UN chief reviews self-policing, nominates Canadian woman top internal watchdog

UN chief reviews self-policing, nominates watchdog

UNITED NATIONS — An internal review of the United Nations’ ability to investigate itself has been launched and a Canadian woman nominated to take over the internal watchdog agency, senior U.N. officials said Monday.

The unusual review of the functions of the Office of Internal Oversight Services that conducts investigations, audits and inspections will focus on “areas where OIOS is not active,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, told colleagues in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.

The agency serves as the U.N.’s chief tool for accountability and oversight for the world body’s billions of dollars a year in spending and many of its agencies, programs and policies.

The memo was sent to colleagues on Friday, the same day that Ban sent the General Assembly his nomination of a Canadian woman to serve as the next undersecretary-general for oversight and take over OIOS.

Officials declined to identify the woman, pending the response by regional leaders within the 192-nation assembly, but they expected Ban to announce his selection as early as Monday.

She would replace Sweden’s Inga-Britt Ahlenius, who departed this month at the end of her five-year term by sending Ban a 50-page confidential memo that described her office as severely hamstrung and blamed many of the problems on Ban’s leadership.

She accused Ban of blocking her appointment of a permanent investigative director and taking other measures that reduced her supposed independence within the U.N. In her memo, she described Ban’s attitude toward OIOS as seeking “to control the function and to suppress it as an effective instrument.”

The directorship position has been unfilled since mid-2006. Ahlenius left it open for 2 1/2 years, but blames Ban for her inability to fill it since roughly the end of 2008. A series of acting directors have run the investigation division for the past four years.

Ban was studying Ahlenius’ memo “in its entirety,” Nambiar wrote, but the secretary-general fully recognizes the OIOS’ independence.