“Needed” people at UN
It is encouraging that the world community recently raised the issue of sexual abuse and harassment in UN, but it is only one of many UN problems. The broader picture is still overlooked: UN became mafia-type organization due to the absence of external control. Employees’ abuse there isn’t restricted to sexual harassment. A lot of people got their careers and lives destroyed as a result of oppressive UN work environment.
UN created an effective system of segregation, where many managers can do whatever they want (openly neglect their duties, abuse, insult and humiliate subordinates, etc.), and where ordinary employees are defenseless against management despotism. This system is accompanied by the endless talking about “great UN principles and values”. Actually, UN system is permeated by vileness and hypocrisy.
My name is Vyacheslav Luchkin. I experienced authority abuse at UNDP and witnessed myself how the UN system of “zero tolerance to wrongdoing” works. I was employed as a Service Contract holder at United Nations Development Program in Tashkent, Uzbekistan from April 21 to November 17, 2017 in capacity of R&D and Piloting Specialist at the “Building the resilience of communities affected by the Aral Sea disaster through a Multi-Partner Human Security Fund for the Aral Sea” project. The main goal of our project was the establishment of Multipartner Trust Fund (MPTF) in strategic partnership with the MPTF UNDP office in New York. The mandate of this Fund would be implementing humanitarian projects aimed at the mitigating the consequences of Aral Sea disaster for local population.
Already at the beginning of my work at UNDP my supervisor Uktam Abdurakhmanov, project’s Technical Coordinator, let know me that I am unwanted employee at the project, and he began to employ such dirty tricks against me as deliberate delaying my work, inciting conflicts to blame me for them and downright lie and slander to present me as unqualified and unprofessional employee.
For example, hiring of National Consultant on the Methodology of Strategy for MPTF was delayed by Uktam by 3 weeks, though preparation of Strategy Document was an urgent matter. On August 30, 2017 Program Manager Bakhadur Paluaniyazov instructed us to hire an individual, whose candidacy was agreed upon both by Uktam and me and approved by Program Manager. Uktam ignored these instructions, and this process was set in the motion only after September 21, when we received the second message on the same issue from Bakhadur.
I informed Bakhadur Paluaniyazov and Hurshid Rustamov, Head of Sustainable Development Cluster at Tashkent UNDP office about Uktam’s actions, but they had nothing against Uktam’s disregard of Bakhadur’s instructions and considerable delay in the project’s implementation. Pleasing bosses and friends at UN is much more important than work.
Uktam is highly rude, insolent and arrogant person and on August 16, 2017 he insulted me (which was reported by me to Program Manager Bakhadur Paluaniyazov and HR department in Tashkent UNDP office). But Bakhadur Paluaniyazov didn’t undertake any measures to investigate this shameful Uktam’s action and to rectify situation at our team. Up till now Uktam Abdurakhmanov didn’t apologize for this, and nobody of UNDP management advised him to do so, which perfectly illustrates the attitude toward employees at UN. Apparently, UN management considers me a human being of a second sort, “untermensch”, not worth any apologies.
Uktam didn’t pay much attention to our work and openly neglected his duties. Many our E-mails to him remained unanswered and most his instructions to subordinates were very unclear. Once Uktam even told us that we send him too many E-mail messages and he hardly finds time to read them. During the first 3 months of my work at the project Uktam was present at our office about 20% of total work time.
Uktam liked to underscore the importance of teamwork for us, but his notion of good team player was quite peculiar. Once at our team meeting Uktam told us that some girl, employee of Aral Sea Gene Pool Fund (Uktam is a Head of this Fund), is “a good team player, because she brings cherries to him”.
Overall, the caliber of Tashkent UNDP management is outstandingly low. Never in my life had I met such incompetent and irresponsible people.
For example, at the very beginning of our work on the project we were informed by Tashkent UNDP management that in September 2017 an MPTF mission from New York will arrive in Tashkent and the process of launching Uzbekistan MPTF will move to the final stage. But on September 20, 2017 Tashkent UNDP office contacted MPTF office in New York and was informed by them that in order to launch MPTF in Uzbekistan some prerequisites of crucial importance must be met, namely, donor interest to Uzbek MPTF funding must be confirmed and Uzbekistan Government funding commitment for MPTF must be secured as well. This fact demonstrates the level of management at UNDP, because such important requirements were never discussed at any project meetings prior to September 20.
At one of the first project meetings my colleague, Fund Establishment Specialist, stated that he has some questions on the preparation of the MPTF Concept and it is highly desirable that he communicates directly with our focal point at MPTF office in New York. But he received a sharp reply: “It’s not necessary to do this! Do what you are told to do!”
