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Letter to the Editor, Sunday Business Post, 28th January 2007
Sir,
Charges of bribery and conspiracy to commit fraud against the former head of the UN’s oil-for-food programme this week, is just the latest scandal to dog the United Nations.
This $64 billion humanitarian operation was supposed to alleviate the suffering of millions of Iraqis when the West imposed sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War. Instead the oil-for-food programme was corrupted by bureaucrats, oil tycoons and Saddam Hussein, after the former Iraqi leader was allowed to choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and seller of humanitarian goods.
The UN’s biggest-ever humanitarian undertaking seems to have become its biggest-ever scandal.
The Volcker Report into the UN programme made it clear that the UN simply isn't capable of taking on massive aid tasks. It indicated too that corruption would not have been so rife in the programme if there had been diligent management by the UN and its agencies.
Worrying therefore is the high priority our Government accords to the UN, reflected in Irish Aid’s €47 million contributions in 2005 to development agencies of the UN. How can the Irish Government expect this disgraced agency to efficiently manage such a sum when its systems have been shown to be so corrupt?
Moreover, the scandal casts a dark cloud over humanitarian agencies the world over, despite the Trojan efforts of non bureaucratic NGOs with proven track records, who toil at the coalface of development on minimal administration costs.
Yours sincerely,
JOHN O’SHEA
GOAL
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