The Red Cross isn’t looking so inefficient now
And here’s the other post that got dropped.
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You knew this was coming, didn’t you (via Gaijin Biker)?
Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead. The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation’s $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.
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The newspaper said details of that appeal it obtained from U.N. agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Food Program showed 18 percent to 32 percent of the expenditure related to staff, administration and other costs.
Some UN agencies aren’t making good on their promises of transparency in allocating funds. You know, I derive quite a bit of amusement from slagging off the UN. The pharisaism that pours reliably from its every agency makes criticizing it pretty much a guilt-free operation. But we’re not talking here about whether cronyism was involved in the appointment of some dumbass who’s job is to hector us about smoking. We’re talking about the aftermath of a natural disaster that was, for the regions it affected, epochal. It was exactly the sort of multi-national, Third World emergency that the UN’s humanitarian divisions are supposed to be ideally positioned to deal with. And what we get is around US$18 million spent on overhead.