Government should not donate €10m disaster relief funding to disgraced UN agency

THERE is no doubt about it: corruption would not have been so rife in the UN-administered oil-for-food programme if there had been diligent management by the UN and its agencies.

This was pointed out in your feature headlined ‘The mother of all scams’ (Irish Examiner, October 28).

The Volcker report into the oil-for-food programme is a damning indictment of the UN and has clearly shown that the world body simply isn’t capable of taking on massive tasks like the $64 billion operation. One of the world’s largest ever humanitarian aid operations, the programme was set up to alleviate the suffering of millions of Iraqis when the west imposed sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War.