UN financial support for Russia is shameful hypocrisy

ON March 2, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demanding that Russia immediately cease its aggression. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres likewise harshly denounced the Russians’ military adventure, declaring the invasion “a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Following the UN’s lead, much of the world has declared Russia a pariah, cutting political ties and economically ostracizing the country to try to force the Putin regime to stop its criminal assault on Ukraine.

Why, then, is the UN Secretariat continuing to engage in the basest form of hypocrisy by continuing to do tens of millions of dollars in business with the Russian government and Russian oligarch-linked companies?

Most of the UN’s spending in Russia comes from the organization’s massive budget for peacekeeping operations, which amounts to $6.38 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, and will probably be a similar amount for the next fiscal year. Among the contributors to UN coffers, Russia has at least until now been the fifth-largest, behind the United Arab Emirates, the US, Kenya and Switzerland.

Figures for the current fiscal year’s spending are unavailable, but for the previous year, the UN paid the Russian government and Russian companies at least $132.6 million. The goods and services purchased by the UN were primarily related to air transportation, information and communication technologies (ICT), and food catering. One of the biggest UN contracts in Russia is with UTAir, a major operator of helicopter transport. The company is categorized as a “public joint stock” company, and is 44-percent government-owned, with about 33 percent of its shares being held by various Russian oligarchs.

When challenged about undermining global efforts to force Russia to stop its war, the UN engaged in legal hairsplitting. In a report by Inter Press Service (IPS) — a news agency connected with the UN Development Program — UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haque said, “What we can say is that if specific UN sanctions were imposed on the Russian Federation, or sanctions against a particular company or their principals that would affect their ability to perform, then of course we would comply.”

In other words, despite publicly agreeing with the rest of the world that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unacceptable and should be stopped immediately, the UN will not recognize sanctions intended to do just that as peacefully as possible, unless those sanctions are imposed by the UN itself, and if the sanctions make it difficult for the suppliers to meet their contractual obligations.

What is particularly galling about the UN’s cynical relativism is that across UN agencies, strict ethical standards and guidelines for suppliers and contractors are rigorously enforced. According those guidelines, suppliers and contractors must comply with the United Nations Supplier Code of Conduct and General Conditions of Contract, which include provisions on sexual exploitation, child labor, discrimination and harassment, and working conditions.

But, as the IPS drily noted in its report, “The violation of a country’s sovereignty and the invasion of a member state are not part of those rules.” However, the specific absence of those things from written standards does not actually excuse the UN’s behavior, because the UN procurement division also provides the public reminder to UN-registered suppliers that, “you have accepted the United Nations Supplier Code of Conduct, which reflects the core values outlined in the Charter of the United Nations.”

We believe most honorable people would agree that participating in a blatant violation of that very charter should immediately disqualify a contractor or government from doing business with the UN, and that the UN’s overlooking of its own principles is shameful. It is particularly appalling when an indirect result of this behavior is a campaign of atrocities directed at civilians.

The UN is undermining efforts by the rest of the world to stop the war, and criticism is not enough. Countries that endorsed the March 2 resolution, including the Philippines, should withhold their financial contributions to the UN until it acts in a responsible, ethical manner.