UNITED NATIONS GATE, August 4 – The corruption in the UN system under UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres ranges from impunity for sexual abuse and harassment to lack of financial disclosures and audits to outright double-dipping of benefits, whistleblower UN staff have repeatedly complained to Inner City Press.
Today we have a story of a victim of a long time UNDP official now using the UN "human rights" system in Geneva: "The administrative and judicial authorities of the Republic of Panama, State party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, have recklessly allowed for almost 4 years the violation of a full range of provisions of this UN treaty, as well as the basic human rights of three Benin children who traveled to that country for a 7-week holiday in 2015, which was supposed to end on September 12, 2015. All legal and diplomatic efforts to secure the return of the children to their habitual residence in Benin have encountered the opposition of the former Foreign Affairs Minister of that the Panamanian authorities, who for three years decided to ignore international commitments made by this country in issues relating to children, domestic legislation that criminalize international traffic in minors, as well as basic human rights. Realizing that the Panamanian administrative and judicial authorities were unwilling, to resolve the matter, the left behind parent filed a petition with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in June 2018, pursuant to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure (Panama is a State party to this treaty) which sought to compel the State party to stop breaching articles 8,9,10,11, and 35 of the Convention. The petition was notified to the State party on 02 July 2018,who according to article 6 of the Optional Protocol and paragraph 3 of article 18 of the Rules of Procedure of the Committee , had six months to submit written explications that relate to the admissibility and the merits of the father’s communication. Unfortunately for the estranged parent, the former Vice President and Foreign Affairs Minister of Panama, who had been personally handling the case of his three abducted children since the matter was referred to her in 2016, knows very well the United Nations bureaucracy,where she first worked between 1990 and 1992 at the Panamanian Permanent Mission in New York, and then at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for 15 years occupying different positions. Sources in Panama have confirmed, that this former Central American leader has been using her personal connections in the UN for one year, to ensure that this “ international child abduction file”(in which she appears as the main culprit) never be bloched by the UN Committee in Geneva, so that she is not held accountable for her wrongdoing. It is worth noting that to this day, the three children respectively aged 17,15 and 14 are still wrongfully retained in Panama, and that the State party still has not submitted any written explications to the Committee despite the serious accusations , the documentary evidence presented by the estranged parent ,as well as the three reminders sent by the Committee which have remained unanswered. This attitude of the State party represents a clear violation of the Rules of Procedures of the Committee, as well as a breach of the letter and spirit of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Control, which suggests that the former Panamanian Foreign Minister, who recklessly, decided that the three children will not return to her home country, has been acting behind the scenes to politicize a common law offense. According to the latest reports, following a compensation claim presented to the Committee by the estranged father on July 9th, 2019 (for the emotional harm him and his three children suffered for their wrongful retention for 4 years in Panama), the left behind parent was informed that same day by the UN, that the State party undertook to submit written explications on the merits of the father’s communication before August 31, 2019. Stay tuned!"
Also on UNDP, in a ham-handed cover up befitting of Guterres' corrupt UN system, Steiner has purported to exonerate the double dippers and finger only lower level country office general managers and national officers.
