You can't Spell Unethical without the U.N.

U.S. Diplomats Raise Skepticism Over Terms of U.N. Ethics Probe
Tuesday, August 28, 2007

By George Russell

The battle over a United Nations whistleblower who exposed unauthorized dealings between North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's regime and the $5 billion United Nations Development Program has become a bureaucratic alley-fight between the U.S. mission to the U.N. and the top managers of UNDP itself.

Round One went to the managers last week, after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that UNDP would be allowed to appoint an outside investigator to examine the whistleblower’s claims that, among other things, he lost his job because he pointed out the irregularities to his superiors, who told him to keep quiet.

The alternative was to make use of the U.N.’s own newly created ethics office, which had already discovered “prima facie” evidence of retaliation against the whistleblower, Artjon Shkurtaj, a 13-year U.N. veteran who served for two years as UNDP’s operations manager in North Korea. The irony was that the ethics office was created specifically to deal with whistleblower protection issues similar to those in the Shkurtaj case.

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Conservative Bloggers Comments:
So the UN creates an ethics office specifically to deal with whistleblower protection issues and then the first case that comes up the Secretary General doesn't allow the group created by his office to do the investigation. Even better, they allow the people who are accused of wrongdoing to appoint an "outside investigator" to conduct the investigation. I sound like a comedy writer. Are these people kidding me? The UN with almost no remaining credibility has the chance to start off on the right foot with a new Secretary General and do the right thing by investigating the UNDP (the ethics office already has evidence of wrong-doing) and taking care of their own dirty laundry. Instead, Ban Ki-Moon (Secretary General) decides to stick with the UN's corrupt ways and allows the UNDP to essentially investigate itself. Shame on the Secretary General for allowing it and shame on us for continuing to fund this useless and corrupt organization.