The United Nations Development Program (“UNDP”) is the largest of the UN’s bureaucratic programs, controlling as much as $5 billion of the $20 billion plus budget of the entire UN system. The U.S. is the biggest contributor to the UNDP, with annual contributions of over $100 million. However, since the UNDP coordinates the funding of many other UN development-related programs as well, the actual amount of U.S. funds controlled by the UNDP is much higher. At the same time, the UNDP is one of the most scandal-ridden of the UN’s agencies, which takes some doing.
There is simply no transparency in how the United Nations Development Program spends our money. The UNDP has an administrative procedure that allows for cash transfers directly to governments to implement much of its programs, with some cash transfers going to some of the world’s worst human rights abusing and terrorist sponsoring states. For example, an investigation of the UNDP’s activities in North Korea, which the UNDP first commissioned and then tried to hobble when it was getting too close to the truth, just recently concluded that the UN agency was in bed with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong II to a far greater extent than it had previously acknowledged.
The UNDP has refused to cooperate with any truly independent audit of its activities in North Korea. Nevertheless, even the internal investigation it permitted managed to find that at least $20 million was transferred from the UNDP directly to the North Korean regime for so-called development projects – more than twice as much as the UNDP had previously owned up to. The report also found that the UNDP had enabled North Korea to use UN-affiliated accounts to launder money and to import dual-use technology involving items that were “controlled by the U.S. for national security and anti-terrorism reasons” without obtaining a required U.S. export license.[1]
This report follows on the heels of other troubling investigations. One involved the UNDP’s operations in Russia, where an audit found extensive fraud at the UN office in Moscow. Another audit of the UNDP’s global procurement practices found no real controls with respect to vetting of the firms the UNDP is doing business with. For example, the UNDP does not ask new vendors for the identity of their owners or other corporate ties. It does not have an effective system for cross-checking its vendors with UN terrorist sanctions lists.
In light of this scurrilous record, it is shocking to find out how much the United Nations Development Program is currently involved in supporting the rogue terrorist sponsoring regime in Iran. The UNDP alone has been directly providing the Iranian regime with an average of $7 million per year of largesse for the last three years. Including both the regular and extra budgetary resources of the UNDP and all of its partner UN agencies, funds and programs coordinated by the UNDP under the umbrella known as the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, the targeted amount of resources expected to be made available to the Iranian regime during the 2005 – 2009 timeframe is $177 million.[2] And this is just what the UNDP admits to in its public documents!
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Iranian government, manages all external aid and carries overall responsibility for the coordination of the UNDP’s program in Iran. This is the same ministry whose chief told the UN Security Council last year that no UN sanctions can make the Iranian nation retreat from its nuclear enrichment program. The United Nations Development Program is helping to make his words come true.
