UN Cash Cow

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | March 21, 2013

IPS reports on the UN’s burgeoning bureaucracy, arguing it has become a haven for out of office world leaders, most recently Mary Robinson, former Irish president (1990 to 1997), who was appointed last week as the secretary-general’s Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Robinson is making her rounds in New York, pumping her oddly-named new NGO “Mary Robinson Foundation–Climate Justice (MRFCJ)” at the Carnegie Council’s handsome upper East Side headquarters.

According to IPS, France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy has been floated for a job as well. Michele Bachelet, who just announced she is quitting the troubled UN Women and is expected to run again for office in Chile, is a safe bet to be tapped as a future UN envoy.

Others ex-leaders drawing a UN salary or per diem include, according to IPS: Romano Prodi, prime minister of Italy (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) as U.N. Special Envoy for the Sahel and Jose Ramos-Horta, president of Timor-Leste (2007-2012) as head of the U.N. Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau, Helen Clark, prime minister of New Zealand (1999-2008), was the first woman to be appointed as administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (since April 2009) and is expected to get another four-year appointment from the UN Secretary General next month.

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