UN system ... “observations”

So now I am becoming very skeptic towards the UN. Here are some examples of things that pisses me off
- Per Diem: If you have a mission out of the city you are based in, you get a DSA. This is a certain amount of money, according to the place you go to. With this DSA, you are supposed to cover all your daily costs: accommodation, food, taxis… For example, if you go to Nazareth, you will get 115 dollars a day. Knowing that your daily costs will approximately not go over 60 dollars (and you already are spoiled with this!), it means that you put in your pocket more than 50 dollars. OK. Soit. Imagine you go to Paris, than you get 350 dollars. Great, you actually can make 200 dollars a day…just for attending a meeting from which nothing concrete will come out. Chennai: 388$; Mumbai: 393$; Mexico city: 309$; Rabat: 302$; Ouaga: 330$; Kiev: 650$ (this one is for the Hyatt).... et j’en passe! (of course those rates are calculated for stays in hotel like Sheraton or Hyatt. Do you really NEED the Sheraton? Will you die in a bit cheaper place. Are you working for development or?). So I am organizing a two days retreat to train people from the AUC on gender issues. The gender Directorate dared to tell us: “If you want people to attend your retreat, we need to organize it outside of Addis. Then they get the DSA and will come. You know, the senior staff at the AU is not well paid”. You bet. Never seen as many Mercedes in Addis than in the parking of the AU. I know we need incentive and way of motivated the people to work in those organisations... but really? we can't find other ways?
And then you are told that the interns are not paid. Don’t you think they could provide us 30 birrs a day for lunch (2 dollars). That is a bit unfair. They don’t pay anything but throw out the money tons of money for flying all over the world to meeting and blabla events.

- The “expatriate” way of life. Let’s say you are international staff of the UN, you have a very big car (biggest in town), you live in a compound with very high walls, security, garden, and all in the best standards of town. You don’t mix with locals; you don’t speak a world of Amharic even after ten years in Ethiopia. You never walk in the street (either you have a car or a driver that picks you up the morning and drives you home). You have “house helps” that you pay 200birrs a months (20 dollars. The minimum wage is 150 birrs). You go to meetings all the time to discuss about things that you are not clearly familiar with because you are not from the country, you don’t know the customs nor the reasons why. But you claim you can do something about it. You claim your are driven by passion but it more feels like that is the position and advantages that took you here. I generalize, and I am sure they are lots of people that do not live this way, are driven by passion and dedicated to their work for the right reason. But sorry, where are they? Can I meet some?

- Management: If you are hired at the UN, it is mainly for two reasons: either you have good contacts, or you are an expert in your field. I‘ll come back to the contacts later. Let’s say you are expert in gender and human rights. Great. You have experience; you get a good position as a project leader or program officer. And you have a team to manage. But what is management? No idea. So here we are, with a skilled boss who is expert in human rights. But who doesn’t know how to organize a team, nor motivate people, nor lead a meeting, nor communicate, nor nor nor…. So it is great but it is not efficient, not functioning. You decide to take interns but you don’t share anything with them and is too busy to help them. Even to busy to give them notice and context of a meeting. And then the results are messy, not organized and not productive. Maybe the UN should observe a private company and try to understand why manager are pillars of efficiency and productivity.

- Contacts: Not one of the interns I met at the ECA got into the structure without knowing someone. When you are hired, you have to fill in a form. One of the questions of this form is: “Do you have any relative working at the UN?” Before, with my innocent of my 20’s, I was sure that if you were checking “yes”, you would have more troubles to be hired. Actually now, I am pretty sure it is a way of seeing if you actually are related to the big family and if you are allowed to be integrated totally (understand here my irony of course)

I am stopping here because I don’t want to be “too much” and i know i already am... It is hard not to see all those bad sides when you have hard time finding the reasons why you actually think the UN is so great...Quite pessimistic today, i know... but always hoping!
Ps: Apart from that, still visiting some apartments and house and still only visiting crap! Need some more work on this….