個案總覽

The Inspector-General of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Fatma Özdamar, receives two highly distressing pieces of news concerning the UNHCR-administered refugee camps in Lundya. The first is an anonymous letter detailing rampant levels of corruption at the camps, including fraud and abuse by UNHCR officials. To make things worse, a key UNHCR donor country informed her that its Ambassador in Lundya had received a personal threat and a demand to leave the country. Investigations revealed that the note to the Ambassador had originated from employees of the Lundyan refugee camps. Thus, the donor country was threatening to withdraw its financial support to UNHCR. Having been told to prioritise the investigation of incidents involving UNHCR staff elsewhere, Inspector-General Özdamar faced hard choices on how to proceed.

Rahul Ratna recently gave up his position in a private corporation to head a new department at the United Nations (UN), Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), whose mandate was to fight fraud and corruption within the UN. As herode the elevator up to his office on the 35th floor of the UN Secretariat building in New York City, a sense of frustration came over him. He began to wonder whether he had made the right decision in taking on his current job. Ratna was aware that he needed sufficient and capable staff, as well as adequate funding for support, if OIOS was to achieve any degree of success in this endeavour. Nonetheless, he was cautious that increasing the budget and headcount was a battle in and of itself. Ratna had just left the Committee Room of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, which vetted all requests for additional staff and funding before such considerations were approved by the General Assembly. However, he was only met with frowns and furrowed brows during an exhaustive 90-minute session in the Committee Room., which remained unconvinced by his arguments and his chances of getting more staff or funding were close to nil. Ratna contemplated his next move. Was it possible to look outside the UN for funding from individual countries and civil society organisations that took a strong stance against corruption and fraud? What about getting outside help from educational institutions to provide training for UN staff? These and other questions swirled through his head as he sat down to ponder his next move.

After the Gulf War of 1991, the UN Security Council imposes economic sanctions on Iraq. To alleviate the crippling effects of the sanctions, the council establishes the Oil-for-Food Programme in 1995 - allowing Iraq to sell its oil and use the revenue to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. Later, in 2000, Rahul Kumar is appointed head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) at the UN. Kumar is responsible for auditing, investigating, evaluating and inspecting UN programmes. He seeks to review the work of OIOS in order to refocus department resources to areas of high risk. A cursory review of UN programmes identifies Oil-for-Food as a major risk in terms of the potential for operational failure and damage to the UN reputation. In the absence of adequate internal resources, Kumar aims to institute a full risk analysis of the programme with the help of external consultants. However, this initiative is blocked.