least to answer to parliaments and taxpayers, not self-appointed boards of self-important thought leaders. …

            Recently Paris Hilton announced that she was going to be really brave and travel to Rwanda. ‘I’m scared, yeah’, she said. …

            [The]  ‘services rendered’ by such foreigners … strengthen the perception that Africa is unable to help itself.  … African development depends on Africans determining their own policies. …

            Portraying Africa as an object of pity also ignores the very real progress the continent … has made in ending conflict and raising living standards.  What Africa needs is extraordinary economic growth, not extraordinary pity.  That is why eventually Africa will tire of this new generation of imperialists, just as it rejected the last lot.”   

Greg Mills, “The new imperialists: NGOs in Africa”, International Herald Tribune, November 3-4, 2007.   [Note: Mr. Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation.]

526b.    “[The World Bank’s report on Africa Development Indicators 2007 states that] …  ‘for the first time in three decades African economies are growing with the rest of the world’ … and expressed tentative optimism that an important change was occurring in Africa.  …

            [ Bank spokesman] John Page … highlighted that while oil and mineral exporters were driving the increase in growth rates, 18 ‘non-mineral’ economies … were also doing well. … [He said] … that the countries in this second group had prospered for a range of different reasons, and that ‘geology and geography’ were no longer so crucial in determining a country’s future. …

            Mr. Page argues the key change in the region has been a marked improvement in macro-economic  management, and governance.  … ‘Economies are more open to trade and private enterprise.  Governance is also on the mend with more democracies and more assaults on corruption’.  ...

            But [several countries] had suffered ‘large declines in governance indicators’ [and] in southern Africa in particular Aids had had a ‘devastating impact.’”

Alec Russell, “Growth data fuel hopes of new business era in Africa”, The Financial Times (UK), November 15, 2007.

527a.    “Earlier this year, 12,000 applications flooded into Brussels [in a fierce competition for 125 highly-coveted jobs] on the Continent: [EU] bureaucrat.  …

            [But] power is shifting away from the unaccountable bureaucrat.  The new reform treaty … [of October 2007] awards greater authority to the directly-elected European Parliament. 

            The some 32,000 administrative elite … enjoy an authority rare among civil servants. … Only these functionaries may propose legislation … using a legislative system of mind-boggling, if not mind-numbing, complexity.  … With this cloistered culture, it is unsurprising that many outsiders resent Brussels’ influence.

            … The EU is trying to buff its image.  Perks have been trimmed; the three-hour lunch is passing into Brussels folk memory.  Now the talk is of … better communication [with 27 member states.]  The referenda of 2005, in which French and Dutch voters rejected a proposed EU Constitution, also served as a wake-up call. …

            ‘They were forced to look into the mirror to say ‘Who are we?’ and ‘What are we doing?’ says former staffer Derk-Jan Eppink, author of ‘Life of a European Mandarin.’  … One answer might be ‘too much.’  Indeed for years it has seemed that the business of Brussels bureaucrats is bureaucracy.”

William Underhill, “Inside Europe’s sausage factory”, Newsweek International, November 5, 2007, page 25.    [Note: the UN has few laws or rulings to make, but UN bureaucrats play a powerful role shaping in its resolutions and decisions.  Will the UN Secretariat ever get its “wake-up call”, before it is too late?]

527b.    “Dirk Jan Eppink … has written a genuinely entertaining book about the European Commission. … [He asks] awkward – and important – questions about the future of the EU. … Last but not least, he has a sense of humor … and interest in the macabre and the tawdry that enlivens his account of working as [an EU] civil servant.  …

            The Commission is ultra-hierarchical and full of back-stabbing time-servers. … Individual commissioners are treated as minor deities, and civil servants compete fiercely for their ear. …

            Commission officials believe that, collectively, they are doing great work.  But this doesn’t stop them from devoting a lot of energy to frustrating each other’s initiatives.  … Reading Eppink’s book made me profoundly grateful that I am never likely to work for the Brussels bureaucracy. …

            Unlike most Brussels insiders, [Eppink acknowledges] … the fundamental difficulty with the European project. … ‘[The Commission] assumes that the public admires her unreservedly, but in this she is gravely mistaken.  … Her aim is the unification of Europe, whether the public wants it or not. ... ‘Europe’s main problem is … that it is saddled with a political agenda that belongs to the past.’”   

Gideon Rachman, “An insider’s tale of Brussels bureaucracy.” The Financial Times (UK), November 26, 2007.    [Note: Again, much like the UN.]

