The extreme aggression and destruction that man exhibited during the Second World War outraged the conscience of mankind. In the aftermath of WW2, man created an association of nations to be a centre to reaffirm faith in the dignity and worth of the human person. This international intergovernmental organisation was named the United Nations.

The United Nations has not succeeded in preventing conflicts between nations or in making future wars impossible. Many commentators have described this organisation as ineffective, corrupt, and biased.

Corruption has been endemic throughout history. The charter of this intergovernmental organisation stipulates under Chapter IX that its administrators can establish as many specialised agencies or subsidiary bodies to fulfil their duties. The administrators of this organisation did not want to limit the activities of its officials to an advisory role constrained to preventing conflicts between nations and making future wars impossible, but they wanted them to be directly involved in providing solutions to international economic, social, health, and related problems. This organisation chose to manage public funds. Money is the root of all evil. The United Nations doesn’t employ people who possess the power to promote social progress and better standards of life while they are capable of triumphing over the weakness of their will and doing wrong when they genuinely know what is right at the same time. It is not totally out of the ordinary that this international intergovernmental organisation failed.

For example, the number of affiliated programmes, funds, and specialised agencies, all with their own membership, leadership, and budget that the United Nations has created, is enormous. According to a recent report published by an independent news and analysis on the United Nations, the Secretariat, which is one of the main six principal UN organs, was staffed by more than 40,000 strong men in 2016. The UN Charter says that this organ “shall be comprised of a Secretary General and such staff as the organisation may require.” A work system that employs hundreds of thousands, manages public funds, benefits from privileges and immunities, has its own internal judiciary system, has to be permeated with corruption, bias, scandals and mismanagement and is loaded with UN officials with unchecked power if this organisation is run by humans. All the UN officials enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities.

The scandals of mismanagement, corruption, or bias that permeate this organisation are the consequence of the price that mankind has to pay after member states, between 1945 and now, decided to accelerate happiness in the world (positive) and ignored that when they put in charge of ruling over such transformation officials who are pursuing the full development of their personality at the same time (negative); this method would push the officials who are tasked with attaining the ends stipulated in the UN charter to use the mechanism of this organisation to make choices that will bring true happiness for themselves first before seeking that the programme that this organisation was created to accomplish succeed. The founders of this association of nations didn’t want this global council to run as a shadow government or to perform humanitarian functions. If their intention were to have the UN run like the Salvation Army, they would have proposed that all the specific task-orientated organisations that the UN member states created post-1945 be conceived at the time of the inception of this association of nations. World insecurity or poverty didn’t start in 1945.

The principal challenge that this organisation is now posing in the world is not one that encompasses arguments regarding various aspects related to how to improve the effectiveness of this organisation. For as long as this intergovernmental organisation is allowed to manage public funds through its own task-orientated organisations, this organisation would continue to be permeated with corruption and be biased, no matter what policy, ideology or administration gets developed.

The question is how to continue to justify the legitimacy or the relevance of the United Nations Security Council as a means or a mechanism for determining or establishing world peace in the 21st century when this body is made to operate from under the auspices of an organisation that itself is creating crises and conflicts in the world.

Man calls any method devised to achieve an end “project”. The existing nations are so determined to see that no man be compelled to have recourse to any form of disregard or barbarous act to address the protection of his rights that they created the UN to serve as a platform to ensure that justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties can be maintained. The UN member states finance projects and programmes in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of combatants so those build new, productive lives for themselves, their families and their communities through the United Nations and on their own.

The social and economic development projects that the different UN subsidiary task-orientated organisations implement are financed from different sources. Some money is derived from voluntary and assessed contributions. There are even UN subsidiary bodies that are self-financed but, of course, with no profit finality. It is important to note that the UN self-financed organisations are not entities that the founding members proposed when this intergovernmental organisation was being formed. The founding members did not propose that this association of nations be financed through operating UN self-financed organisations to generate funds. The UN self-financed organisations operate like any legitimate cash-based owned business that is in the business of generating wealth, except that they are not for profit. The UN self-financed organisations are operations that were devised post-1945 by the administrators of the United Nations with the approval of UN member states. Those self-financed organisations cover direct and indirect costs and charge a fee for their services.

If UN officials are hiding impropriety, the rule that those officials have to be breaking has to centre around the means and mechanism adapted to appropriate and award money. Thus, the lack of probity has to be residing in a decay in the separation of powers and in a system that was designed with limited or unstringing checks and balances. This is because practitioners define effective project management to be broken down into four P’s: people, product, process and project. Of the four Ps, only people possess the power to consent and/or to deviate away from the criteria which decision-makers rule on in exchange for a reward or for the promise or expectation of a reward.

