UN Allows Corruption While Children Starve

UN Allows Corruption While Children Starve by Freedom Alliance September 8, 2005

This week, the United Nations Development Fund released a study which concludes that one billion people survive on less than $1 a day; 10.7 million children die of starvation before their fifth birthday; and 115 million children have no school and get no education. American taxpayers entrust billions of dollars in aid each year to the United Nations and its various agencies that are supposed to alleviate these problems, but the organization wants even more. What is worse, is that the UN is mired in corruption and beleaguered by poor management. Another report released this week by the Independent Inquiry Committee, a panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and empowered to investigate the UN's massive oil-for-food scandal, found widespread mismanagement and corruption. The Committee concluded that there are "serious instances of illicit, unethical, and corrupt behavior within the United Nations," and there was "wholesale corruption" within the Oil-for-Food program. The Volcker Committee went on to criticize UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's oversight of the program and said that decisions in the Oil-for-Food program "were delayed, bungled, or simply shunned." There were "numerous administrative failings" in running the program to include "a grievous absence of effective auditing and management controls" and that corruption "has been far too common." Another UN employee – Vladimir Kuznetsov – was recently indicted on money laundering charges. Kuznetsov was in charge of the UN's budget oversight committee. "With all the corruption and mismanagement up at the UN," said Freedom Alliance president Tom Kilgannon, "it is no wonder children are starving. Our tax dollars would be better invested in responsible charities who would do a much better job at getting aid to those who need it than would the United Nations."