In a letter dated 8 December 2020 to the Chair of the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee, the Chair of the UN Pension Board, Martha Helena Lopez, also Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources, doubled down on the Board’s longstanding attempts to suppress the voices of the UN Participants Representatives to the Board and block transparency. (See letter below).
Describing them as a “small sub-group” of Board members, Lopez accuses them of breaching confidentiality obligations, and of violating UN staff rules and regulations about seeking to influence Member States.
In fact, the UN Participants Representatives are the duly elected representatives of 85,000 active UN staff –i.e. two-thirds of participants in the Fund for whom $50 billion is entrusted.
Their crime? To have carried out their duty as Board members and briefed the General Assembly, which has ultimate oversight of the fund, on their concerns. These concerns, as they have indicated, include mis-spending of the Fund's budget, attempts to remove the Fund from the jurisdiction of the UN Appeals Tribunal (UNAT), attempts to disenfranchise hundreds of Fund staff/participants by excluding them from Board membership, reporting of fraud, and their views on Board governance reform. Hardly high treason, as Lopez seems to imply.
As members of a subsidiary organ of the GA, the 5th Committee is entitled to understand their concerns and to understand any problems with how the fund operates. It’s well known that other groups on the Board do the same.
The UN Participants’ Representatives would be remiss in their legal fiduciary duty if they did not make their concerns clear.
Further, Lopez knows as well as anyone else that commenting on the board report, a public document, does not breach confidentiality.
Lopez sends her message to the Fifth Committee Chair on behalf of the Board. Were the UN Participants Representatives, who are members of the Board with voting rights, given the courtesy of seeing her note before it was sent to the Fifth Committee? Or is this really a statement solely on her own behalf? It wouldn't be the first time that Lopez appears to confuse her roles of head of UNHR and Pension Board member.
This latest attempt to discredit, and bully and intimidate the UN Participant Representatives into silence is part of a pattern of such behavior by the Board leadership.
There is much in the UN Participants Representatives' note to the Fifth Committee (see Note below) that the Board may indeed wish to suppress, such as paragraph 13 that cites their concern "about the lack of disclosure pertaining to fraud or presumptive fraud against the UNJSPF" and their recommendation that "the General Assembly reiterate its requirement for accountability of the Board in line with oversight role."
The UN Pension Board has serious governance challenges and significant variances with the best practices of other pension funds, as detailed in internal UN audit reports of the past several years and in a recent governance study mandated by the General Assembly (see governance audit A/73/341 and the Mosaic study annexed to A/75/9).
The UN Participants Representatives have over the years demonstrated immense courage and perseverance in continuing to advocate for the interests of their constituencies in the face of such intimidation, of which Lopez’s letter is merely the latest salvo.
See links to:
https://www.passblue.com/2019/10/10/the-67-billion-un-pension-fund-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
https://www.passblue.com/2020/11/12/the-75-billion-un-pension-fund-kicking-reforms-down-the-road/
Click 'read more' (below) to read the Board Chair's letter to the Fifth Committee Chair, and the UN Participants Representatives Note to the Fifth Committee.
