The U.N.'s Dirty Laundry
Should Kofi Annan shoulder all the blame, or do the problems go deeper?
A secretary general on the ropes. A powerful former backer agitating for change. Mounting scandals. Overdue promises of reform. A grasp at legacy. For Kofi Annan, it must look a lot like 1996. That was the year the United States called for the ouster of then U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. By the following year, Boutros-Ghali was out and the suave Annan was in, promising a new era of openness and accountability.
Now Annan, 67, finds himself similarly bruised, allegedly unable or unwilling to control the elephantine bureaucracy he was brought in to reform. Backers say it isn't for a lack of trying. And Annan has pushed, particularly recently, for major reforms. Brian Urquhart, a respected former U.N. under secretary general, says he still can't understand how, in the minds of some, Annan has suddenly become "this shady man everyone is calling on to resign." Adds Urquhart, "He is making a serious attempt at reform, but it takes two to tango, so the countries also have to get involved." But, as the oil-for-food scandal is increasingly illustrating, Annan, a career U.N. bureaucrat, has missed prime opportunities to change an ossified institutional culture that obstructs accountability.
Earlier this month, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the old friend Annan appointed to look into misdeeds in the U.N.-run Iraq oil-for-food program, directly criticized the secretary general for failing to launch a formal investigation into the award of a large oil-for-food contract to Cotecna Inspection SA once Annan learned that the company had employed his son, Kojo, and was the subject of a Swiss criminal investigation pertaining to previous work for the United Nations.
Blind eye? To many Annan supporters, the Cotecna controversy is minor and one that solely concerns his son. But Volcker's report carries the ring, and sting, of truth. To critics, it's part of a pattern. Annan, himself exempt from staff ethics rules, recently allowed the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Ruud Lubbers, to remain at his post despite a June 2004 internal report substantiating allegations of sexual harassment. Lubbers did not resign until February, when the scandal hit the papers.
Consider that two thirds of U.N. employees surveyed by Deloitte Consulting last year admitted being privy to unethical conduct--and that almost half said they were too scared to ever report it. Those who do air dirty laundry typically find themselves shunned, and their employment contracts often aren't renewed. Although new whistleblower shields are being proposed, those who step forward currently have few protections. And internal audits reveal how little has happened on Annan's watch when misdeeds are reported. From 1998 to 2001, a U.N. staff member forced defense lawyers to pay him kickbacks to process their payments at the International Criminal Tribunal for the genocide in Rwanda. In September 2003, frustrated investigators found that the man had not been fired but, instead, had been shifted to other clerical duties.
In another case, a staff member at the U.N.'s Geneva office was allowed to take early retirement after he was found viewing child pornography on his office computer. And auditors have long complained that U.N. peacekeepers believed to have committed serious crimes, such as rape, face little more than return to their home country as punishment. That's one outrage the United Nations has recently promised to rectify.
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