UN peacekeepers stand guard during a protest by Haitians at UN's main base in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 16. (Reuters File Photo)

Amid charges of waste, fraud, and malfeasance in its multi-billion-dollar peacekeeping operations, the United Nations has suspended one contractor and eight staff members pending further investigations into potential wrongdoing.
The focus of the investigation is procurement, which, according to one UN source, could emerge as a major financial scandal in the history of the organization.
The audit is being confined to five years of peacekeeping-related procurement, including major UN procurement contracts.
A UN staffer who served in one of the peacekeeping missions and is familiar with several others told IPS that “corruption and kickbacks were taken for granted in most overseas operations.“
He cited two examples from recent peacekeeping missions: A former diplomat, currently with a peacekeeping mission in Europe, is said to have received a Mercedes Benz car as a kickback for favoring a particular contractor. The vehicle was sent to an address in a third country and is awaiting shipment until the staffer gets back to his home country.
In another mission, he said, a husband-and-wife team was working in tandem to defraud the organization--mostly on procurement.
“The higher-ups either don’t take notice or are working in cahoots,“ he added.
According to a UN statement released Monday, “the secretary-general [Kofi Annan] is confident that the steps now being taken will help ensure that remaining deficiencies in the UN procurement systems will be quickly uncovered and corrected.“
Another four staff members in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations were recalled from overseas missions in order to assist with the audit. But they will be returned to their duty stations.
Placing eight staff members on special leave is an administrative, not disciplinary, measure that “fully respects the due process rights of the staff members concerned and does not presume any wrongdoing on their part.“
While the audit report is not yet finalized, “it raises a number of issues of serious concern,“ the UN statement said.
“In light of the critical importance of an efficient and effective procurement system to the proper functioning of the United Nations, the Secretariat has provided additional resources to the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) in order to expand its investigation of procurement allegations as quickly as possible,“ the statement added.
The United Nations said it is also continuing to “cooperate fully with ongoing investigations into UN procurement being undertaken by national law enforcement authorities.“
Since 1948, the United Nations has spent a staggering $41 billion in its peacekeeping operations worldwide.
With 15 peacekeeping operations currently in force, the total peacekeeping budget has reached over $5 billion for 2005-2006, compared to the UN’s regular biennial budget of over $3 billion.
Currently, there are nearly 85,000 personnel serving in UN peacekeeping operations--from Lebanon and Western Sahara to Kosovo and Haiti.
As UN peacekeeping costs have skyrocketed arithmetically over the last two decades, waste and corruption have continued to increase geometrically.
One of the biggest setbacks suffered by the United Nations was the loss of about $3.9 million from a compound that housed the offices of the UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia in 1993.
In 1996, the United Nations mistakenly overpaid nearly a million dollars to its peacekeeping staff in Iraq and Kuwait--and tried to rectify the error by frantically demanding its money back.
The overpayment of more than $800,000 was made to about 150 staffers, including military observers, local recruits, and headquarters personnel who served with the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM).
But despite an investigation, the United Nations was unable to track down the staffer responsible for the overpayment.
ANTIWAR.COM

What’s one of the world’s biggest problems?
Global warming.
What is its principal cause? Burning fossil fuels.
Who makes and sells most of these? Oil companies.
If you have any green blood in your veins, you wish that we could significantly reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels like coal.
Over the past year or so in Europe and North America, the big oil companies have been trying to convince us that they are doing just this. For example, for most of last year in the Financial Times and other business publications, advertisements appeared saying that this or that oil company was really concerned about the problem. The campaigns that caught my eye were:
* BP is going “beyond petroleum“.
* Chevron is asking “will you join us“ in helping to produce “human energy?“
* ExxonMobil is “taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges“.
* Shell is asking us to “find out how they are helping“.
* Total is reminding us that “our energy is your energy“.
A two-page advertisement in the Financial Times outlined the problem we all face. In a letter from “Dave“, the chairman and CEO of Chevron, we are told that global demand is outstripping supply. He also tells us that companies, governments and every citizen on the planet must be part of the solution because they are part of the problem.
As an advocate to companies seeking to enhance their corporate reputations, I often suggest that they tell their stakeholders about their good deeds. There is a growing body of research that suggests the companies that people think are good community citizens are the ones that do good and then make sure that people know they are doing good. Corporate advertising is one such mechanism. But I draw the line with this crop of oil company advertisements.
The oil companies have a long, and not very distinguished, track record of self-interest when it comes to exploration, refining and distribution. And environmental groups have been exposing these exploits and criticizing them for years. Recently some governments have also taken to publicly questioning these giant companies.
In November, the US Congress proposed a windfall profits tax on the oil industry. The big five oil companies had made a $30 billion profit in the previous quarter. During a hearing by the Senate’s energy and commerce committees, the companies flatly rejected this social tax. Nothing surprising here.
However, what was surprising was that while the US senators were questioning the oil company chiefs, Dave O’Reilly from Chevron said the oil refiners needed environmental regulations to be relaxed. This plea is because US refining capacity is near its limit and much of the oil-refining technology is outdated. To highlight this problem, the US authorities are investigating a series of accidents in BP’s old Texas facilities.
O’Reilly’s comments, however, provide a window into Big Oil. Their investments in existing technology are so extensive that they have to “sweat the assets“, as the saying goes, in order to achieve their profit targets. They are also a classic example of “greenwash“--the presentation of a company as environmentally friendly while continuing to deploy or advocate the use of destructive tactics in the background.
His comment, while presumably under oath, immediately calls into question the environmental preservation actions of all the oil companies. And it doesn’t enhance the images of corporate advertising and the media that carry it.
Grahame Dowling
COMMONDREAMS.COM