The implementation of any project is normally broken down into two categories: formulation and implementation. Implementation is made of two activities: procurement and execution. In any project, the money is lodged in the implementation phase and not the formulation. If, as we are saying, the decay has to be lodged within a process in which the separation of powers and the checks and balances adapted are carried out under the same roof, then the organisations that the UN created and tasked to award and implement projects under the same administration have to be the organisations that are more susceptible to having power left in them not fully checked. This is because if the power is split, then a work unit may choose to block procedures of the other work unit. This also signifies that the most decayed have to be the ones that award, implement and are self-financed. This is because when the three criteria are combined under one roof, the UN organisation in question wouldn’t be confronted to operate within the voluntary or assessed budget. This specific UN organisation can obtain its own funding independently or on its own.

No one knows how many self-financed UN subsidiary organisations the United Nations created and tasked with activities to offer procurement and implementation services at the same time. In other words, no one knows how many organisations the UN created in which the separation of powers and the checks and balances adapted are managed by the same administration and under a one-stop shop triangular arrangement that also includes being self-financed. We will mention one subsidiary organ herein only for illustration purposes.

The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is a UN organisation that the United Nations set up to be self-financed and also tasked to award and implement projects for the United Nations system, international financial institutions, governments and other partners in the aid world. UNOPS was established in 1973 as part of the UNDP, and it became independent in 1995. UNDP serves on the governing body of UNOPS.

For example, there are three steps involved in the process of money laundering. These three steps are placement, layering and integration. UNOPS could be a potential money laundering operation for the UN based on how this organisation was structured to operate. For instance,

Placement: UNOPS is not funded from assessed or voluntary contributions. UNOPS is a UN subsidiary organ that operates like any private company but one that the different UN-affiliated programmes, funds, specialised agencies and governments could go to in order to conceal or shelter illegitimate transactions to create the appearance that the money that is being processed or employed to implement projects is being used effectively because it comes from legitimate sources and is handled by legitimate people.

Layering: UNOPS provides project management, procurement and infrastructure services to partners. The three activities that UNOPS was approved to operate under the same roof are the three pillars from which money in the aid world is lodged or where it can be manipulated.

Integration: UNOPS is the designated lead United Nations entity mandated to harmonise the actions of the rest of the UN family members for all procurement and implementation services.

The UNOPS governing body, the UN Board of Auditors, UN Internal Oversight Services, and the UN inspection unit of the UN system subject UNOPS each year to a review process, and there should be no doubt they do find UNOPS transactions to meet the highest international standards of accountability and transparency.

The challenge UNOPS is posing in the world is not centred on how to control bookkeeping tricks or how to control the rules that the official of this UN organisation are depending on to decay the social order in exchange for a reward or for the promise or expectation of a reward that operating under the UN legitimacy makes possible. As we said before, corruption is endemic, and so the improbity that the officials of this organisation could be running at this intergovernmental organisation could not be something that would be any different from the one that people who are doing business on the outside of the UN fence are also running.

The challenge that UNOPS and the rest of the UN subsidiary organisations that the UN created to function like UNOPS (or implement projects) pose addresses a paradox that is more complex.

In 2013, a UNOPS staff member expressed to the UNOPS administration his concerns against the organisation signing a project which didn’t seem to be designed in accordance with the UN rules and regulations. UNOPS administrators proceeded to sign the project without correcting the irregularities first. The staff that expressed apprehension against the UN entering into this agreement was involuntarily removed from his position and transferred to a new country (his immediate supervisor, who was not part of this irregularity, was later dismissed because he refused to consent to what the hierarchy was requesting). In the new country, this staff found the irregularities that UNOPS officials were running even worse. UNOPS administration masterminded a plot charging this staff member with being a threat to the best interests of the United Nations after he had spent close to 24 years serving the United Nations honourably and with performance reviews that are always very satisfactorily rated. Then, while this staff member was under investigation, UNOPS administrators informed him that the organisation is restructuring and his contract would not be renewed. Most importantly, the UN officials kept this staff living with the charges hanging around his neck even after he was told that his contract wouldn’t be renewed and the investigation had concluded, preferring to inform him only five days before the expiry date of his contract that the UN cancelled the charges. The United Nations refused to help this staff member to resume his normal career after this organisation cancelled the charges. In early 2017, the UN investigators testified during the UN tribunal that this UN staff was charged by UN officials against their own recommendation and that he had not committed anything to be charged against. Unfortunately, the UN judicial system refused to address the claim of this staff member and dismissed his case by arbitrarily making his claim to be about an issue that this staff member didn’t go to this body initially to seek to request judgement to avoid admitting responsibility and paying him compensation. During the Spanish inquisition, the Catholic Monarchs operated their own internal tribunal. The issue here is not denying this UN staff any justice. The issue is more complex:

There is no difference whatsoever between being a combatant or a UN staff. Those two professions are one and the same. They are nothing but two distinct professions or means by which a person can sustain his livelihood.

