The UNDP's Vitamin D Deficiency: A Problem We Can Live With?

Stories of corruption at the United Nations are usually so many dogs biting men, but Nicole Kurakawa and Matthew Lee have both seen fit to give the matter some attention this week, and Kurakawa in particular has raised an interesting question: if everyone knows that corruption at the UN is a huge problem, why did the UN Development Program's executive board take steps last week to make their programs less transparent? She explains at AFF:

An internal audit of the UNDP program in North Korea uncovered rampant waste, fraud, and abuse; it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that these problems might be repeated elsewhere. Presently, these internal audits are kept confidential even from the governing executive board, and efforts are underway to keep it that way.

In a statement by China and the G-77 to the UNDP in January:

. . . the Group believes that UNDP and UNPFA should not disclose information contained in their internal audit reports, particularly country programme-related audit reports, without the permission of the Executive Board. Such requests should first be based on a justifiable need for disclosure and put to the Executive Board for its consideration. There should also be means of insuring that the requester of such confidential information can be held accountable.

At this point, the UN has punted on the transparency issue, lumping this into a larger ethics package. Meanwhile, political maneuvering has stalled the process further. The only reason this issue is even being discussed right now? If the U.S. State Dept determines the program isn’t sufficiently transparent, U.S. financial support will be cut back by congressional mandate.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think shrouding programs in secrecy looks a little dubious — especially coming from a body that claims to value the rule of law. And hiding behind procedural rules to avoid public accountability looks a lot like corruption and cowardice.

Matthew Lee's straightforward account on Bloggingheads lays out the facts: audits are often ineffective, but the regulations coming out of the UNDP's board meeting this week might make it harder to request an audit in the first place, requiring anyone who wants one—even a UNDP funder—to run their reasons by the board and the country in question.

Why this resistance to sunshine, given the UNDP's record of graft and mismanagement? Isn't everyone against corruption? First of all, one needs to notice the growing power of Russia and China within the UN (as Norman Geras has pointed out), and the coincident backlash against the US. The audit in Pyongyang turned up all kinds of dirt, but no one has forgotten that it was the US that requested the audit in the first place. When China says things like "requests should first be based on a justifiable need for disclosure," it's not because they hate audits; it's because they don't want the US to continue politicizing audits, using them as a back-door way to punish countries they don't like.

For all my concern about UN waste and mismanagement, I'm sympathetic to calls for depoliticizing aid. The US should not be able to call for an audit of UNDP programs in the DPRK (as opposed to other places with similarly corrupt UN programs) simply because we're trying to play hardball on the nuclear question. If taking that illegitimate card off the table means moving away from transparency, that's an entirely live-with-able sacrifice.

More from Matthew Lee and Inner City Press here.