Blind ideology, irrationality and incompetence may be on the rise in some parts of Latin America. Not thankfully in Chile, where Michelle Bachelet, a moderate socialist, secured an impressive victory in Sunday’s presidential election.
Ms Bachelet will become the fourth successive president of a centre-left coalition known as the Concertaci?n and is set to continue with the same brand of political pragmatism and economic openness that has made Chile such a success in recent years. Its neighbours in the increasingly chaotic and unpredictable Andean region have much to learn from its example.
Not everything is rosy. Chile has grown by an annual average of more than 5 per cent over the last decade and a half but the country is not creating enough jobs, especially for younger people. The government should free up labour laws so that younger people can take advantage of part-time working.
It also needs to open up opportunities for poorer Chileans in a society where family and social connections still count for a lot. Chile’s privatised pensions system--hailed as an international model--badly needs an overhaul. Public education is often of poor quality. Public healthcare is better but access needs to be improved.
Even so, by Latin American standards Chile is a success story. Sensible counter-cyclical fiscal management underpins macro-economic stability and that is helping Chile to secure more durable benefits from high prices for copper, its biggest export. At a time when commodity prices are high, other countries would do well to set up Chilean-style stabilisation funds. Chile has been open to the opportunities stemming from free trade. It is the only country in South America to have concluded a deal with the US and recently clinched a deal with China--again a regional precedent.
Chile has successfully tapped private capital to build its infrastructure. The contrast between the quality of its roads and those in Brazil or Venezuela is stark. Chile’s politicians have had the maturity to transcend ideological divisions ensnaring their country for decades. Augusto Pinochet, the country’s former dictator, is being prosecuted through the courts for human rights abuses and more recently tax offences, in actions that have underlined the resilience of local institutions.
The fact that Mr Pinochet’s name was barely mentioned in the election campaign might seem surprising in view of Ms Bachelet’s personal history. Her father--a military officer opposed to the military coup--died after being tortured by fellow officers. Ms Bachelet herself was detained and tortured after the coup and spent years in exile.
This is surely a sign of the strength of the political consensus that has been built. In a region where many politicians seem only too anxious to re-live the violent struggles of the past, that seems to be a cause for optimism.
FT.COM

