Helen Clark, one of the frontrunners to succeed Ban Ki-moon as UN secretary general, says there were legitimate criticisms of the way the United Nations dealt with allegations of human rights violations during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka. 

Foreign Policy magazine recently carried a probe into Clark’s management style that reported widespread disgruntlement among staff. 

The article talked of a “trail of embittered peers and subordinates” in UNDP and told the story of an official who was allegedly driven out by Clark in retaliation for the employee’s participation in a critical review of the agency’s response to human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

However, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand dismissed the claims about the allegedly retaliatory treatment of the official: “I have no evidence of that”. 

Speaking to The Guardian, she said there were legitimate criticisms of the way the UN dealt with Sri Lankan abuses during the civil war with the Tamil Tigers, but said the conflict was officially declared over a month after she started at the helm of UNDP – “it was before my time”.

Clark also denied that her reorganisation of UNDP had been an internal disaster. She said the number of employment tribunals brought by individuals was “tiny, a handful”.

“One of the hardest things is to change an organisation, as people have a vested interests in the way things are. But not to do it, knowing that the whole nature of funding is changing and you have to be much more adaptable, is not an option – you have to act in the interests of the organisation.”

Source: The Guardian

-Agencies