Oxfam and WWF punished by UN after Saudi insult

Finance | Gareth Jones | 4 Aug 2010

Oxfam and WWF have been forced to apologise to the government of Saudi Arabia after staff members attending a UN meeting broke the country’s name plate, put it in a toilet bowl and circulated photos around the convention centre.

The incident took place at the June meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, and has led UN officials to restrict the organisations’ number of attendees at the Convention’s October meeting as punishment.

At the opening of UNFCCC’s August meeting on Monday, delegates representing nations across the world spent an hour condemning the incident, with Pakistan saying: “This act of vandalism has severely jeopardised the input that we used to receive from civil society”.

Speakers also said the name plate theft was not the first such indiscretion, referring to breaches of protocol at meetings in Copenhagen and Bangkok last year which included a mistreatment of the Saudi flag.

However, the Saudi Arabian representative ended the session on a conciliatory note, saying his country is “a forgiving nation” and that it would not be pushing for further punishments.

“Staff procedures broke down”

In a statement, WWF said the employee who took the name plate was no longer working for the charity, while another staff member and an Oxfam employee who were both present have been suspended pending further investigations.

The charity has drawn up a code of conduct which all staff attending international meeting will be forced to sign.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, said: “Proper staff procedures broke down and we were too slow to respond. We have commissioned an independent review of our internal controls and management systems to ensure nothing like this happens again."

The incident was reportedly sparked by Saudi Arabian opposition to a proposal placed by a group of small developing nations.

The country has in the past been accused of attempting to block progress on climate change in order to protect its oil interests.

Directory: Oxfam | World Wildlife Fund UK (WWF UK)

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