The United Nations: Behind the Stage

By Elisabeth Carrio

The United Nations was founded in 1945 to preserve the future generations of the plague of the war, to create the conditions necessary to justice and equality of the people and to support the social progress.

However, the system of the United Nations generates internal and external violence.

Externally, as well as the media and the reactions of the populations against a instrumentalization of the organization highlighted it in countries such as Sierra Leone, Iraq..., evidences are numerous.

Internally, this violence is not very well known and it exists. Not only it is difficult to be recruited by the United Nations if you do not belong to the the rights networks but the law of silence is rigorously applied there, covering sometimes corruption. And yet this violence exists.

This book analyzes from a real experience the reasons explaining the non-respect of the chart. It opens a road for reforms which will perhaps prevent the United Nations not to know the same fate as its predecessor, the League of Nations, which disappeared because of its inability to prevent the human disaster of the second world war.

This book will interest all the citizens of this world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elisabeth Carrio
• Release date: Mar 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463452387

Elisabeth Carrio

After studing in Political Sciences and in Economy, my professional career has known several steps: First Independent Certified Public Accountant and Legal Auditor for twenty years in France, I drapeau FRworked then for multilateral international organizations, such as United Nations, OSCE and European Commission.My missions were various: As Chief of Budget and Finance, expert in strategy, capacity building or evaluator, I participated to national strategic plans in the frame of European Development Funds I acted also as evaluator of projects and programmes in Sub-Sahaian countries, in Cambodia or as expert in capacity building in Syria or Macedonia. These missions often included training, management and monitoring of multicultural or local teams. They all have as aim change management and facilitating the dialog between countries representativesIn France I essentially worked for reinforcing capacities of NGOs or the medical sector: restructuration, advice in organisation, evaluation

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Content

Chapter 1 My first contact with international organizations

Chapter 2 My recruitment in international organizations

Chapter 3 The United Nations and their satellites: an autocratic system based on appearances

Chapter 4 Political decision-making in international organizations

Chapter 5 The management of international organizations

Chapter 6 Corruption in international organizations

Chapter 7 The culture of the international organization mandated to destroy chemical weapons

Chapter 8 The consequences of the management of international organizations by diplomats

Chapter 9 Corruption in a context of financial and international crisis

Chapter 10 International organizations in the service of American interests

Chapter 11 The (non)-appraisal of (non)-performance in international organizations

Chapter 12 The lack of respect for human dignity in international organizations

Chapter 13 Lessons from this testimony

Conclusions

In this essay, the term United Nations will refer to the global system of the United Nations, including not merely the organizations of the United Nations themselves, but also the 38 specialized agencies and the so-called sister organizations, i.e. those with operating rules and procedures derived from the United Nations.

To my daughter

To my friends

2004

INTRODUCTION

I had been appointed to a post with the United Nations, and was elated: what an opportunity! I almost had to pinch myself to confirm that the unimaginable had actually happened. For much of my adult life I had dreamt of being able to serve an international organization belonging to the United Nations system, and thus to share in a hope of helping to bring peace and equality to the peoples of the world.

My subsequent experiences were to show that, while working for the UN was indeed an opportunity, it was the antithesis of what I had looked forward to with such eager anticipation. Whereas I had hoped to devote myself to serving populations in distress, I found myself battling against the undermining of the system from within.

I ended up with the United Nations almost by chance, as a consequence of a decision to change the direction of my professional life. Decades in the service of the private sector had generated in me a need to use my knowledge and experience in the service of humanitarian causes. To share my knowledge and, in so doing, to help those less fortunate than myself to rediscover a sense of dignity and courage, had always been objectives which I have in common with many other people.

If you aim to achieve such a goal, you are then confronted with one fundamental issue: to work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), i.e. for groups representing civil society, or for intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. NGOs are funded by donations and grants from the public and private sectors, while the United Nations are directly financed by their member states. While the difference between the two sectors may not appear considerable at first sight, it is in fact of fundamental importance by virtue of its consequences for the political independence of their decision-making processes. These two types of organization are worlds apart, and can and do produce drastically opposed results.

I was unaware of all this when I took my decision, and was accordingly unencumbered by such considerations. In my opinion at that time, both systems had been created to help people, and thus shared a common objective. Chance came down on the side of the United Nations system, one of whose sister organizations recruited me.

However, this world, or this family, as it is called by those who work for it, has its own informal rules which one is well-advised to understand if one wishes to get off to a better start than I was capable of. Four years were to elapse before I understood that the United Nations Charter was achieving the opposite of what its creators intended. I also realised that, if the purpose of the United Nations was not thoroughly reconsidered, they would share the same fate as their predecessor, the League of Nations.

Before offering some suggestions for the reform of the United Nations, I would like to highlight, on the basis of my personal experience, examples of the extent to which the United Nations have deviated from their initial noble goals.

Chapter 1 My first contact with international organizations

It was during 1998 that I decided to become a professional expatriate – to change my life, as we say. This possibility had often occurred to me, but I had never ventured to follow through on it. Although very little separates a thought from a deed, one nevertheless has to take this decisive step. Indeed, I did not act on a sudden impulse, and it took quite some time for this idea to take shape.

Until then I had enjoyed a comfortable life, lacking any surprises, well regulated… almost tedious. To escape the daily routine, I often went abroad. I like to travel, to be on the move. I have probably inherited this from my family, with an expatriate history going back for several generations, from Spain to France, while missing out Algeria. Although this family history predisposed me to be curious about foreign places, I lived in the same place for 20 years, moving house again and again, often without any real justification, and travelling extensively.

It is during one of these trips that I was confronted with the realisation that my life had to take a new turn, and that time came to move on to new and different things.

I realised suddenly that it was possible for me to travel usefully while at the same time sharing my knowledge; I then contacted associations specializing in the training of accountants or teachers of accounting in Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia, asking whether I could take part in the humanitarian missions that they were organising. They entrusted me with various projects in these countries, projects which I engaged in while also continuing to manage my accountancy practice. For the first time in my life, I experienced the pleasure and satisfaction of working together with people from the most diverse cultural or ethnic backgrounds.

Then something happened during one of these missions in Africa which marked a caesura in my life, and precipitated my decision to definitively change the direction of my professional career.

In 1997, the NGO for which I worked and which was conducting courses in Africa, was contacted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF: The International Monetary Fund (IMF), was created before the end of World War II. Initially, the IMF was mandated to solve balance of payments problems through short-term loans. Since the middle of the 1980s the granting of such appropriations has been made conditional on the adoption of neo-liberal structural adjustment plans.) to organise trainings for deflated people. Do not