And from the text of the story: “UNICEF decided to review its relationship with Leviev after a campaign by Adalah-NY and found ‘at least a reasonable grounds for suspecting’ that Leviev companies were building settlements in occupied territory, a UNICEF official said”.

The report continues: ” ‘I can confirm that UNICEF has advised Adalah in New York that it will not be entering into any partnerships or accepting financial contributions from Lev Leviev or his corporate people’, Chris de Bono, a senior adviser to the executive director of UNICEF, told Reuters. ‘We are aware of the controversy surrounding Mr. Leviev because of his reported involvement in construction work in the occupied Palestinian territory’, de Bono said, adding that it was UNICEF’s policy to have partners who were ‘as non-controversial as possible’.” UNICEF could not say how much Leviev had donated as an individual. In his only known partnership with UNICEF, Leviev last year donated jewelry to a fashion event in France that benefited the French national committee for UNICEF, de Bono said…” The full report can be read in Haaretz here.

The story says that “In the long term, prices are expected to stabilize. Farmers will grow more grain for both fuel and food and eventually bring prices down. Already this is happening with wheat, with more crops to be planted in the U.S., Canada and Europe in the coming year. However, consumers still face at least 10 years of more expensive food, according to preliminary FAO projections. Among the driving forces are petroleum prices, which increase the cost of everything from fertilizers to transport to food processing. Rising demand for meat and dairy in rapidly developing countries such as China and India is sending up the cost of grain, used for cattle feed, as is the demand for raw materials to make biofuels”. This AP report can be read in full here .

The Associated Press article reports that these dirt cookies are “a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal”.

This AP report is posted here.

Photo by Reverend Julie Rowe

The JPost added that “Some Bethlehem residents have accused Israel of discouraging tourists from entering the city, but Rafi Ben-Hur, senior deputy director-general of the Israeli Tourism Ministry, insists this is not true. ‘While the situation is safe we are actively encouraging Christian tourists, through travel agents, to go and visit the town. We see Christians as a bridge for peace between our two communities’, he says. The ministry has also recently opened a tourism office at Rachel’s Crossing, near Rachel’s Tomb, the aim of which is to quicken the passage of tour coaches through the checkpoint by exempting them from searches. It has even introduced a policy of handing out candy to Christian pilgrims”.

The JPost continues: “Tourists choose to travel with tour companies rather than wander the town individually for several reasons. The pilgrims often travel in groups along with a pastor, so that they can pray together. And the town is still commonly perceived to be unsafe and tour companies claim to provide people with protection. That tourists can easily feel intimidated is understandable. Outside Giacaman’s shop, in full view of tourists, a commotion breaks out as armed Fatah security men, some masked, others beating the sides of their jeeps with batons, try to push their way through traffic. But Giacaman says that the tour companies take advantage of people’s fears by strictly controlling where they can and cannot go, including where they can eat and shop, thus depriving small businesses like his of a fair share of the profit. Taxi drivers have also been feeling the pinch. At Rachel’s Crossing, drivers anxiously wait to take visitors down into the city. When a foreign face approaches from the turnstile, a throng of five or six drivers gather round, angling for a deal. Tourists present good income potential as they are normally willing to pay as much as double the local rate for a ride. But such opportunities are few and far between” … This JPost article about Bethlehem and tourism is here.

Seth Freedman, who writes from Jerusalem for The Guardian’s Comment is Free, said in a recent article that “Britain’s former prime minister … announced four projects designed to kickstart the ailing Palestinian economy. One of the plans was to revive the tourism industry in Bethlehem, by easing the restrictions on entering the city and making the town centre more appealing to sightseers …
After making my way through the bottleneck of the checkpoint – where two long queues on either side of the border converged on one harassed-looking teenaged soldier – I headed for the dilapidated Aida refugee camp on the edge of the city. Once there, I went to meet Abdel Fattah Abu-Srour, the head of the Al-Rowwad Theatre Centre who had left such an indelible impression on me when I first interviewed him in May … He said that he was doubtful that any increase in tourism would have much effect on the Bethlehem economy, unless the fundamental way in which tourists visited the town changed significantly. ‘At present, the buses bring the groups in, they visit the Church [of the Nativity], jump back on their bus and are gone’, he said. ‘That means that they don’t sleep here, so the hotels are empty, as are the restaurants, and none of their tourist money filters down to the street. They just use Bethlehem as a passageway’. A Palestinian policeman I spoke to outside the Church of the Nativity was equally unenthusiastic about Blair’s proposals. Shivering in his bomber jacket and felt beret, he said that ‘I don’t know what it is he wants to do here, but I do know that you shouldn’t trust what you read in the media. We’ve heard nothing about spending on the tourist industry – they talk about putting money in, but the tourist policemen sleep with the mice’. He wasn’t exaggerating, he said – ‘we sleep in an underground building, with rats everywhere, and we don’t even have enough money for guns’, he complained, patting his waistband where his pistol was conspicuous by its absence. ‘We didn’t get our salaries for 15 months and even when we did finally get paid, they didn’t cover the debts we’d accumulated during that time’. Where did that leave him? ‘I’ve got five kids – and no cash’ he replied flatly … Whether or not Tony Blair’s tourism drive manages to inject life back into Bethlehem’s collapsed economy, the main obstacle to financial health is the far more significant problem of the wall and the checkpoints. ‘Most people can’t even leave their own cities anymore’, Abdel Fattah told me, ‘and that has a devastating effect on their ability to find work’. The prime minister of the Palestinian authority, Salam Fayyad, said the same thing when unveiling Blair’s plans, stating that the private sector wouldn’t recover until roadblocks were lifted to permit the passage of goods and people. And, until that happens, Tony Blair’s idealistic proposals seem like nothing more than window-dressing, given that the West Bank’s problems are far worse than a mere dearth of tourists in Bethlehem. ‘Peace be with you’ reads the cynically placed Israeli tourism ministry billboard where tour buses pass through the security wall to enter Bethlehem. But, until that very same wall is opened up just as freely to the Palestinian people, then the last thing that will be bestowed on the people is peace – and the situation will continue to deteriorate as steadily as before”. This article can be seen here.