528a.    “Record high oil prices have dramatically shifted the balance of global power.  … At nearly $90 a barrel, oil is … a strategic commodity of central importance. …

            Yet even as oil has greased the wheels of global capitalism, it has hindered democracy. Governments with large oil receipts need less consent from the governed to stay in power … Roles are suddenly reversed.  It is the energy importers who are now the supplicants. …

            National oil companies now control nearly 80 percent of worldwide reserves, leaving major Western multinationals with full access to only 6 percent. …

            Demand could outstrip supply … [and] governments would maneuver to secure scarce oil supplies, with potentially devastating geopolitical results.  [Rather than addressing climate change, it seems likely that such a crunch] would divert politicians from long-term environmental concerns to the immediate energy crisis. …

            There is no question that the world has entered a less stable era.  New actors, flush with money and ambition, are playing bigger if not always better roles.”

Robin West, “The power of petroleum”, Newsweek International, November 5, 2007, p. 21.  [Note: Mr. West is chairman of PFC Energy, a global strategic advisory firm on energy matters.]

528b.    “The unrelenting rise in international oil prices … has thrown into relief the prospect of a looming energy crisis.  The International Energy Agency’s annual energy outlook sounds the alarm, warning that without immediate [cuts in use] … and huge investment by producers … a supply-side crunch is a real possibility. …

            The biggest contributors to a surging rise in energy demand over the next two decades, says the IEA, will be China and India, the future engines of the global economy. … [By 2030, …more than 1,300GW of new electrical generating capacity will be needed to power [China’s] economy – more than all the power stations in North America alone. …

            This snapshot of a new energy order points to a growing dependence on the Opec cartel of oil producers. … There is a sharp reality check, too, for advocates of biofuels and renewable power.  Fossil, fuels, increasingly coal, will dominate. … Investment in nuclear power, however, controversial, is essential. …

            Much future supply will come from muscular national companies emboldened by the commodities boom.  … The west can shape what happens through policy decisions it takes now.  But time is short.”

“Act now to avoid an energy crunch”, The Financial Times (UK), November 8, 2007.

528c.    Mexico’s Carlos Slim is now the richest man in the world, [according to Fortune magazine.]  … Estimated at $59 billion, Mr. Slim’s fortune [from Teléfonos de México, in which he obtained a controlling stake from the government in 1990], is equal to 6.6 percent of Mexico’s gross national product.

            …  Vast concentrations of wealth are sure to have political consequences, inciting corruption and populism … [which] weaken both the legitimacy and effectiveness of fragile democracies.  … To put the point bluntly, there exist [various ways] of making a fortune.  The least useful are through political connections; the most useful are in competitive markets. …

            As many as 14 of the 100 richest individuals in the world are Russians, with an aggregate wealth equal to 26 percent of the country’s GDP. … So how did they make their money?  … They appropriated much of the wealth of a collapsing superpower. …

            A recent article worries that ‘as the core of the global economy shifts to countries with weak rule of law and institutions, connections to government, rather than entrepreneurial skill, are becoming the quickest and most effective route to wealth.’ … Not all capitalisms are created equal.”

Martin Wolf, “Why plutocracy endangers emerging market economies”, The Financial Times (UK), November 7, 2007.   [Note:  As if a fractious and turbulent world of climate change, terrorism, inequalities, and major national rivalries was not enough to challenge global governance, suddenly an energy crisis and the rise of plutocrats in emerging democracies threaten international stability and the rule of law even more.]
                                                                                                          

528d.    “Bill Gates is no longer the world’s richest man.  That honor now goes to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.  But … he is [only] one of a growing list of tycoons from countries like China, India, and Russia who represent a new wave of wealth, power, and influence.  Many are skilled businesspeople.  But, in these fast-developing economies, being able to seize a political opportunity may count for a lot more.”

Brian Winters, “How Slim got huge”, Foreign Policy, November/December 2007, pp. 35-42.   [Note:  As if a fractious and turbulent world of climate change, terrorism, inequalities, and major national rivalries was not enough to challenge global governance, suddenly an energy crisis and the rise of plutocrats in emerging democracies threaten international stability and the rule of law even more.]

529.      “[2008 is the UN’s] International Year of Sanitation … heralded last week by a four-day conference in New Delhi, awash in bureaucrats from about 40 countries and dubbed the ‘World Toilet Summit.’ 

            If that sounds like a joke, sanitation is no laughing matter.  According to U.N. estimates, 2.6 billion people worldwide lack access to hygienic toilets.  The U.N’s aim is to halve this number by the year 2015, … and it will seek more funding. …

            Will that help?  Modern development has taught us that decent plumbing … emerges when ordinary people gain some say … [and freedom to seek] a better quality of life.  At the United Nations, different priorities prevail. … [The Year will include more] workshops, thematic exhibitions and conferences in venues around the globe. …

            The U.N. resolution was backed by 55 member states … [including half-a-dozen listed by New York-based Freedom House as] ‘the world’s most repressive societies.’  From the Year will flow employment, consultancies and per diems for people who already have toilets.  … To promote sanitation for the most disenfranchised, far more could be achieved … [if the UN would] proceed not by promoting toilets, but by demoting repressive governments.”

