After years of secrecy and resistance from the United Nations’ flagship anti-poverty agency, the United States has called forcefully upon the United Nations Development Program to provide full details of its spending and financial oversight, or face the possibility of a cut-off of its funding.
The cutoff threat came in the form of a remarkably blunt statement on Sept. 6 from Joseph M. Torsella, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. charged with issues of management and reform, at the fall meeting of UNDP’s 36-member supervisory Executive Board, where the U.S. is a member.
“We have reached a juncture where we have to ask the hard question: Will UNDP adopt full public disclosure as its policy, and when?” Torsella declared. “The answer will have a profound impact on the perception of UNDP’s integrity and on the support it receives from donor and program countries in the years ahead.”
With that, the struggle to induce the secretive UNDP to lift some of the veils swathing its operations or face financial penalties has reached a new pitch, as Torsella told the often controversial U.N. agency that it must make all of its “audit, oversight, and financial information public as soon as possible.”
The clear implication was that if UNDP, a $5.3 billion organization which manages and coordinates most of the U.N.’s development and social programs world-wide, did not do so, its continued funding would be under threat.