Now, I’ve got to find the article in which I read recently of scams by taxi drivers in Bethlehem to intimidate tourists into spending more money — the taxi drivers pick the tourists up at the checkpoint and tell them it will cost 20 shekels ($5.00) to be driven to Manger Square at the center of town, where they can find the Church of the Nativity. But, instead, the taxi drivers take the tourists waaayy out of town, and tell them it will cost them 100 shekels to get back into town…

There is also a lot of aggressive panhandling in the center of town, and a lot of lousy cheap merchandise being forced on tourists — which some of them nevertheless seem happy to buy.

A whole re-think, and re-education of people working in the tourism business, might also help stimulate better and longer interactions between tourists and Bethlehem merchants and vendors…

The President’s “disappointment”, the spokesperson said, “reflects is the fact that he was expecting them, probably based on assurances, to be here at a high level. In fact, if you may remember the whole process of scheduling this particular high-level debate or dialogue, the original date was 22^nd and 23^rd of October. Then, because of the meetings in Washington of the World Bank and the IMF, this had shifted to 23-24 in order to allow for those meetings to conclude and to have finance and development ministers, central bankers here, and also high-level representation from the international, financial and other relevant institutions. We’re not talking about the financial institutions only but, for example, World Trade Organization, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), etc., the ones that are relevant for FfD [Financing for Development].  So, in that context, yes there was expectation for something higher, thus the expressed disappointment”.

Of course, there is a problem in explaining the purpose of the two-day High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development — just look at this jargon: “The two-day high-level event is a key element of the preparatory work mapped out by the Assembly to hold the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in the second part of 2008 in Doha. That Review Conference is supposed to assess progress made on the key elements of the Monterrey consensus, which, as you may remember, was adopted in 2002. The idea there is to reaffirm goals and commitments made and share lessons learned … The two-day Dialogue that we have here now is to provide impetus to preparations for the Review Conference and also to provide some substantive elements as to what that Review Conference is going to look like”.

That’s the way the UN talks — and it’s hard to sell that.

The problem, the President of the UN General Assembly told the meeting, is that promises have been made, but not kept. The spokesperson reported that the President said: “if implemented, existing commitments to finance development were enough to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, even in Africa”.

The Monterrey Consensus, he explained, had two prongs: “developing countries [were supposed to] adopt comprehensive national strategies, then donors must deliver on commitments to provide additional assistance”.

The spokesman also noted that the President had told the meeting: “If this — the greatest anti-poverty partnership in history — was insufficient to break from ‘business as usual’, many developing countries and campaigners around the world would be left without hope”.

Some 30 Ministers and Deputy Ministers are reportedly attending the meeting (out of 192 UN member states).

Is it any surprise that the attendance is disappointing? Here you have a meeting called to show that various parties have not lived up to their commitments, while the UN and all its various actors prefer to either (1) sound alarms, or (2) proclaim victory.

“Disappointment”, while diplomatic, is not compelling.

One thing you can be sure of — all parts of the UN system are working to promote and implement the Millennium Development Goals. The UN Chief Executives Board website writes loftily: “The organizations of the UN system stand together poised to adapt and intensify their efforts, with the support of Member States, and on behalf of them and their peoples, to bring the vision of the Millennium Declaration to life…” The organizational lock-step behind these exhortative but ultimately unverifiable goals puts North Korea’s reverence for its Dear Leader and its Great Leader to shame.

