UNFPA Competence Challenged at Executive Board Meeting

By C-FAM Staff | 2003

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) UNFPA Competence Challenged at Executive Board Meeting United Nations Population Fund Executive Director Thoraya Obaid faced a series of pointed questions this week at a meeting of the UNFPA Executive Board, many of them from the population control agency's most loyal allies. Obaid's top donor countries were concerned with the adequacy of UNFPA's management and financial reporting. The United Kingdom, Sweden, Benin, Denmark, the United States, Ireland and Canada all questioned whether UNFPA had the analytical ability to determine if its programs were successful.

     As an example of UNFPA's continuing oversight problems, a major UNFPA statistical document released this week at the meeting contained a serious mistake, a mistake acknowledged by Obaid in her comments to the Executive Board. According to the document, UNFPA spending on reproductive health and family planning in 2002 had dropped significantly, from $119 million to $104.9 million, when in reality such spending rose to almost $130 million. The document, which relied on the incorrect figure for its analysis of UNFPA activities, was thereby rendered largely useless.

     Issues regarding financial and programmatic mismanagement at UNFPA were first raised by C-FAM and the International Organizations Research Group (IORG) in their investigative white paper on the agency, "The United Nations Population Fund: Assault on the World's Peoples." Citing UN audit documents, the paper reported that UNFPA had lax quality control standards, even shipping 10 million faulty condoms to Tanzania, and that it possessed little capability to measure the outcomes of its programs.

     At the time, some officials within the European Union showed hostility towards the report. In February, Claus Hougaard Sorenson, a high ranking member of the European Commission's office for Development and Humanitarian Aid said, "these allegations have very little factual basis and in many cases have distorted information or used it out of context..The UNFPA Executive Board has dealt with the allegations on financial issues appropriately and decisively." However, these appear to be the same allegations now raised by a number of EU member states.

     At the Executive Board meeting, the European Commission (EC) continued to exhibit a desire to protect UNFPA from criticism. In a statement to the Board, the EC representative claimed that, "In the last 12 months, the Commission has become the target of a campaign aimed at.discrediting the EC and our partners such as UNFPA.

     This "campaign" appears to be a reference to the presentation of the C-FAM/IORG paper to the European Parliament, which seemed to draw the ire of the EC. In an internal memo obtained by the Friday Fax, the EC even declared that it had established an office to monitor the activities and publications of C-FAM and IORG.

     This renewed debate regarding UNFPA's financial competence comes at a critical juncture for the population control agency, as its allies in Washington DC gear up for a major push to have its US funding restored.

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