If member states are financing and demanding the UN implement projects in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes of ex-combatants so those build new, productive lives for themselves, their families and their communities. Then, on the other hand, the UN is dismissing staff who are observing the Charter of the UN in the performance of their duties and subjecting them to cruelty, inhumane treatment, interference, and punishment and denying them any right. In other words, doing the opposite of what the member states who created this council expect this organisation to supposedly be working on teaching and educating people on the need to take effective measures to not be compelled to have recourse to any cruel acts. Then, the net gain is zero.

This signifies that either the UN officials who dismissed this UN staff acted in this manner because the United Nations proposed to the member states to create UNOPS to “launder” money and undermine democracy, and this staff and his immediate supervisor paid the ultimate price when they refused to not be part of what the UNOPS administrators were conniving on behalf of the UN SG or the claim that this staff expressed about the project that the UN was signing containing irregularities was a claim that wasn’t true.

UNOPS (the UN) and the donor that was financing the project rescinded their agreement after the UNOPS staff exposed the irregularities.

Let us verify if the administrators of the United Nations proposed to member states to create UNOPS to use this organisation as a means to undermine democracy or to achieve the goals set forth in the preamble of the UN charter.

Dr Petrus van Duyne (Tilburg University) is an internationally known researcher on organised (economic) crime, money laundering and corruption. Dr Van Duyne has defined the concept of ‘corruption’ to be as follows:

Corruption is an improbity or decay in the decision-making process in which a decision-maker consents to deviate or demands deviation from the criterion which should rule his or her decision-making in exchange for a reward or for the promise or expectation of a reward, while these motives influencing his or her decision-making cannot be part of the justification of the decision.

Let us put aside that most of the UN-affiliated programmes, funds, and specialised agencies that exist now were not approved in 1945, because this would be an automatic decay.

The UNOPS decision-maker(s) have clearly deviated from the criteria that should rule their decision-making process. The United Nations was not created to manage public funds but to see that people reach the ability to build new, productive lives for themselves, their families and their communities so they do not live in fear and want. The United Nations refused to help this staff to resume his normal career after this council cancelled the charges when this council is financing projects in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration to help combatants.

Dr Van Duyne claims that the motives which could influence a decision-maker to consent to deviate from the criterion which should rule his or her decision-making process to be classified as corruption have to be in exchange for a reward or for the promise or expectation of a reward.

The decision of the UNOPS administration to place this staff under investigation was due to an event in which UNOPS leadership and this staff were in two totally opposing positions on how to move forward on a business. The staff was against UNOPS signing the project to gain the promised or expected fee, and the UNOPS administrators were in favour. This event shows that there was a reward.

The last item that we need to show to support that it is very possible that UNOPS administrators are using this global council to plunge mankind in insecurity and uncertainty is to verify the rule that is influencing the UNOPS administration to consent to deviate from the criterion is a motive that is not part of the justification of the decision.

The rule that is influencing the UNOPS administration to consent to deviate from the criterion which the global council was created to achieve, thus letting greed and corruption contaminate and corrupt the minds of the UNOPS administrators, could be to get rewards from the money that partners bring to UNOPS to be managed. Alternatively, it could be motivated by conditions which those UN senior officials are exhibiting involuntarily. In other words, those UN officials are not able to keep greed and corruption in check for reasons that are outside of their control.

Herein, we are not interested in the rewards or criminal activities that the UNOPS administration is involved in because UNOPS is part of a hierarchy, and it is the job of the UNOPS governing body to ensure accountability. We will focus on the conditions that motivate the UNOPS administration to involuntarily commit cruel and inhumane acts or be bound only by their personal power to deny others any rights.

This rule could only be due to the decision of the administrator of this organization, the United Nations, to make UNOPS self-financed. This is because, since the day humanity invented the free economy, businesses focused on maximising financial profit or loss have contributed to social inequality, which in turn leads to wars. Therefore, this indicates one of two possibilities: either the administrator of the United Nations proposed to the member states to establish UNOPS as a self-financed entity and a comprehensive procurement and implementation hub to maintain global insecurity, or the member states must separate the UN Security Council from all self-financed UN organisations or those that provide project implementation, if the current member nations of this intergovernmental organisation wish to retain the Security Council’s role in the 21st century.