Claudia Rosett, “In year of sanitation, U.N. should clean its own house”, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 7, 2007.     

530.      “How kings and presidents treat their predecessors – whether they forgive them, exile them or punish them for brutality and corruption … have been among the most pressing political questions since the dawn of history.  Even now, the fates of many nations … depend on the answers. …

            The distasteful reality is [that] former presidents … [worldwide]      are treated harshly or leniently, according to what is politically expedient. … The aim should be to make presidents worry about their legacy and their future, but not frighten them so much that they never step down. …

            There is a solution …[from] South Korea a decade ago.  [One president] was sentenced to death … and his successor… to 22 years in jail for [corruption and suppressing pro-democracy demonstrations.]  … [Their] photographs … in prison fatigues carried a clear message: even dictators can be punished for killings and corruption. … [Both men] were pardoned, although not with … unseemly haste. …

            Neither summary execution nor a free pardon is the right way. … The best answer is a real threat of jail and a promise -- conditional on withdrawal from politics and the return of stolen goods -- of eventual forgiveness.”                  

Victor Mallet, “An exit strategy for crooks and dictators”, The Financial Times, November 8, 2007.

531.      “There is a lot of talk in the UN about protecting whistleblowers.  But the desire by some at the top of the System to maintain control cuts in the opposite direction. … [A] critique by the UN’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions [after having called the Department of Management’s consolidated report essentially useless, notes problems in reforming the UN’s internal justice system.]  The Department will have a … [meeting] said to concern the UN’s [long-delayed] computer system.  … And still, ten months in, no freedom of information/access to documentation policy has been released. …

             The ACABQ report also makes reference to ‘the Organization’s responsibility to ensure that the daily paid workers in peacekeeping missions (3,312 individuals as of September 2007) are made aware of their rights and obligations and have access to suitable recourse procedures within the framework of the United Nations.  As Inner City Press has previously reported, the ‘daily paid workers’ of the UN’s Mission …in Liberia, UNMIL, have complained of hiring discrimination, so far without redress.  Until UN workers at all levels have legal recourse, and whistleblowers are protected, these problems will continue.”

Matthew Russell Lee, “UN management seeks to block access to justice, while achievements seem few”, Inner City Press, November 8, 2007.

532.      “[The U.N. Relief and Works Agency], a 58-year old agency charged with the welfare of Palestinian Arabs is pleading this week for a renewal of its U.N. mandate and asking additional funds for its activities. … [Meanwhile,] Israelis are highlighting the use of the agency’s Gaza facilities as launching pads for armed attacks against towns across the Israeli border. …

            [As UNRWA head] Karen Koning Abuzayd stressed the decrease in goods coming into Gaza … and the inevitable  worsening humanitarian conditions there, [she] also acknowledged that the Palestinian Arabs’ plea for aid would be heard better ‘if there were no more rockets going out of Gaza.’  … Jerusalem officials specifically highlighted an incident last week that was dramatically captured in a camera mounted on an Israel Defense Force drone. … showing three mortar rounds [fired into an Israeli town from] an UNRWA-owned schoolyard.”

Benny Avni, “Despite attacks from its facilities, U.N. agency requests more funds”, The New York Sun, November 8, 2007.

533.      “UN beachside conferencing goes way beyond plans for a December blowout on Bali. … Live, right now, the UN is continuing its grab to control the Internet, with a Nov. 12-15 conference in Rio de Janeiro …

            [This meeting] … is the work of the UN-based Internet Governance Forum (IGF) [and its Geneva secretariat, which have] …   been following up on the UN’s second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).  That internet summit … was held in November, 2005 in internet-censoring Tunisia – initial sponsor in 1998 of this UN bid to cash in on the web. …

            [Via a UN media link I heard a speaker] declaring … that what’s needed is an internet managed under the UN tent as yet another global redistribution scheme, etc. … That would be the same … unreformed … and unaccountable UN that won’t disclose details of its own … spending, and has failed abysmally to reform its own dysfunctional and unjust internal ‘justice’ system, while operating across borders, outside any normal system of law …

            Coming up next … a 2008 meeting in India, 2009 in Egypt … and beyond.  Enjoy the freedom of the internet while we’ve still got it.”

Claudia Rosett, “Bloggers beware!  The UN internet grab continues … right now, in Rio”, The Rosett Report, November 12, 2007.

