Published October 27, 2010
FoxNews.com
The United Nations, which has aggressively pursued financial partnerships with private businesses over the past ten years, has no conflict of interest rules covering all staffers involved in those relationships, nor does it have any effective way to protect against the corporate misuse of their association with the U.N.’s name, according to a report by an internal watchdog agency.
The U.N. also lacks a common set of procedures across its sprawling array of funds, programs, agencies and other entities—more than 35 in all—for vetting those relationships to decide whether they are in the best interest of the U.N. as a whole.
And in the case of one of the fastest growing U.N. initiatives—the so-called U.N. Global Compact of corporations, unions, civil organization and other groups, which boasts more than 5,200 corporate members -- the Global Compact headquarters can’t be sure that the companies involved are living up to the agreements they have signed, according to the unit that is tasked with monitoring the U.N. on a system-wide basis.
Moreover, once corporations sign up to the loosely defined principles of the Global Compact, other U.N. organizations tend to take their bona fides at face value, despite the lack of verification—a “major risk” for the world organization, according to the U.N. watchdog.
Those conclusions are laid out in a specialized report called a “management note” composed by the Geneva-based watchdog organization known as the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), the only U.N. body specifically charged with examining U.N. policies and practices across the world organization.
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