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Congo-Kinshasa: UN Has Lost Face
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The East African (Nairobi)
COLUMN
5 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Oscar Kimanuka
Nairobi
The revelation that Pakistani and Indian members of the United Nations Mission in the Congo sold weapons in exchange for minerals once again puts the UN under the spotlight.
This is not new, though. In 2005, a classified UN report did prompt the then secretary general Kofi Annan to admit that the UN peacekeepers and staff sexually abused or exploited war refugees in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The sale of arms and ammunitions by the UN personnel is something that should be thoroughly investigated and the culprits brought to book.
According to Rwanda's Minister for Foreign Affairs, since the allegations are against members of the UN, the world body must promptly investigate the charges of misconduct by the peacekeepers.
The catalogue of scandals involving UN personnel entrusted with the delicate exercise of peacekeeping is long. But what is unfortunate is the lack of will by the UN and indeed the international community to find durable solutions to these scandals.
IT IS TIME FOR THE UN TO wake up to reality: The UN scandals should not be looked at as unfortunate accidents. Neither are they casual blots on the reputation of what is otherwise an idealistic organisation. These and other unreported scandals remain inherent in the structure of the United Nations.
THE TROUBLE WITH THE United Nations is not so much that it has scandals but that it is managed like an old-fashioned corporation or bureaucracy.
And like Max Weber, a German sociologist pointed out many years ago, bureaucracy is the co-efficient of inefficiency. It uses other people's resources, financial and material, for purposes of its own.
Top managers occasionally engage in profitable side ventures that the senior executives may or may not know about.
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Revelations such as the recent BBC investigative report are routinely dismissed as an isolated case of a few individuals with the larger UN system.
The idea that the UN Secretary General can act as global representative or even that the UN staff can act as an honest and effective international civil service, will cease to be taken seriously with scandals such as that in Congo.
Oscar Kimanuka is a commentator on social and economic issues based in Kigali.
Oscar, you speak out of my heart! Watch my comment recently. Reinhard
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