Just another reason why the UN should be defunded and ultimately disbanded.
Via Fox News
The $5.7 billion United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship anti-poverty agency, is poor at producing lasting results, sets unrealistic or unfocused priorities and often seems more interested in getting funding than in setting up programs that make the best sense, according to an internal assessment that will be discussed at a top-level meeting next month.
Moreover, in a sweeping examination of some $19.7 billion worth of UNDP programs between 2008 and 2012, the report says that only in “just about half” of the country-by-country efforts was the agency “likely to have made, or make, a significant contribution to the intended outcome.”
Nor is the agency very good at judging where it is going wrong, the report adds, meaning that “strengthening the efficiency of projects and programs is a major challenge.”
The sobering evaluation of UNDP’s usefulness was carried out by UNDP’s own Evaluation Office, whose director is appointed by UNDP’s top official, Helen Clark. So far, only an executive summary of the evaluation is available to members of UNDP’s 36-nation supervisory Executive Board, which holds its semi-annual meeting in New York City starting on June 3. According to a UNDP spokesman, a full version of the report will be made public next week.
…One of the biggest causes of UNDP’s incoherence and chasing after short-term or ill-planned projects, the evaluators judge, is its business model, which increasingly depends on making use of earmarked funds from its big donors.
Unlike the U.N. Secretariat, where rich countries are assessed dues — with the U.S. at the top of the donor list, contributing 22 percent of the Secretariat’s “regular” expenses —contributions to UNDP are voluntary, and increasingly come with long strings attached —in part to ensure that the donors get some specific value for their money.
The only people on the planet worse than the UN at wasting money is the Australian Labor Party.