Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Peggy McGuinness at Opinio Juris takes note of the new UN scandal developing in peacekeeping procurement

Peggy McGuinness at Opinio Juris, here, takes note of the new scandal developing at the UN, around procurement in peacekeeping operations, and compares it to similar scandals in the Pentagon. The Peacekeeping budget is far larger than the regular UN budget and, as Peggy notes, procurement always presents corruption problems for officials, whether the Pentagon or the UN. It's not so much that procurement presents opportunities for corruption - it always does - the question is whether there are genuine mechanisms of accountability that can root it out and effectively deal with it, both to reduce the risk and punish it afterwards. These scandals are not going away, either at the Pentagon or the UN.

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