It is no accident that the United Nations Oil-for-Food program turned out to be the biggest scam in the history of humanitarian relief. Oil-for-Food, which ran from 1996-2003, was designed by the U.N. and managed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan along lines so perverse, so secretive, so inviting to corruption, that it could hardly have turned out otherwise.
But when I first began reporting on Oil-for-Food, back in 2002, I was not looking for a scandal. I had written for years about aid programs in various parts of the world, and was simply trying to understand what looked like a complicated U.N. relief effort in Saddam’s Iraq. I found someone familiar with the program, asked some standard questions, and was floored by the answers. In theory, the U.N. was busy containing U.N.-sanctioned tyrant Saddam Hussein while helping the people of Iraq. But in practice, Oil-for-Food was less an aid effort than an invitation to fraud, influence-peddling and continued tyranny in Iraq. It doubled as a terrific employment program —not for Saddam’s victims in Iraq, but Saddam’s Baath Party and the United Nations.
One of the first things that got my attention was Oil-for-Food’s goal of supervising almost the entire economy of Iraq. The world had only recently emerged from a century that pitted the devastating and dictatorial system of Soviet-style central planning against laissez-faire capitalism. Markets had won — but not, it seemed, in Iraq, where Oil-for-Food actually helped consolidate Saddam’s control and strengthen his grip.
The next shock was learning that under the U.N. setup it was not even the U.N. but Saddam himself who got first rights to draw up the shopping lists for what the people of Iraq were presumed to need. That was disturbing given that it was Saddam who was responsible for the wars, oppression and deprivation of Iraqis in the first place.
Then I learned that the U.N. let Saddam pick his own oil buyers and relief suppliers and negotiate his own deals, subject to U.N. approval — which, as it turned out, he routinely got on thousands of contracts blatantly laced with graft. When I asked who those contractors were, the Oil-for-Food staff said the U.N. preferred to keep the identities of Saddam’s dealers confidential. The U.N. also kept secret the dollar amounts of individual deals, and just about all other details that would have allowed any third party to judge the integrity of a business. Oil-for-Food was run as a secret, privileged bargain between the UN and Saddam. To this day, the U.N. has not released such basic information. It is only through leaked documents that the most incriminating details of Oil-for-Food can begin to be gleaned.
Ah, but then came the showstopper. I learned that to cover the costs of administering this program Kofi Annan’s Secretariat collected a 2.2% commission on Saddam’s oil sales, totaling $1.4 billion over the course of the program, plus another .8%, or $520 million, for weapons inspections (though for four of the program’s seven years, Saddam did not allow any weapons inspections). In other words, the U.N. Secretariat was being paid richly by Saddam to supervise Saddam; the U.N. had, in effect, become Saddam’s business partner, playing Arthur Andersen to Saddam’s Enron. The incentives were for the U.N. Secretariat to hush up Saddam’s graft, and keep expanding the program. And that’s what happened.
Following Saddam’s overthrow, the U.N. finally shut down Oil-for-Food last November. But the U.N.-condoned mess it created it still with us. Billions in funds grafted out of the program by Saddam have yet to be accounted for. Oil-for-Food tainted the Security Council debates over Iraq, in which the U.N. never disclosed that fat deals under Oil-for-Food had gone to such pivotal U.N. Security Council members as France, China and Russia. To whatever extent Oil-for-Food corrupted politicians and businesses who dealt with Saddam — and that was evidently part of the problem — some of the figures involved may now be ripe targets for blackmail by anyone with inside information on Saddam’s U.N.-condoned secret deals. And tucked away in those confidential records are enough overlaps between Saddam’s network of dirty finance and Al Qaeda to warrant worries that money he filched from Oil-for-Food may be funding terrorists today.
This is the legacy of a U.N. that over the years has become accustomed to treating some of the world’s worst despots as privileged clients. In the end, the most alarming aspect of Oil-for-Food is not that it became the biggest financial scandal ever to bubble through the U.N., but that it was the natural product of a U.N. steeped for decades in its own culture of privilege, immunities and secrecy, accustomed to guarding the interests of despots at the expense of subjugated peoples, and — as Oil-for-Food so richly exemplified — more absorbed in its own venal interests, payrolls and power than in such matters as the world peace, freedom and prosperity it was founded to promote.
2)Peacekeeper 'smuggled Congo gold'
A United Nations inquiry has confirmed that a Pakistani peacekeeper in the Democratic Republic of Congo was involved in smuggling gold.
