In Bangladesh, I had a great job with very nice expatriate and local staff and racism was never an issue. In fact, since I joined UNDP in Sri Lanka in 1972, it was nice to see how expatriates worked with locals and racism appeared never to be an issue. Although I must say that, some local staff was more qualified than expatriate staff. However, as I learned later in UNICEF Bangladesh, that balance of expatriate/local was a necessity, but local staff does not understand that much very well. Moreover, I also understood it better on taking the UNICEF assignment in Bangladesh.
Also in Bangladesh we had some highly qualified national officers who were more qualified than some of the expatriate program officers. However, the expatriate program officers were able to get the programs moving with the government of Bangladesh at a more rapid pace. With whatever good intentions, when the local national officer would represent the UN agency he was dealing with his own national who did not take him (or her) seriously. It is another form of racism, like the old saying, “a prophet is not honored in his (or her) own country.” I could remember that with the water project, a highly qualified local officer could not do much. However, when the office sent out a junior expatriate for the same job the execution time was fast, very fast. In the same way, there was also discrimination against office titles. A government officer would not see anyone with the title of “assistant”. The office simply changed titles from Assistant Program Officer to District Representative and that sorted out the problem.
Back in New York in the 1980s, my understanding of racism turned to discrimination. The issue was that women suffered discrimination in placement and needed to occupy more positions in the professional category. In fact, this was a delayed act on the part of the UN as the corporate sector was ahead in this game. The UN however, and UNICEF particularly did a great job of furthering the well-being of the professional woman. I think today that UNICEF stays unmatched in the UN system by having had the first woman Deputy Executive Director in 1982 and following that the appointment of two women Executive Directors in succession of each other. That followed with women occupying leading positions of Regional Director and Country Representative, a first woman Comptroller. However, in developing countries, it may be still a problem for women's honor as they treat less equally than their male counterparts may. In fact, UNICEF Staff News of April 2006 posted an article (Is UNICEF an Equal Opportunity Organization? For Women, Not Quite, by Gretchen Luchsinger Sidhu) showing that women still make up only 19 per cent of D2/L7s in UNICEF.
In many parts of the world, women are so diminutive in society that in “The State of the World’s Children 2007 Report” UNICEF refers to it as a ‘Double Dividend of Gender Equality and calls for an end to gender inequality throughout the world. Despite some progress says UNICEF, millions of women around the world are still condemned to suffer from physical and sexual violence. In other words, women suffer discrimination by the actions of men, sadly also approved by the state of governance. “There is no way you can be an advocate for women’s rights without being an advocate for children’s rights – and there is no way to be an advocate for children’s rights without being an advocate for women’s rights,” said Ms. Rima Salah, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, at the African Development Forum in Addis Ababa in December 2006. Yes, when women are denied rights, children suffer the consequences. The male child thinks the girl child is inferior and treats her in a discriminative way thus carrying on the misguided tradition from generation to generation. When entire countries deny women an education and equal opportunity in the work place (consequence of tradition or religious belief) those countries are in essence wasting one-half of its human capital. Why not then have racial and gender equality in the curricula of education from the primary school onward?
In addition, though, I feel there is also some inconspicuous racial discrimination in the UN system because of people’s race or nationality, but organizations are silent of it. It is time that UNICEF (UN and other UN agencies too) undertake a survey of racism in its internal administration to ascertain whether the agency is an equal opportunity employer for race. Although racism is not in the culture of the UN system, there are some glaring examples that some staff may really practice racism in unconscious ways although they preach equality to the rest of the world.
At one general meeting in UNICEF, one senior colleague once made a statement that staff from developing countries should not clamor for promotion as they already had a big promotion by joining the ranks of the international professional category and coming overseas. In another case, it was reverse discrimination. On another occasion, one UNICEF manager said he preferred an Asian for the job as Asians could be pushed around. That same manager was always very uncomfortable in the company of fellow Americans. Then there is pressure from donor countries (industrialized countries) to have their nationality represented in the most senior position of the organization. While such a claim seems quite valid, it has also led to the placement of some incompetent people in senior positions just because they must appoint from industrialized countries resulting in unconscious discrimination of more qualified personnel from developing countries.
Select Bibliography
1. Reuven Brenner. The Force of Finance: Triumph of the Capital Markets. New York: Texre, 2002.
2. William J. Bernstein. The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created. New York, Chicago, etc: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
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