A UN disgrace

UN reform

The UN is cancelling its corruption task force. The Chigao Tribune covered the story under the title "A UN disgrace":

(The United Nations) created a special task force in 2006 to investigate bid-rigging, bribery and other alleged abuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts the UN handles every year.

By all accounts, the unit has been busy—and successful. It has uncovered about $630 million in allegedly tainted contracts. Its work has resulted in a criminal conviction of a UN employee and a contractor, disciplinary actions against 17 other UN employees and the suspension or removal of more than 45 private companies from the contracting process. (...)

With that record, you might think the UN would beef up this unit, allow it to ferret out corruption and attempt to restore the UN's shattered reputation. Wrong. The UN thinks the UN has had enough scrutiny, thank you.

The task force expired Jan. 1. The world body failed to renew funding for it. That endangers the 175 investigations the task force did not get to complete.

So much for the UN's zeal to clean up its act.

Some UN bureaucrats harrumph that the task force was not intended to be permanent, that it was a stopgap until the UN could find a permanent way to battle fraud and abuse. That one deserves to be enshrined in the UN's Hall of Lame Excuses. (Full)

Discovered via International Aidworkers Today.

More on The Road about the UN.

Picture courtesy Capitalism Magazine

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