Investigative journalist Claudia Rosset does a good job in writing about how unknowable the UN is — see her somewhat disorganized but fascinating article, How Corrupt is the UN?, published about a year ago in Commentary Magazine:

“A grand committee that reports to itself alone, the UN operates with great secrecy and is shielded by diplomatic immunity. [I don't think the issue of diplomatic immunity is as much a problem as Claudia Rossett does, but the penchant for secrecy is a huge problem.] One of its prime defenses, indeed, is the sheer impenetrability of its operations: after more than 60 years as a global collective, it has become a welter of so many overlapping programs, far-flung projects, quietly vested interests, nepotistic shenanigans, and interlocking directorates as to defy accurate or easy comprehension, let alone responsible supervision.

But let us try.

One clear sign of how badly things have gone with the UN is the difficulty of tallying even so basic a sum as the system’s real budget. Nowhere does the UN present a full and clear set of accounts, and statistics vary even within individual agencies and programs.

The UN’s current “core” annual budget is $1.9 billion—but the “core” is itself but a fraction of the actual budget. Around it are wrapped billions more in funding provided by “voluntary contributions” from private and corporate donors, foundations, and member states, including, to a large extent, the United States. These sums are shuffled around in various ways, with UN agencies in some instances paying or donating to each other.
…
Little of this system is open to any real scrutiny even within the UN, and no single authority outside the UN has proved able to compel any genuine accounting.
…
Since its founding, the institution has added untold numbers of agencies, funds, commissions, programs, “ad-hoc bodies,” and “other entities,” to the point where most of the UN’s own personnel do not know who reports to whom, or how. The Secretary-General himself, when questioned last year by the Volcker commission, professed not to understand his own chain of command.
To anyone seeking to capture fresh turf at the UN, creating one of these new bodies has long been a favored path. The Secretary-General appoints or at least nominates the heads of most of them, but each has its own board, its own agenda, and in many cases its own program for soliciting funds. To name just a few of the better-known ones: UNICEF (founded in 1946); the World Food Program (or WFP, 1961); the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 1964); the UN Development Program (UNDP, 1966); the UN Environment Program (UNEP, 1972); the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS, 1994), UN-Habitat (1997); the World Tourism Agency (UNWTO, 2003); and so forth.
Many of these overlap. Most, when probed, open onto ever-receding vistas of regional offices, working groups, and the like. The offices are scattered around the globe, from New York to Rome to Nairobi to Tunis to Madrid to Bangkok and beyond. Periodic efforts to streamline and harmonize the system tend mainly to paint yet another layer on top. Typical of this is one of the Secretary-General’s latest initiatives, launched just this past February: the “High-Level Panel on System-Wide Coherence in Areas of Development, Humanitarian Assistance, Environment.”
…
There is almost no way to hold the UN accountable for most of what goes on in this growing empire. No national legal jurisdiction applies to the UN network and no media corps has the resources, or for that matter the interest, to deal with the entire network. Despite a Secretary-General who wields more control than anyone else in the system, accountability ultimately does not reside with him, either.
…
An enormous amount of UN activity now revolves around the so-called Millennium Goals, which aim to cut world poverty in half by the year 2015. This noble-sounding goal serves as a framework for calculating to the last decimal point a set of targets for which the UN system then decides how resources should be apportioned … ”

http://www.defenddemocracy.org//in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=365116

The snappy UN’s Chief Executives Board website says this: “The United Nations system is made up of the organizations established by the Charter of the United Nations, that is, the United Nations proper, the specialized agencies provided for in Article 57 of the Charter and a number of programmes established by the General Assembly under its authority derived from Article 22 of the Charter. To this must be added the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which is not a specialized agency in the strict legal sense. The agencies, which are legally independent international organizations with their own rules, membership, organs and financial resources, were brought into relationship with the United Nations through negotiated agreements. Some of the agencies existed before the First World War, some were associated with the League of Nations, others were created almost simultaneously with the United Nations and yet others were created by the United Nations itself to meet emerging needs. Given the diversity of their respective fields of action, history and experience, each agency has its own needs and concerns, not to speak of “corporate culture”.

