Amid UN80 Pay to Play ESCAP Fat Cats Stay In While Local Staff Cut Loose Reform Call

Amid UN80 Pay to Play ESCAP Fat Cats Stay In While Local Staff Cut Loose Reform Call by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack UN GATE, Aug 4 – How corrupt is today's UN under Antonio Guterres? How corrupt will it remain, given the current NextSG candidates and with USUN Mike Waltz praising "UN80" for no reason, while colluding in banning the Press? Guterres' staff tell Inner City Press things have hit a new low about which his spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming refuse all Press questions. The below is about inequitable cuts at UN ESCAP in Thailand. Now this on August 4, 2026, staff for reform: We are  writing to raise three interlocking failures in the UN's system of accountability that directly undermine the goals of the UN80 initiative. These are not peripheral administrative issues — they go to whether staff can trust that the Organization applies its own rules to itself. Reform that streamlines budgets and structures while leaving this broken will not restore staff confidence, and will not survive scrutiny from Member States who are already on record raising concerns.  THE UNDT/UNAT PROCESS IS TOO SLOW TO DELIVER JUSTICE A staff member with a legitimate grievance today faces a process that can run three to five years from the original administrative decision to a final UNAT judgment, once management evaluation, first-instance UNDT proceedings, and appellate review are added together — and UNAT frequently remands cases back to UNDT for further fact-finding, restarting part of that clock. This is not a fringe complaint. The Secretary-General's own Expert Panel on UN Internal Justice, reporting in November 2025, concluded that a fundamental overhaul is essential and described the current system as costly in terms of time, staff dissatisfaction, and the reputation of the Organization. The Panel's own language makes the point for us: a system whose independent reviewers say a redesign would resolve grievances "far more quickly and effectively" is, by their own admission, currently neither quick nor effective. United Nations  The cost of that delay is not abstract. It is staff members living for years under contract uncertainty, stalled careers, and — for many, especially those whose immigration or residency status is tied to their UN post — sustained strain on their families while a case grinds through the system. UN80 reform cannot claim to modernize the Organization while leaving this timeline untouched.  STAFF REPRESENTATIVE BODIES ARE NOT DOING THE JOB THEY EXIST TO DO Staff representative structures exist specifically to escalate exactly this kind of systemic failure to management and to Member States. Their silence on the scale and duration of the UNDT/UNAT backlog is itself a failure of representation. If staff associations will not put this on record, the burden falls on individual staff and on this reform process to do so instead. UN80 should not treat the absence of formal complaint from staff representative bodies as evidence that the problem is minor — it is evidence that the representative function itself needs review as part of this reform. Staff  representatives are in a scary mode due to management retaliation and harassment.   OIOS IS OBSTRUCTING THE COURTS WITH INCOMPLETE INVESTIGATIONS The tribunals themselves have documented this. In one case, both the UNRWA Dispute Tribunal and UNAT found that the Agency had treated an OIOS investigation as if it were conclusive evidence rather than subjecting it to independent assessment, and both tribunals criticized this as an abdication of responsibility — the Dispute Tribunal ultimately rescinded the termination because the underlying investigative conclusions could not withstand scrutiny. That is not an isolated drafting error. It is a structural pattern: administration relies on OIOS findings as though they were dispositive, tribunals are then left to unwind disciplinary decisions built on investigations that do not hold up, and the staff member pays for that gap in years of litigation.  When OIOS investigations are incomplete or under-substantiated, the cost does not fall on OIOS. It falls on the tribunals, who must do the fact-finding OIOS should have done, and on the staff member, whose case is prolonged by exactly that remand cycle described above. Any UN80 reform of oversight functions must include a hard look at OIOS investigation quality and timeliness as a direct driver of tribunal delay — not treat OIOS and the tribunals as separate reform tracks.  UN80 should not proceed with structural or budgetary reform of oversight and internal justice functions without first commissioning a joint review of: (a) UNDT/UNAT case duration data end-to-end, including remand cycles; (b) the adequacy of staff representative escalation on this issue; (c) OIOS investigation completeness rates as measured against tribunal findings that overturn or criticize them; and (d) OIOS investigator qualifications and independence.   On point (d) specifically: OIOS investigations frequently form the sole factual basis for disciplinary and non-renewal decisions that are later challenged in tribunal, yet there is no public standard confirming that OIOS investigators hold professional investigative credentials or training in ethics-compliant interview methodology. UN80 should require OIOS to publish minimum qualification standards for investigative staff, mandate documented training in interview technique and evidentiary standards, and commission an independent audit of hiring and promotion decisions within OIOS to rule out conflicts of interest — including cases where investigators or their family members/wives  have been recruited into positions connected to the offices or managers they investigate.Some taking bribes to retaliate staff members who expose corruption and irregularities. Given that tribunals have already found individual OIOS investigations could not withstand scrutiny, the burden should be on OIOS to demonstrate its investigative workforce meets a defensible professional standard, not on staff to keep proving it doesn't case by case. Previously: Dear Matthew Russell Lee,  The plan for abolishment from UN-ESCAP  is directed only at GS staff, while senior positions—P-5, D-1, D-2, and USG—remain untouched. The salary of a single one of these officials is equivalent to that of fifty or more local staff members. If justice truly mattered, it would be these high-level posts under review—not the livelihoods of ordinary staff. Many of these officials are beyond retirement age, largely inactive in their offices, while their administrative assistants act more like personal aides or cooks than contributors to the Organization’s actual work.  This is not about fairness—it is about selfishness and corruption. Guterres and his team have revealed themselves as weak, wicked, and corrupt. They cling to their privileges while sacrificing the most vulnerable staff, simply because they hold the power to decide.  It is therefore no surprise that more and more staff are coming to agree that the UN has become useless, especially under the failed leadership of Guterres.  Guterres appears increasingly surrounded by what staff describe as “phone-call human resource advisors and legal officers.”    Martha Helena Lopez, the Secretary-General’s senior advisor on human resources, has become emblematic of this “don’t care” policy. Observers note she looks fatigued, more focused on retirement than on strengthening governance. Rather than engaging with tribunal rulings, she and her team have defaulted to what staff now mockingly call “phone-call directives,” issuing guidance over the phone without regard to established precedent or proper review.  In New York, staff have started referring to her and her legal colleagues as “phone-call officers and advisors” because of their casual approach to matters of grave consequence. Their advice to the Secretary-General effectively shields misconduct from judicial scrutiny, entrenches his culture of impunity.  Guterres, they say, should end censorship. Application was made on June 19, 2025. Watch this site. *** Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron. 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