DEVELOPMENT-UN: First of Turner’s Billion Announced

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UNITED NATIONS, May 20 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations Foundation, created to disburse the one-billion-dollar gift conferred on the United Nations by U.S. media mogul Ted Turner, Wednesday announced its first award of 22 million dollars for development work.

The Foundation, headed by former U.S. Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth, awarded 22 grants to U.N. agencies to support their projects. Among them, children’s health received 6.5 million dollars, the environment 1.4 million dollars and women and population 9.3 million dollars.

The Foundation funds are in the form of supplementary payments to existing U.N. projects and comprise of Time-Warner stock worth 100 million dollars a year. There is a cap of 18 million shares of Time-Warner stock for the entire gift.

Among the largest projects receiving the first tranche of grant money are; a 2.9-million-dollar programme to eradicate guinea worm disease in Africa, which is being undertaken by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF); a 2.1-million-dollar U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) drive to improve reproductive health care in the Philippines; and a three-million-dollar bilingual literacy programme in Quechua and Spanish for Bolivia, also run by UNFPA.

The projects also include UNICEF campaigns against intestinal parasites in Vietnam and measles in Nigeria, a joint U.N. Development Programme and U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNDP- UNIFEM) drive to combat violence against women in Latin America, and UNDP mine awareness, clearance and reintegration programmes in Bosnia-Hercegovina and several other mine-infested zones.

The disbursements came after months of review by both the U.N. Foundation and by the U.N. International Partnership Trust Fund (UNFIP), a special body created to coordinate and channel the funds donated by Turner. As one U.N. agency official privately noted to IPS, the entire U.N. system had been lobbying intensely to receive the grants ever since Turner made a surprise announcement of the billion-dollar donation last September.

The initial round of grants showed the interest by Turner and his foundation in the work being done by UNICEF (whose projects received 30 percent of the current disbursement) and by UNFPA (which received about 36 percent).

The latter agency has repeatedly drawn fire within the United States for its support of family planning programmes, which has led U.S. critics like Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey to accuse the UNFPA of assisting other countries’ abortion or forced sterilisation programmes – charges the agency strongly denies.

Turner, a maverick U.S. businessman who has frequently attacked conservatives like North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms for their lack of support for the United Nations, therefore is helping to fund work by an agency that has often struggled for U.S. Congressional support. But Wirth denied there was any connection between the U.N. Foundation’s support for UNFPA programmes and the political controversy.

The abortion debate and its effect on UNFPA funding, Wirth said, “has to be worked out in the U.S. Congress.” In general, he added, “there is very broad support for family planning, and for women’s choices” within the U.S. public.

“We did not play politics with our choice of projects,” said Miles Stoby, UNFIP executive director, who stressed that the U.N. officials involved in selecting projects for grant review by the Foundation emphasised the need for innovation and quality.

Wirth added that there had been several other criteria for grant recipients, including that the projects be preventive, deal with urgent needs, encourage “bottom-up” community involvement and engage the private sector.

For that reason, several suggestions for infrastructure projects – many involving environmental efforts by the U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP), among other agencies – were turned down by the Foundation. Only some six percent of the current disbursement goes to environmental projects, a low figure given Turner’s outspoken concerns over global warming and other environmental problems.

The disbursement process largely avoided controversy over whether Turner’s money would herald a new era in which the private sector, not governments, provides funds and influences for the work done by the United Nations performs.

The United Nations has taken pains to show that it is only adding funds to existing initiatives, and has been adamant that countries like the United States – which owes the word body more than 1.5 billion dollars in regular and peacekeeping dues – should not be let off the hook because of the new stream of private money.

“The U.N. Foundation should not be an excuse for the overseas development responsibilities of traditional donors to wither away,” Stoby warned. The Foundation, in any case, has a lifespan of ten years, Wirth added – after which, he promised, it would shut down unless new philanthropic gifts emerge.