Here is a list from the Basic Information on United Nations System Organizations section from the report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence in the Areas of Development, Humanitarian Assistance, and the Environment:
United Nations Secretariat:
Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)
Department of Political Affairs (DPA)
Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) pending
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing
Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS)
Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA)
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Regional Commissions:
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)
Economic Commission for Europe (ECE)
Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC)
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)

United Nations Funds and Programmes:
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
- United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)
- United Nations Development Group Office (UNDGO)
- United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
- United Nations Volunteers (UNV)
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT)
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
World Food Programme (WFP)

Other UN Entities
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) pending
United Nations Staff College (UNSSC)
United Nations University (UNU)
Research and Training Institutes
United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)
United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
(INSTRAW)
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)

Specialized agencies:
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
International Labour Organization (ILO)
International Monetary Fund (IMF) not submitted
International Maritime Organization (IMO)
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
Universal Postal Union (UPU)
World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
World Bank
World Health Organization (WHO)
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

Related Organizations [What does this mean?]
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - Established 29 July 1957:
“IAEA is an independent intergovernmental, science and technology-based organization, in the United Nations family, that – serves as the global focal point for nuclear cooperation;
- assists its Member States, in the context of social and economic goals, in planning for and using nuclear science and technology for various peaceful purposes, including the generation of electricity, and facilitates the transfer of such technology and knowledge in a sustainable manner to developing Member States;
- develops nuclear safety standards and, based on these standards, promotes the achievement and maintenance of high levels of safety in applications of nuclear energy, as well as the protection of human health and the environment against ionizing radiation;
- verifies through its inspection system that States comply with their commitments, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other non-proliferation agreements, to use nuclear material and facilities only for peaceful purposes”.
World Trade Organization (WTO) – Established 1 January 1995:
“The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. The WTO’s overriding objective is to help trade flow smoothly, freely, fairly and predictably; thus contributing to a conducive environment for economic growth. It does this by: administering trade agreements; acting as a forum for multilateral trade negotiations; settling trade disputes among its Members; reviewing national trade policies; assisting developing countries in trade policy issues (through technical assistance and capacity building programmes); and cooperating with other international organizations to enhance coherence in policy making”.

Information from links on http://www.unsystemceb.org/reference/system

The article, written by the LA Times’ Robyn Dixon, reports that “students called her Mama Jackey and sang gospel-style hymns in her praise. The 100% high school graduation rate that her private school claimed impressed many, including former President Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey and the makers of a documentary scheduled to air on HBO beginning today.”

But, the article says, “Jackey Maarohanye and her school, the Ithuteng Trust, were plunged into a scandal after the students told the South African investigative television program ‘Carte Blanche’ that they are not orphans. They said Maarohanye scripted and rehearsed horror stories about how they had watched their parents die. Students, six of whom were contacted by The [Los Angeles] Times, repeated their allegations, saying she had coached them on how to sob for the television cameras or contributors to extract bigger donations. They told The Times that they recounted their false tragedies with tears and drama at the United Nations and for former President Clinton in 2001, on U.S. television and radio and for other visiting donors and media. Contacted by The LA] Times, she declined to answer questions on the allegations but said the program was malicious and unethical, and expressed anger that ‘Carte Blanche’ had contacted some of her donors for their reactions. The Ithuteng Trust board has since informed sponsors of the allegations and is setting up an independent investigation. Maarohanye ran an adult literacy program before approaching Mandela in 1999 for help in setting up an outreach program for children involved in crime. She recruited students from schools in Soweto, a township outside Johannesburg. Former students told The Times that the program was fun at first, and gave them life skills. But later they had to tell lies for media and sponsors. One Ithuteng patron, Judge Yvonne Mokgoro, argues that the program still has great value for children and says it’s important to distinguish its worth from Maarohanye’s alleged methods. The LA Times story is posted here.

The United Nations is not immune from the donor-duping syndrome. One of its worst manifestations is the numbers-generating done to generate media reporting of stores to attract donor interest.

UN Truth would like to know: How does UNAIDS know exactly how many people have died from AIDS (they give a figure of nearly 40 million persons worldwide)? How do they know even the approximate number of people who might be affected by HIV or AIDs? They rely on statistics provided by Governments — and, if Governments permit, they might do sample testing in some places of women who are admitted to hospital to give birth. The more victims and potential victims, the more press — and the more donations.

The World Health Programme proclaimed that they were on the verge of ending polio, through their vaccination campaigns, by the year 2000. It attracted a lot of media coverage, and donor funding. Then, the WHO said, they were aiming at a 2005 deadline. Now, maybe it will be 2007…

The main United Nations relies much less on donor funding, because the bulk of its budget is composed of its membership dues, called “assessments”, based on a fixed rate for each country according to its level of development and ability to pay. The U.S. pays the most – around 22 percent.

But, the UN’s Millennium Goals are one of the most egregious examples of fluffy nonsense. At a high-level meeting at UNHQ/NY in October 2000, UNSG Kofi Annan and his “strategic communication” honchos got world leaders to pledge to work to half poverty in the world (and other lofty goals) by the year 2015. They worry, now, that the target might not be achieved. But, how do they know the exact numbers of people around the world who were, in the year 2000, “living on less than a dollar a day”? And how will they know, exactly, whether or not half that number will be doing better in the year 2015?