•User Rating•: / 0
•Poor••Best• 

Government donor agencies ranging from Britain’s DFID to Switzerland’s SDC and Canada’s CIDA shunt extraordinary amounts of funds every year into supporting elaborate monitoring procedures regarding the use of international aid. All too often, however, the results are ignored - or are published far too late – to prompt little effective action. One way of getting people to notice would be the creation of a specialized media reporting entity that could expose the weaknesses in the international aid business – including the use and abuse of donor funding - and encourage much-needed reform.

The forced resignation of former World Bank director Paul Wolfowitz for nepotism was largely the result of intense pressure by an irate staff who saw his actions as lacking in dignity and concern for the well-being of the organization. The willingness of the press to pursue the issue was another contributing factor.

Wrongdoing, of course, is nothing new to the international aid industry.

But in most cases there is no dogged media reporting or public will to bring the culprits to task. The fact that Mr. Wolfowitz was appointed in the first place by the Bush administration only underlines the practice of many member states (who consider it their right) to dump political appointees – regardless of competence – on the United Nations and other international agencies. This does little for the credibility of these organizations.

The UN’s 53-member Commission on Sustainable Development recently named Zimbabwe (led by its corrupt and increasingly arrogant president, Robert Mugabe, whose willingness to economically destroy his country and cause rampant misery and deaths) to head the key UN body. This is another example of the disdain that countries - this time African - often harbour for the mandates of institutions that are supposed to serve humanity and not dictatorial regimes. Another is the systematic failure of governments to hold their peacekeeping soldiers accountable for rape or trafficking.

International aid is in desperate need of more critical reporting. This is crucial if committed aid professionals - and there are many - are to do their jobs properly. Many feel frustrated by their inability to thwart the inherent nepotism, corruption, and power abuses that pervade much of the system.

Aid organizations regularly cover up managerial dysfunction, including sexual harassment, by ignoring the actions of those responsible. This includes the director of WIPO in Geneva lying about his age to stay in power longer, the misappropriation of US funds by private contractors in the Middle East – seven billion dollars appear to have disappeared in Iraq alone - and the placement of inappropriate personnel in well-paid UN positions by in-house “mafiosi” to the detriment of more qualified individuals.

Many UN employees working in Geneva or New York know only too well cases of incompetent officials doing everything possible to avoid doing real work or getting their hands dirty in the field. (The Whistleblower section of the Essential Edge seeks precisely to help dig up such incidents).