As well, there was a lot of confusion and misunderstanding regarding the Strategy Document for MPTF. In the framework of our project a Strategy Document had to be prepared in order to define the directions of humanitarian projects for Uzbekistan MPTF. Aral Sea disaster is a large-scale and multidimensional problem, and Strategy Document preparation for MPTF is very complicated task, which requires effective teamwork and excellent coordination and communication with project partners. UNDP management did a poor work in all these directions. I was receiving highly unclear and contradictory instructions on this work from management. Neither my supervisor Uktam Abdurakhmanov, project’s Technical Coordinator, nor Program Manager Bakhadur Paluaniyazov were able to clearly articulate their views on this issue. I asked Uktam to work out the common understanding of Strategy concept with Program Manager, to no avail. Hurshid Rustamov, Head of Sustainable Development Cluster at UNDP office in Tashkent, and Bakhadur Paluaniyazov even actively promoted for a few months the idea that our project must prepare the Regional Development Strategy for Aral Sea region economy, though such a document is absolutely not relevant to the operations of Multipartner Trust Fund. What is interesting, nobody of UNDP management stumbled upon a simple idea to establish a closer working relations with our strategic partner, MPTF office in New York, and to ask them a few relevant questions. Eventually, a vision of a Strategy was elaborated, to a large extent thanks to my efforts.
Despite his poor management skills, low qualifications and unprofessional behavior Uktam Abdurakhmanov enjoyed a full support by UNDP management. In accordance with my work plan I prepared a Draft Strategy for MPTF that was fully approved by our Program Manager, Bakhadur Paluaniyazov, but a few days later he rejected my Draft Strategy without any explanations and informed me that this document will be prepared by Uktam.
A few days later Draft Strategy was prepared by Uktam and his document didn’t withstand any criticism. Our Project Proposal clearly defined Needs Assessment (survey of population in the Aral Sea region) as a main input for Strategy, but Uktam’s Draft Strategy didn’t even mention it. Also, it contained numerous mistakes. For example, even the document’s title had a grammar error. Some sentences in Uktam’s document were simply meaningless, such as “Despite a significant increase in attracted funds, most of them are directed to infrastructure projects, construction of roads, energy, construction and reconstruction of irrigation and drainage-collector networks, which, in fact, are resource intensive and have a long period of implementation and payback.”
Should ordinary UNDP employee have prepared such a document, he would be most probably relieved of his duties; nevertheless, Uktam’s Strategy Draft was accepted by Hurshid Rustamov and Bakhadur Paluaniyazov with enthusiasm. But not only Uktam’s writing skills, but also his reading skills were weak. Even understanding E-mail messages was a challenging task for him.
Before the expiration of my contract, on October 2, 2017 Uktam Abdurakhmanov completed my Service Evaluation Form (SEF) with considerable violation of UNDP rules and procedures and passed the decision on termination of my contract (separation). Uktam Abdurakhmanov’s assessment of my performance was total and outright lie.
Suffice it to say that in September 2017 in the presence of all my colleagues Uktam twice commended me for my good selection of National Consultants. Program Manager Bakhadur Paluaniyazov also noted my good performance in this direction. But only a few days later Uktam stated at my SEF that the process of National Consultants search was conducted by me at unsatisfactory level, and Bakhadur Paluaniyazov didn’t raise any objections to this record in my SEF, which speaks a lot about his moral qualities. Overall, during the whole term of my UNDP contract neither Hurshid Rustamov, Head of Sustainable Development Cluster at UNDP office in Tashkent, nor Bakhadur Paluaniyazov, Program Manager, ever expressed any dissatisfaction with my work performance.
I provided extensive critical comments in my SEF regarding Uktam’s evaluation of my work. In particular, I pointed out that to harm my reputation, Uktam resorted to direct lie and I provided at SEF an example of such Uktam’s action. In his E-mail to our team as of August 25, 2017, Uktam wrote: ”Dear colleagues at Tashkent office, 2 days ago (during the meeting at my office) I have kindly asked you not to send your documents for discussion thru e-mail.” Actually, Uktam never said that and he stated this in his message in order to demonstrate to Program Manager that I ignore Uktam’s instructions.
SEF is an important document and naturally, my comments were seen by a lot of UNDP/UN managers. It is noteworthy that nobody of them was bothered by Uktam’s behavior. Possibly, they were even admired by Uktam’s smart lying about me.
I would like to provide here one more example of Uktam’s management style. On July 19, 2017 Tashkent team presented documents, prepared by our team, at the roundtable at the Ministry of Economy. Beforehand, Uktam informed us that the whole event will last for 1 hour. Eventually, our roundtable lasted about 1 hour and 20 minutes, and after that participants of another event scheduled at this room appeared and we finished our roundtable. When we returned to our office, Uktam in the presence of entire our team accused me and my colleague (we were tasked with conducting negotiations about using conference room at the Ministry of Economy) of practically derailing the whole event. Uktam told us in threatening and insulting tone: “The event was intended to last for 2 hours and if something similar will occur again, both of you will get corresponding records at personal files at UNDP”.
