Welcome to the IGO Watch Monthly Newsletter for February

Despite being the shortest month of the year, it’s been a busy February for IGO Watch as there has been a significant amount of IGO activity this month. We have been closely tracking all important news and activities, from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) investigation into the coronavirus outbreak to the United Nations’ (UN) election campaign.

 

At least there was sightseeing

The whole world was expecting a lot from the WHO investigation into the origins of the coronavirus in China, even without the necessary assistance and cooperation by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Still, we can confidently state that the result of the global health agency’s field trip has left us wanting more. Let us try and sum up the comments by Dominic Dwyer (a microbiologist and infectious diseases expert) who was a member of the investigative team. He said, “WHO should have been there from the start.” What we are sadly left with is a conclusion that years and years of further research are needed if we are to ever grasp fully what actually happened. This effort may even be in vain because of the unwillingness of the CCP to provide the relevant data to the WHO. But a better question should be, why do we still think that the WHO has any credibility left to guarantee an objective and unbiased investigation, after almost a full year of acting as the CCP’s PR office? And no amount of reinvigorated diplomatic efforts by the new U.S. administration are going to change the failing and corrupt structure of the WHO an organization that doesn’t shy away from providing cover to rogue regimes who disregard international norms.

 

Boss wants you to click the link

We thought that this year the UN was going to manage to keep a tight lid on all the stories of harassment their high-ranking officers seem to enjoy. Well, they did not even manage a full month. Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond, who has just been named as the UN’s first-ever technology envoy, has suddenly been placed on leave (with pay, mind you), pending an investigation into several complaints by women who have worked with him on the UN-75 project over the last year or so, alleging instances of harassment and other inappropriate behavior. And we know how it goes with UN’s internal investigations – they will just not mention it again until everyone simply forgets it ever happened.

If harassment is the first most frequent UN theme, corruption is the second one. Members of the Philippines government accused former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg of illegally paying regulatory agencies through charities, in order to implement his anti-tobacco policies. Yes, we know that Bloomberg will stop at nothing to regulate the size of your soda or the price of your cigarettes, but it’s a pretty big deal when this goes through an international agency that bases its credibility on the strength of their policy.

Now, here’s the third frequent UN theme – the world is going to end soon. And, going with the current trend, the climate is the main culprit. We are used to global death threats by the UN, but this time they correlate marvelously with the start of Antonio Guterres’ campaign for the second term as the IGO’s chief. We are sure that, throughout 2021, we will be hearing a lot more about how the climate is definitely out to get us and that the unwavering Portuguese is the only one that’s going to save us.

We hope that he’ll come up with a better plan to save the Earth than the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Remember when we told you about their costly attempt to create an animated movie and a mobile game that looks like nothing that kids like, but which should motivate them to care about the ozone layer? Well, we’ve been tracking the numbers throughout February, and, although dreadful at first, they seemed to steadily increase. But something’s just not right. Their short movie, which had around 250.000 views at the end of February, has only 57 comments (from 30ish accounts) and 902 likes. We guess that there was an internal “please click on this link email” throughout the UN System midway through the month. God knows their workforce has the strength in numbers. And, the mobile game had less than 1000 downloads on Android in the first week or so.  Do they honestly think that we are going to believe that more than 10.000 play a game with a 3.2 score, that hasn’t even been updated once since launch? And we’re not going to even talk about the version on the App Store, which has a whopping total of 6 ratings. We guess that they just needed to waste money on something that sounds good and modern, and not a thing that will actually be used.  We think that a more appropriate mobile game would be Angry Taxpayers instead of Angry Birds.

 

Partner Spotlight: Center for Freedom and Prosperity

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) seeks to promote economic prosperity by advocating competitive markets and limited government. The top project of CF&P is the Coalition for Tax Competition, which is fighting to preserve jurisdictional tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy from erosion by international bureaucrats.

 

See Something? Say Something!

Our wish for 2021 is to further develop our network of regional coordinators from countries around the world to help us distribute information on social media, write blog posts and op-eds, and provide us with on-the-ground information from their regions. If you have any tips about stories, or would like to become a regional coordinator, please send us an email!

Until next month,

IGO Watch Team

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