In South Africa, indeed around the world, we are raised on a strict diet of justice as retribution. With violent crimes on a shocking upsurge, with the hideous crimes of child rape and abuse on the increase, there are nowadays frequent calls--backed by wide public support--to restore capital punishment. Mercifully, South Africa’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the death penalty-Ñwhich South Africans eliminated at the same time we were liberated from apartheidÑ-is unconstitutional.
It was a mercy that our country chose to go the way of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission--granting amnesty in exchange for the truth. This was ultimately based on the principles of restorative justice and ubuntu.
At the TRC hearings we were exposed to gruesome details about atrocities that were committed to uphold or to oppose apartheid. “We gave him drugged coffee and shot him in the head and then we burned his body. As it takes 7-8 hours for a human body to burn, we had a braaivleis on the side, drinking beer and eating meat.“ How low men can sink in our inhumanity!
Each time such horrible stories were published, we had to remind ourselves that, yes indeed, the acts were demonic, but the perpetrators remained each a child of God. A monster has no moral responsibility and so cannot be held accountable; but even more seriously, designating someone a monster closes the door to possible rehabilitation. Restorative justice and ubuntu are based firmly on the recognition of the fundamental humanity of even the worst possible offender.
We cannot give up on anybody. If it was true that people could not change, once a murderer always a murderer, then the whole TRC process would have been impossible. It happened because we believed that even the worst racist had the capacity to change.
The type of justice South Africa practised, what I call “restorative justice“ is, unlike retribution, not basically concerned with punishment, it is not fundamentally punitive. It sets high store by healing. The offence has caused a breach in relations and this breach needs to be healed. It regards the offender as a person, as a subject with a sense of responsibility and a sense of shame, who needs to be reintegrated into the community and not ostracised.
There is a wealth of wisdom in the old ways of African society. Justice was a communal affair and society set a high store by social harmony and peace. The belief was that a person is a person only through other persons, and a broken person needed to be helped to heal. What the offence had disturbed should be restored, and the offender and the victim had to be helped to be reconciled. Justice as retribution often ignores the victim and the system is usually impersonal and cold. Restorative justice is hopeful. It believes that even the worst offender can become a better person.
This does not mean being soft on crime. Offenders must realise the seriousness of their offences by the kind of sentences they get, but there must be hope, hope that the offender can become a useful member of society, after paying the price they owe to society. When we act as if we really believe that someone can be better, is better, they will often rise to our expectations.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
a winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

A US flag flies over a Wal-Mart Supercenter sign May 12 in Lebanon, Missouri, USA. (AFP File Photo)

The US writer Barbara Ehrenreich related her own experience of Wal-Mart, where she worked for $7 an hour, in her book Nickel and Dimed. This extract describes the company’s preferred self-image.
We begin with a video, about 15 minutes long, on the history and philosophy of Wal-Mart, or, as an anthropological observer might call it, the Cult of Sam. First young Sam Walton, in uniform, comes back from the war. He starts a store, a sort of five-and-dime; he marries and fathers four attractive children; he receives a Medal of Freedom from President Bush, after which he promptly dies, making way for the eulogies. But the company goes on, yes indeed. Here the arc of the story soars upward unstoppably, pausing only to mark some fresh milestone of corporate expansion.
1992: Wal-Mart becomes the largest retailer in the world. 1997: sales top $100bn. 1998: the number of Wal-Mart associates hits 825,000, making Wal-Mart the largest private employer in the nation. Each landmark date is accompanied by a clip showing throngs of shoppers, swarms of associates, or scenes of handsome new stores and their adjoining parking lots. Over and over we hear in voiceover or see in graphic display the “three principles“, which are maddeningly, even defiantly, non-parallel: “respect for the individual, exceeding customers’ expectations, strive for excellence“.
“Respect for the individual“ is where we, the associates, come in, because vast as Wal-Mart is, and tiny as we may be as individuals, everything depends on us. Sam always said, and is shown saying, that “the best ideas come from the associates“--for example, the idea of having a “people greeter“, an elderly employee (excuse me, associate) who welcomes customers as they enter the store.
Three times during the orientation, which began at three and stretches to nearly eleven, we are reminded that this brainstorm originated in a mere associate, and who knows what revolutions in retailing each one of us may propose? Because our ideas are welcome, more than welcome, and we are to think of our managers not as bosses but as “servant leaders“, serving us as well as the customers.
Of course, all is not total harmony, in every instance, between associates and their servant-leaders. A video on “associate honesty“ shows a cashier being videotaped as he pockets some bills from the cash register. Drums beat ominously as he is led away in handcuffs and sentenced to four years.
The theme of covert tensions, overcome by right thinking and positive attitude, continues in the 12-minute video entitled “You’ve Picked a Great Place to Work“. Here various associates testify to the “essential feeling of family for which Wal-Mart is so well-known“, leading up to the conclusion that we don’t need a union. Once, long ago, unions had a place in American society, but they “no longer have much to offer workers“, which is why people are leaving them “by the droves“. Wal-Mart is booming; unions are declining: judge for yourself.
But we are warned that “unions have been targeting Wal-Mart for years“. Why? For the dues money of course. Think of what you would lose with a union: first, your dues money, which could be $20 a month “and sometimes much more“. Second, you would lose “your voice“ because the union would insist on doing your talking for you. Finally, you might lose even your wages and benefits because they would all be “at risk on the bargaining table“.
MONDEDIPLO.COM