Same Old Dog, Same Dirty Tricks

from the February 12, 2008 eNews issue

Following a series of very public and very appalling scandals, the United Nations has come under increased scrutiny. In recent years it has promised to clean up its act, and has enacted new policies and procedures meant to restore its credibility. Unfortunately, it would seem those reforms have done little to purge the international organization of corruption and waste.

Last year, in an attempt to reform its corruption-rife procurement system, the UN blacklisted a number of vendors. Among them was an Italian company called Corimec, which gave bribes to UN officials in exchange for lucrative contracts. However less than one month after it was removed from the UN's list of approved vendors the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) purchased several million dollars worth of goods from Corimec. According to FOX News, the UNDP knew that Corimec had been blacklisted, but decided to use them anyway: "…UNDP officials declared that as a legally separate UN agency, they were not bound to honor the Procurement Service sanction…[this is] particularly significant, because the UNDP is the premier agency through which the UN operates on the ground in most of the 160 countries that it services." These events prompt us to wonder if the UN is really serious about cleaning up its act.

The procurement service scandal is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The pattern of corruption in the UN is widespread. A recent internal audit of the UN mission in Sudan, conducted by the UN Office for International Oversight Services, found that the organization has wasted tens of millions of dollars over the past three years. Auditors found "potential fraud indicators and cases of mismanagement and waste" as well as "dozens of irregularities" in how the money was spent - money that should have been used to help the people of Sudan. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, "UN officers in Sudan have squandered millions by renting warehouses that were never used, booking blocks of hotel rooms that were never filled, and losing thousands of food rations to theft and spoilage."

Hundreds of thousands of people in the Darfur region of Sudan have been slaughtered, and millions have been forced to flee their homes. The Islamic government that controls Sudan has been accused of genocide, but the United Nations has yet to take decisive action to stop the bloodshed. For the past five years they have done little but deliberate, procrastinate, and make empty threats.

The United Nations was created to maintain international peace and help solve the world's economic and humanitarian troubles, but the UN has failed time and time again to accomplish its primary objectives. The UN is plagued by scandal, widespread corruption, favoritism, and financial mismanagement. Furthermore, through its misconduct, negligence, and complacency the UN has aided terrorism and oppression worldwide.

It should come as no surprise, that amidst the scandals that have engulfed the UN, the organization has announced plans for a massive overhaul. The huge reforms will be unlike any changes made since the organization was founded in 1945. Historically, government never downsizes voluntarily; it always increases its power and minimizes accountability to its citizens. Government reinvention is frequently an effort to avoid the consequences of failed policies in the past, or to justify a government's continued expansion by posing solutions to the problems it has created.

Over the last decade, the United Nations has unabashedly pushed for what it calls "global governance." The UN is positioning itself for real global power and it has become evident that they will use the scandal and the ensuing "reforms" to advance closer to that goal.