At UN, Budget Flux Amid Claims of Transparency, Favoritism Called Minor, FOIA On Its Way
By Matthew Russell Lee
Inner City Press
October 29, 2007
UNITED NATIONS, October 25 -- The UN's new two-year budget is either $4.2 billion, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put it in his speech Thursday to the General Assembly's Fifth Committee, or $200 million higher, at $4.4 billion. The latter figure was cited by Under Secretary General for Management Alicia Barcena in a press conference Thursday afternoon, after Mr. Ban's budget speech. Reporters asked about the extra $200 million and were told it was due to inflation and exchange rate changes. The questions persisted despite Ms. Barcena's talk about transparency. She was also asked, by Inner City Press, about perceived favoritism and retaliation against whistleblowers in her department. "We need to recruit better," she said generally on the first topic. "We have a system that is dysfunctional." Video here, at Minute 35:50.
Some viewed this as a disarming admission, given questions that have arisen about an e-mail chain showing UN investigator Inga-Britt Ahlenius recommending to Ms. Barcena a candidate for a top procurement job at what's called the D-2 level, and Barcena telling her chief of staff Simona Petrova, "Make sure I am on all D-2 interview panels." Three weeks ago, Ms. Barcena declined to comment on the e-mails. The response, sources tell Inner City Press, was to interrogate staff in the Department of Management to find who had blown the whistle. Thursday in front of the UN TV cameras, Ms. Barcena said that she recuses herself from the Senior Management group that approves D-2 appointments, if she has done the interviews. Video here, from Minute 24:27. Off-camera, she told Inner City Press that the procurement post is the first D-2 position that has opened during her ten month tenure. So the stated policy of recusal, it seems, has not yet been implemented.
Despite Ms. Barcena's initially dismissive approach -- at a press conference at which only five reporters asked questions, she said she didn't want to waste correspondents' time responding to allegations of favoritism and retaliation -- she did, if only in the corridor, answer a number of outstanding policy questions. Asked by Inner City Press about the status of the UN's freedom of information policy, which in May she said was immanent, Ms. Barcena said it should now be in place by the end of the year, as part of the "Accountability Framework. Ironically, she said, the delay is attributable to member states' concerns about how under the policy their e-mails might be disclosed. (Ms. Barcena chuckled after saying this, referring to her own e-mails about the procurement post having been disclosed). On the long-delayed harassment policy, she said that "I finalized that" and it is now with the UN Office of Legal Affairs. "You see?" she asked Inner City Press, "We are very transparent."
