By Toby McIntosh
There’s a transparency subtext to a scoop by Colum Lynch in Devex about a United Nations report that documents the theft of aid in camps for the displaced in Somalia.
The leaked report is officially secret and there is no way to pry it free through official channels.
That’s because the UN Secretariat lacks an access to information policy. As a result there’s no formal channel through which to request the report. Nor are there any standards to guide whether the report, or parts of it, should be released.
The report, commissioned by Secretary-General António Guterres, remains “an internal report,” according to a UN spokesman.
Journalist Lynch saw the report nevertheless, and wrote:
A network of Somali landowners, clan leaders, police, and other local authorities have systematically enforced a coercive system of taxes on U.S.-funded aid recipients displaced by drought and conflict, threatening to arrest, beat, or deny life-saving assistance to those who refuse to pay up, according to an independent review commissioned by the United Nations.
While the UN may have good arguments for keeping the report confidential. Access policies include exemptions. But without a policy or a process, there’s no way to challenge claims of secrecy through an access to information request.
Confidentiality claims may be well-founded for parts of the report, perhaps for the names of those affected, the informants, or the perpetrators.
But should confidentiality apply to facts in the report, such as the results of surveys conducted for the UN that documents the problems?
Should confidentiality apply to the report’s conclusions? “Post-delivery aid diversion in Somalia is widespread and systemic,” according to report, as quoted by Lynch.
Or should confidentiality apply to the 16 policy recommendations in the report?
The 16 recommendations, Lynch reported, are “aimed at minimizing corruption, including a wider investigation into aid diversion nationwide, an appeal to fully fund a financially stretched U.N. Somalia risk management unit, more extensive site monitoring, outreach to the Somali government at the highest level, and reviewing and redesigning the beneficiary selection process to minimize the influence of the gatekeepers.”
Secretariat, Most UN Agencies, Lacks Access to Information Policies
The UN secretariat has resisted adopting an access policy. In 2018, there was a hint of a possible pro-transparency move at the UN Secretariat, but nothing developed.
Less than half of United Nations agencies have access to information policies, according to a 2023 survey by Eye on Global Transparency. (See article.) Of possible relevance is that the World Food Programme does have an access policy, a Directive on Information Disclosure.
Access to information is considered an integral part of the fundamental right of freedom of expression, as recognized in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. National adoption and implementation of access laws is one of the UN‘s Sustainable Development Goals,
The fact that the UN Secretariat and other UN bodies don’t apply this standard to themselves prompted a rebuke from a UN Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights in a 2017 report.
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