Corrupt United Nations to Make Life Harder for Whistleblowers

06 Jan, 2017 by Dave Blount

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Rather than cleaning up its act by cracking down on corruption, the United Nations is instead effectively cracking down on the whistleblowers who bring that corruption to light:

Six months after a United Nations watchdog report suggested better protection for UN whistleblowers, the global bureaucracy is about to produce a policy that could make a bad situation for those employees a lot worse. …

Among other things, critics charge the new whistleblower policy reinforces a two-tier standard at the scandal-scarred UN, in which only those pointing fingers at the most serious kinds of wrongdoing get full protection for their actions.

What qualifies as serious wrongdoing is determined by the U.N.’s own Office for Internal Oversight Services, “which itself in the past has been charged with retaliatory action against its investigators.” Whistleblowers will only find out after sounding the alarm whether their complaint is regarded as serious wrongdoing that effects the “public interest.” If the answer is no, the hammer may come down on their heads. There will not even be a pretense of protection against firing or more subtle retaliation like bad performance ratings, no work assignments, excessive work assignments, denial of promotion, et cetera.

According to the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based organization that supports whistleblowers, “UN management is narrowing the definition of a ‘protected disclosure’ in a revised policy,” and “it should not be made more restrictive.”

Corrupt U.N. bureaucrats respond that they are only trying to keep petty grievances from clogging up the system.

American taxpayers have a grievance that is anything but petty. In addition to hosting this hostile club for Islamists, dictators, and scoundrels, we pay 22% of the U.N. Secretariat’s regular budget and 28.57% of the still more massive U.N. peacekeeping budget. Enough is enough.