Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/undp4208media042008.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 20 -- Alone among UN agencies, the UN Development Program has spent money and time to create a media "fast reaction team" to seek to ostensibly rebut and discredit reporting and reporters critical of UNDP and its high officials. When the coordinator of its Millennium Campaign Eveline Herfkens was accused of taking $7000 a month from the Dutch government while ostensibly working only for the UN system, UNDP's online "For the Record" leaped
On allegations about procurement irregularities in Burundi
UNDP's seeming rebuttals are selective: the gist of Inner City Press' reporting about UNDP in Burundi is that UNDP refused to give information about the contracting irregularity to representatives of two donor member states who asked -- and then arranged a job for one of the requesters. Despite a track record of refusing to show documents and audits even to its funders, UNDP has now claimed that it would be willing to show anything on its Intranet to interested reporters. But UNDP has delayed and finally declined in answer basic factual questions from Inner City Press, preferring to wait and respond selectively on its "For the Record" blog-like page. UNDP is clearly proud of the page. But what does it choose to respond to?
Earlier this month, the Associated Press ran articles severely critical of the award, by UNDP
-the Fiji Women's Rights Movement (Pacific)
-International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic (USA)
-Popular Education Network of Women from Latin America and the Caribbean
-Women's Action for Change (Pacific)
-Women's Development Collective (South East Asia)
-Women in Development Europe
-Young Women Activists (Global)
UNDP also claims it shares the information on its Intranet with its "NGO partners." We'll see
Regarding UNDP's claims that it would happily show information from its intranet to reporters, and offer briefings on subjects needing clarification, not only have Kemal Dervis and Ad Melkert not taken questions in months, here after a week's delay was UNDP's response to two simple factual questions from Inner City Press:
In a message dated 4/2/2008 1:03:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, christina.lonigro [at] undp.org writes:
On your questions regarding compensation for the Algiers bombing, due to the ongoing processing of claims and the Brahimi investigation, I have no information to give you at this time.
On your question at the briefing regarding a Fox News
Underlying the still-disputed Venezuela contract issue
UNDP also recently reached out to take issue with media reports in Malaysia
"In a related development, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) clarified that UNDP national expert in Sarawak for the peat swamp project, Dr Alexander Sayok, is a staff of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) and not a staff of the UNDP and thus Dr Sayok's comments on the lack of enforcement against wildlife abuse in Sarawak was his personal view.
"When contacted, the UNDP Kuala Lumpur spokesman said that the UNDP did not have an office in Sarawak and thus it could not give any official comments on issues in this state. 'However, the coverage by The Star
And see, www.innercitypress.com/undp4208media042008.html