534a.    “The Balkans have a dismal way of living up to their stereotype as a region of ancient, intertwined and irreconcilable feuds.  This month was supposed to be the one in which the Kosovo issue was finally put to rest.  …

            The trouble is that these are conflicts with no good guys, and very little spirit of compromise. … This is the Balkan mess that the United States, Russia and the European Union confront when they meet this week in the latest, and possibly last, round of talks with the Serbs and Kosovar Albanians. …

            The only feasible solution … is to gather all the feuding Balkan nations under the European Union and NATO umbrellas, where issues of sovereignty, borders and ancient grievances would hopefully fade.  That is what the European Union must impress on both sides.”

“The Balkans, again”, International Herald Tribune, November 13, 2007.               

534b.    “Diplomats in the Balkans say the real threat to peace could lie in another troubled corner of the former Yugoslavia -- Bosnia. … Twelve years after the US-brokered peace ended a bloody civil war, people in Sarajevo are even talking about the risk of violence erupting again in the next few months. …         Western officials said there was no risk of an all-out war. … The [EU commander] says the main risk is ‘localized ethnic clashes’, … but he commands just 2,500 troops compared with the 60,000 NATO soldiers in the late 1990s. … [Slovenian prime minister Janez Jansa says] Bosnia ‘is not a working state.’     

            … Meanwhile, dangers lurk elsewhere. … In Serbia, non-government paramilitaries have again … [threatened] to intervene in Kosovo.  Serbia’s more pro-western parties continue to threaten the EU that hardline nationalists … would come to power if Kosovo declares independence. … Kosovo’s tensions have spilled over into Macedonia, with its own restive ethnic Albanian minority. … Even Montenegro, the smallest ex-Yugoslav republic has worries. …  As elsewhere, political conflicts are complicated by ties and tensions among armed criminal groups.”

Neil MacDonald and Stefan Wagstyl, “Bosnians stockpile staple food as fear mounts”, The Financial Times, November 16, 2007.

535.      “[A] growing feud between [New York’s] City Hall and the United Nations    intensified yesterday over safety conditions at the Turtle Bay landmark building. … [The city’s UN commissioner wrote] to the U.N. administration chief, Alicia Barcena, [that] the implementation of safety measures … such as the installation of smoke detectors by the United Nations – lags behind schedule, which had been confirmed in past meetings with city officials [and] is ‘not satisfactory.’ …

             As an international entity ... [New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said,] ‘we can’t enforce our building codes’ on the U.N. headquarters building.  Nevertheless, as [former New York governor George Pataki, an informal mediator, noted] ‘It’s not going to be the U.N. firefighters if there is a fire in the building – it’s going to be the NYC firefighters.”  The city therefore was correct in pushing an ‘accelerated time table’ to resolve nearly 900 fire code violations that plague the First Avenue building, he said.”

Benny Avni, “Pataki roams U.N. halls as safety feud intensifies”, The New York Sun, November 14, 2007.

536.      “Many of the world’s most authoritarian governments favour democratic reform, judging from their latest speeches … at the United Nations, where they’re demanding the democratization of the world body’s most powerful arm, the Security Council. …

            That the 15-member council needs an overhaul is not in dispute. … It’s the only UN organ with the power to discipline recalcitrant countries by imposing sanctions or even authorizing military force.  But it is dominated by a cabal of five permanent veto-bearing members – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. 

            [During the debate, Belarus, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan called for] a Council ‘more representative, efficient, and  transparent’ … ‘a more democratic and accountable body’ … ‘further[ing] democratic representation and diversity’ … and [responding] ‘to the legitimate aspirations of the world’s people.’ 

            If only they would practice what they preach.  While the U.S.-based monitoring group Freedom House ranks these four countries ‘not free’ in its report for 2006, it says only 90 UN member states are ’free.’  In other words, a minority.”    

Steven Edwards, “Too bad UN members don’t practice what they preach”, National Post (Canada), November 14, 2007.

537.      “Africa’s rural poor are facing a ‘perfect storm’ of rising food prices, climate change and population growth, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today, urging the international community to take more concrete action to help the continent’s most vulnerable people.

            … WFP operations in West Africa planned … to June next year remain underfunded by as much as $168 million overall. … West Africa faces a particularly difficult challenge against the elements as the Sahara Desert creeps further and further south each year. … Global commodity prices are soaring, driven in part by the rising cost of fuels. … High world prices for grains … [mean] the overall cost of WFP reaching a hungry person has gone up by 50 per cent in the last five years. …

            An estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five in the Sahel region are now classified as acutely malnourished, the highest proportion of any region worldwide.  This ‘silent emergency’ kills more than 300,000 children every year and stunts the growth of those who survive. …

&