A Pakistani contingent was accused of selling gold and guns between 2005 and 2006 to Congolese militia groups they were meant to disarm.
The investigation, which began in early 2006, found no evidence of gun-running.
Pakistani officials have previously denied all the accusations, describing the allegations as "baseless".
In May the UN said it would seek to discipline anyone who had compromised peacekeeping in DR Congo by trafficking in gold or guns.
Now the head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has told the BBC: "The investigation has found no evidence of gun smuggling but it has identified an individual who seems to have facilitated gold smuggling.
"We have shared the report with the concerned troop contributor and I'm confident they will take the required action. This issue is closed."
3)UN Ambulance Transporting Terrorists
The United Nations is covering its rear in the oil for food scandal. And now it's engaged on a second front as new evidence is emerging that a U.N. ambulance was used by Palestinian terrorists for their getaway following an engagement on May 11, in which 6 Israeli soldiers were killed.
The Israelis have been making the charge for years that the U.N. and Red Cross have been providing cover for terrorists, with American taxpayers footing some of the bill.
But now there's evidence to back up the charge. In video shot by Reuters in Southern Gaza, Palestinian gunmen are seen piling into the back of a clearly marked U.N. ambulance in the midst of a firefight.
Israel further charged that the U.N. ambulances were used to transport body parts of the Israeli soldiers who were killed.
When Israelis leveled the charge, the U.N. denied the incident and demanded an apology.
A U.N. spokesman now concedes that armed Palestinians used the vehicle, claiming the driver was forced into service. But Israel's deputy ambassador to the U.N. notes that the driver didn't report the incident until after the videotape was shown.
And that's the Observer.
4)UN troops face child abuse claims
Children have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia, a BBC investigation has found.
Girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money.
A senior official with the organisation has accepted the claims are credible.
The UN has faced several scandals involving its troops in recent years, including a DR Congo paedophile ring and prostitute trafficking in Kosovo.
5)Kosovo UN troops 'fuel sex trade'
It claims UN and Nato troops in the region are using the trafficked women and girls for sex and some have been involved in trafficking itself.
Amnesty says girls as young as 11 from eastern European countries are being sold into the sex slavery.
A Nato spokesman said some details of the report seemed out of date.
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Moran said some policies had changed. Peacekeepers were "not allowed" off base in civilian clothing or to go to bars and nightclubs, he said.
"Each nation is responsible for the conduct of their soldiers, and if they find a soldier that is breaking the law, it is up to them to bring them to justice," he added.
There has been no comment from the UN.
6)UN staff raping children in Sudan
Members of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Sudan are facing allegations of raping and abusing children as young as 12, The Daily Telegraph reported today.
The abuse allegedly began two years ago when the UN mission in southern Sudan (UNMIS) moved in to help rebuild the region after a 23-year civil war. The UN has up to 10,000 military personnel in the region, of all nationalities and the allegations involve peacekeepers, military police and civilian staff.
The first indications of possible sexual exploitation emerged within months of the UN force’s arrival and The Daily Telegraph has seen a draft of an internal report compiled by the UN children’s agency Unicef in July 2005 referring to the problem.
This paper has learnt of more than 20 victims’ accounts claiming that some peacekeeping and civilian staff based in the town are regularly picking up young children in their UN vehicles and forcing them to have sex. It is thought that hundreds of children may have been abused.
7)DR Congo sex abuse by UN peacekeepers
Last Updated: Saturday, 8 January, 2005, 02:58 GMT   |
| DR Congo sex abuse claims upheld | ||
 The report by the UN watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, investigated abuse allegations in the north-east Congolese town of Bunia. The probe found a pattern of sexual exploitation of women and children, which it said was continuing. Head of UN peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said he was outraged and angered by the abuse. The report said many of the victims were under 18, with some as young as 13. They were usually given food or small sums of money in return for sex. The investigation looked at more than 70 allegations against military and civilian UN personnel in Bunia. It found seven cases against UN staff, all but one of them peacekeepers, involving sexual exploitation of under-age girls, were fully substantiated. | ||
Why do we need an impotent organisation??????????????????????????????
Inaction on genocide and human rights
The UN has been accused of ignoring the plight of people across the world, especially in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Current examples include the UN's inaction toward the Sudanese government in Darfur, the Chinese government's ethnic cleansing in Tibet along with its repression of the Falun Gong and the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, the North Korean government's systematic and widespread human rights atrocities (including the establishment of forced-labor camps), and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
