MEDIA: U.N. Image Being Tarnished by Lopsided Coverage

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations is complaining that its public image is being unfairly tarnished by lopsided media coverage of waste, fraud and mismanagement in the world body.

Under-Secretary-General Karl Paschke, head of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) says that whenever he releases his annual report, he tries to accentuate the positive over the negative. “But I cannot help the media’s refusal to pick up such angles and instead focus on the negative,” he adds.

The perception of oversight work in the United Nations or any other large bureaucracy would always be a problem, Paschke told the U.N.’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee, pointing out that his reports usually focus on how the Organisation fights abuse.

In its annual report released in October, the OIOS detailed multiple cases of fraud and overpayments running into millions of dollars. The audit investigations found 209 individual cases of fraud, including 191 cases where staff members used their extended families to cheat the Organisation.

Last month the London Sunday Times, in an article titled “Runaway Gravy Train,” said that several U.N. officials were involved in “a sleaze scandal.”

The newspaper said that senior U.N. officials responsible for improving the living conditions of the world’s poorest people, have squandered hundreds and thousands of dollars “by abusing their positions.” The article drew heavily from the OIOS annual report.

Tryggve Gjesdal of Norway said the publication of the OIOS annual report was an occasion for unfair media coverage of various improper activities in the United Nations. ‘One major newspaper had proceeded from the assumption that corruption was endemic in the United Nations, and was difficult to root out.”

Without naming the Sunday Times, he said about two-thirds of the material in the article seemed to have been selected for a particular purpose, “and depicted a world of petty criminality that would be difficult for anyone familiar with the Organisation to recognize.”

Soong Chull Shin of South Korea said that although the media tended to focus only on the more controversial results of oversight work – casting the United Nations in an unfavourable light – the OIOS should be careful in conveying “a more balanced picture” of the Organisation.

Pasche said that even though some media accounts of his annual report had been perceptive, the Sunday Times article “had distorted the reality that existed in the United Nations and had used some internal documents.” to make its case.

The Organisation had found it difficult to restrict confidential documents, he said, because of the easy availability of photo-copying machines. “Once draft reports were sent out, it was almost impossible to trace leaks and plug them. It would be difficult to stop such a phenomenon,” he added.

In its report, OIOS exposed the overpayments of more than 400,000 dollars from the U.N. pension fund to survivors of deceased beneficiaries. And at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), OIOS auditors discovered that funds were being siphoned off through the submission of false medical reimbursement claims on behalf of registered refugees.

The U.N. Office in Geneva last year brought criminal charges against a staffer at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), who had defrauded the organisation of more than 600,000 dollars.

These losses come at a time when the financially-ailing world body is struggling for survival. Currently, the United Nations is owed more than two billion dollars in overdue payments from member states, including more than 1.2 billion dollars owed by the United States alone.

One of the biggest unresolved cases is the loss of some 3.9 million dollars from a compound that housed the offices of the U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia in 1993. Although Scotland Yard was called in to investigate the loss, the United Nations has never found the money.

Paschke said that despite the waste and mismanagement in the U.N. system, the three-year-old OIOS has saved the United Nations about 29.3 million dollars in the last year alone. But the media invariably plays down such positive stories.

“The savings also do not take into account the deterrent factor,” he said, since the OIOS is now “looking over the shoulders of every manager.”