To complete the picture on UN culture and the work environment, one more issue should be raised. On September 12, 2017, during our business trip to Nukus, when we had a dinner (all our Tashkent team (4 Specialists (including me)), Uktam and Bakhadur Paluaniyazov were present), Uktam told us a story about a disagreement between Russian and Turkish ambassadors to Uzbekistan during their visit to Karalpakstan and made a racist statement. He called a Russian ambassador “a Russian fool”. I think that any reasonable and objective person will agree that American, for example, will be insulted if in his presence someone is called “an American fool”. As well, Uzbek will be insulted, if he hears words “an Uzbek fool”, and etc.
I reported this incident to Ms. Helena Fraser, UNDP Resident Representative in Uzbekistan, but she didn’t react to this. Apparently, she thinks that Russians are the people of the second sort and should not be insulted in such a situation. Later I informed UN/UNDP management (including UN Secretary General and UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner) about this case, and again, no reaction followed. Clearly, racism is rooted deeply in UN culture and is supported by top UN management.
UN management loves to rant that employee rights at this organization are effectively protected. Actually, UN has very effective system allowing its management to oppress unwanted people, so that abused person has zero chances to achieve justice. This system is based on very simple principles: all the evidence that abused employee provides is completely ignored by UN management; at the same time, manager, who abused employee, and his friends and allies can tell about complainant whatever they want, any slander and lie. As well, any meetings of complainant with management are a pure formality. Such meetings serve an exclusive goal of creating a semblance of objective investigation. Also, UN management avoids communicating with anyone, able to supply positive information about complainant.
UN investigations are conducted only to give the management the opportunity to happily report that due procedures are complied with and no grounds for further actions were discovered. In essence, complainant at UN doesn’t have even the slightest opportunity to influence the outcome of the decision on his complaint. Such investigations deserve the name of a “swindle” much more than “investigations”, but this is UN policy of “zero tolerance to any wrongdoing” in action.
I informed UNDP New York office (namely, Office of Audit and Investigations; Mr. Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator; and Ms. Cihan Sultanoglu, Director of Regional Office for Europe and CIS) and UN Secretary General about my unfair separation, abuse of authority by Uktam and the oppressive work environment at Tashkent UNDP office. All my statements in my complaint were supported by convincing evidence. As well, I mentioned the names of witnesses, where it was applicable. Also, I had a meeting with UNDP management in Tashkent office on October 16, 2017, with Farid Garakhanov, Deputy Resident Representative, Hurshid Rustamov, Head of Sustainable Development Cluster, and Uktam. On November 15, 2017 I met with Helena Fraser, UNDP Resident Representative in Uzbekistan. At both these meetings UNDP management was absolutely not interested in analyzing the situation at our project and discussing it with me and completely supported all Uktam’s actions. Helena Fraser informed me that she doesn’t see “anything special” in Uktam’s actions and behavior. She also told me that I don’t fit into the project. Apparently, in her opinion, liars, rude, unqualified and irresponsible people fit into the project perfectly.
UNDP management actively used shameless lying against me. For example, during my meeting with Helena Fraser I learned from her that Bakhadur Paluaniyazov, Project Manager, and Hurshid Rustamov, Head of Sustainable Development Cluster, lied to her about me. Ms. Cihan Sultanoglu, Director of Regional Office for Europe and CIS, in her letter to me as of Feb. 15, 2018 also lied that I signed my Service Evaluation Form without any contestation. Actually, I provided extensive comments in my SEF regarding Uktam’s decision and overall used all the ways available to me in order to declare my disagreement with UNDP management actions.
All my efforts to achieve justice at UN proved futile. I persistently got replies from UN officials that everything is done in accordance with UN procedures. My evidence was completely ignored. Nobody at UN bothered to discuss my case with me, request any documents or contact my witnesses. So I received an excellent opportunity to see how UNDP values (integrity, transparency, mutual respect, professionalism, accountability, results orientation) work in practice. My case perfectly demonstrates what kind of people manages UNDP and UN.
UN is managed by deeply dishonest, arrogant and insolent people. During many years UN was involved not only in a massive wrongdoing, but also in serious criminal activities. And over this time UN management demonstrated a zero desire to rectify situation within this organization, to conduct honest and impartial investigations and to prosecute culprits. In the case of any wrongdoing or crime discovered at UN its management invariably produced talking about ”great UN values and zero tolerance toward any wrongdoing” and some activity designed just to calm down the world community.
At the same time, UN management always demonstrated extremely strong determination to protect and support ”needed people” and to ensure cozy life for themselves. They want to see money flowing to UN unhindered, so that they could obtain lavish benefits and high salaries. UN management cynically spits on the public opinion and its own employees and intends to milk the world community indefinitely. “Needed people” need more money…