N. Korea Denies Misuse of UNDP Funds

Update 1/26:   The UNDP North Korea program has pretty much hit the wall.  The UN says  it will “adjust the North Korea program and delay its implementation” until “approved,” which most likely means until the audit is completed.   The U.S. annual allocation to the UNDP remains, but it has decided to withhold  all of those funds for the time being, and may propose an end to all UN programs in North Korea, except the humanitarian ones.

Here’s the  one that really  fascinates me:  The UN Population Fund.  Yes, that’s right:  a  dying nation with a (probably) shrinking population of shrinking people has a UN population control program!   In this particular context, this would be tasteless humor if the UN bureaucracy hadn’t given it its own  budget allocation. 

I had asked this question during the exchange of some e-mails with Claudia Rosett of the Wall Street Journal, who  also published  a story under the provocative title, “Ban’s First Cover-Up.”  Perhaps that’s premature, but recall Ban Ki Moon’s previous promise to allow an “external” audit of the programs.   Now, Ban is backtracking and giving the job to an internal UN audit agency  with a less-than-unimpeachable record for integrity:  its former head, Vladimir Kuznetsov,  was indicted for bribery and money laundering in 2005; he goes on trial next month.  The agency itself  performed poorly during Oil-for-Food.  

This is a familiar pattern with Ban.  Ban is  an exceptionally pliable man with a purge-survival  record  bested only by Nikita  Khruschev, and he has learned that he can mollify his critics by telling them what they want to hear, and then quietly go about doing something  different when no one is watching.  Ignore what Ban Ki Moon says.  Watch what Ban Ki Moon does.

What I cannot emphasize enough:  the real action is at the World Food Program.  We need more pressure on North Korea — all forms of pressure — to get it to accept openly monitored food aid for all of its people.  This issue is far closer to the base of the iceberg than nuclear negotiations, because food aid drives at the regime-imposed isolation, the machinery of selective deprivation,  and the political system  they sustain. 

Updates:    In my visitors’ log:

It’s like I’ve been firing tracer rounds lately (they’d have found GI Korea, too).  Meanwhile, the  slow starvation of the  North Korean people goes on.

The number of undernourished people in North Korea has more than doubled over the past decade with a diminishing dietary energy supply despite the country’s increased food production, a latest report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

Released in Rome on Wednesday, FAO’s annual flagship report, “Status of Food and Agriculture,” put the number of undernourished in North Korea at 7.9 million for 2001-2003, more than twice as many as the 3.6 million recorded for 1990-1992.

Much of this malnutrition obviously took place while the UN World Food Program’s feeding operations were at their peak, further suggesting that diversion was widespread.  I emphasize that it’s the North Korean government that bears primary responsibility for this, not the WFP, whose best intentions  the North Koreans frustrated at every turn.  But had the WFP been tougher and forced the military and the elite to share in this misery, the regime might have had to agree to  real transparency and effective monitoring.

Original Post:   Background here.   

North Korea on Thursday rejected an allegation by the United States that it misused funds it took from the United Nations Development Program, accusing Washington of conducting a smear campaign to increase pressure on Pyongyang.

“We will continue to develop our cooperative relationship with all U.N. agencies including the United Nations Development Program, but we will never overlook any attempt to politicize the cooperative relationship and will never accept any conditional or inappropriate assistance from the beginning,” Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a report carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the North’s main media outlet.  [link]

By “conditional,” they are probably referring to monitoring that the aid goes to the people it was intended to help, instead of to purposes that would violate UN Resolutions 1695 and 1718.

Prediction:  more press  attention to be focused on the misuse and misappropriation of food aid.