The UN’s ‘Folly’

I SEE (The Namibian 22/12/05) that the UN and its new resident representative are spending N$70 million (US$12 million) on a new UN headquarters in Windhoek.

Quite apart from the fact that this ‘headquarters’ has damaged a thickly wooded and environmentally sensitive part of the Klein Windhoek riverbed, can one ask why the UN is not spending this money in Darfur, Pakistan or somewhere more urgent? Namibia is a (reasonably) settled and grown-up country now, and we should be able to tackle our own problems without being nannied by the UN and its UNDAF (or UN-Daft) fund. The UN Resident Representative says that “by 2010, the UN hopes to have strengthened the country’s response to the HIV-AIDS pandemic”.Well, I doubt whether the endless generously funded HIV conferences and ‘workshops’ will lessen the AIDS pandemic by one single case.Hot air has not yet been medically proven to be a cure for Aids, nor unfortunately, just on its own, is money, unless spent on immediate practical things.And education programmes? If anyone does not know yet the causes of HIV infection, I don’t think further education is ever going to help.Rephrasing, I think the N$70 m would have been better spent on ARVs than on a new paper-shuffling palace for the UN from which it can launch more ‘education’ programmes.A corollary of the famous Parkinson’s Law says that the moment at which an organisation loses all relevance, is when it moves into its purpose-built, brand-new, state-of-the-art, no-expense-spared headquarters.The only way in which the UN violates this rule is that it probably reached this point some time before.The new UN representative is reported to have said that Namibia is the country with one of the biggest income disparities in the world (sadly right) and that “turning this situation around is a major challenge for the UN” (wrong).Even if the UN had the remotest ability to redress income disparity, I did not know that social and economic re-engineering within a country, or income redistribution, was their job, or business – again, don’t they have anything more critical to do? In previous years, the UN has rented offices in Windhoek.Now, according to the representative, “the money saved on rent (in his new N$70 m building) can be put towards development assistance”.Assuming that the rent paid by the UN in its old accommodation could not be more than say N$50 000 per month, and the finance payments on a ‘home loan’ of N$70 m, assuming you could get such a thing, would be about N$700 000 per month, (even though the Government, i.e.the Namibian taxpayer, has chipped in a bit) it makes one tend to agree with those who wonder about the UN’s ability to plan its finances.Angry Namibian, WindhoekThe UN Resident Representative says that “by 2010, the UN hopes to have strengthened the country’s response to the HIV-AIDS pandemic”.Well, I doubt whether the endless generously funded HIV conferences and ‘workshops’ will lessen the AIDS pandemic by one single case.Hot air has not yet been medically proven to be a cure for Aids, nor unfortunately, just on its own, is money, unless spent on immediate practical things.And education programmes? If anyone does not know yet the causes of HIV infection, I don’t think further education is ever going to help.Rephrasing, I think the N$70 m would have been better spent on ARVs than on a new paper-shuffling palace for the UN from which it can launch more ‘education’ programmes.A corollary of the famous Parkinson’s Law says that the moment at which an organisation loses all relevance, is when it moves into its purpose-built, brand-new, state-of-the-art, no-expense-spared headquarters.The only way in which the UN violates this rule is that it probably reached this point some time before.The new UN representative is reported to have said that Namibia is the country with one of the biggest income disparities in the world (sadly right) and that “turning this situation around is a major challenge for the UN” (wrong).Even if the UN had the remotest ability to redress income disparity, I did not know that social and economic re-engineering within a country, or income redistribution, was their job, or business – again, don’t they have anything more critical to do? In previous years, the UN has rented offices in Windhoek.Now, according to the representative, “the money saved on rent (in his new N$70 m building) can be put towards development assistance”.Assuming that the rent paid by the UN in its old accommodation could not be more than say N$50 000 per month, and the finance payments on a ‘home loan’ of N$70 m, assuming you could get such a thing, would be about N$700 000 per month, (even though the Government, i.e.the Namibian taxpayer, has chipped in a bit) it makes one tend to agree with those who wonder about the UN’s ability to plan its finances.Angry Namibian, Windhoek