Jacques Diouf

 U.N. staff consider future as dollar slumps

 By JAN FILIPOWICZ

ROME – Thousands of former employees of the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture could be “begging on the streets” of the Eternal City if the slide of the U.S. dollar against the euro continues to erode the value of their pensions denominated in the American currency, sources at the FAO Pensions Committee have warned.

 The value of the assets owned by the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund in New York has plummeted in recent years due to the world financial and economic crisis, at one point falling from an initial high of dlrs 42 billion to as low as dlrs 27 billion. The fund subsequently has recovered to as much as dlrs 36 billion but the impact of the recession nourishes little hope of effective compensation for the effect of the slide of the dollar for retired international civil servants from the FAO and the other food agencies, WFP and IFAD, living in Italy, say the sources.

 “FAO pensions have lost as much as half their value for many pensioners in the last seven years since Italy entered the Eurozone and abandoned the lira in 2002,” said one senior source. “We are told by officials from the United Nations in New York that there is no danger of the U.N. Pension fund going bankrupt despite the plunge in asset value and that is all very well but FAO pensioners will be begging in the streets like British civil servants in Zimbabwe if the decline in the dollar continues against the euro as the cost of living continues to rise in Italy.”

 Thousands of FAO pensioners choose to remain in Italy where they made their homes following a career in the vast former Italian Colonies Ministry building by the Circo Massimo which houses the U.N. agency dedicated to eradicating hunger and poverty in the world.

 Nabil Gangi, Secretary of the FAO/WFP Staff Pension Committee, said “the impact of the decline in the dollar would depend on the kind of pension someone has. There are mechanisms for compensation for exchange rate changes.”

 He declined to comment, however, when asked to characterise the overall impact of the decline of the Greenback’s value on FAO pensioners living in Italy and elsewhere in the Eurozone.

 While former top executives from the Rome-based food agencies are understood in many cases to have pensions that are relatively protected from exchange rate movements, many former lower and middle grade staff who devoted their lives to the FAO and its noble mission are finding it hard to survive.

 “The typical person hard hit is a former secretary from Britain or another Commonwealth country who retired in Rome and now has to take paying guests if she is lucky to make ends meet,” said one source.

 United Nations pensioners may opt to be paid in euros rather than dollars. But if they do so they can not change back and many have hesitated to change in the hope that the dollar eventually will recover.

 Senegalese Director General Jacques Diouf recently indicated he intends to retire himself imminently and will not seek a further term of office when his 18 years at the helm of the agency end.

 Brazil has indicated it would like to present a candidate to lead the FAO and is sure to receive support from other Latin American countries while the United States would prefer a Brazilian candidate to one from one of the more radical Latin American countries such as Venezuela or Cuba.

 The failure of the FAO to recognise the problem of pensioners’ plight and deal with it underlines once again how Mr Diouf and his entourage of “yes men” are remote from the concerns of the talented team they have the privilege to lead, insiders say.

 “In New York at the U.N. they are aware that the FAO is not a success, that it does not have the impact on poverty and hunger that it could have,” said one retired senior FAO man who declined to be identified. “But if anyone asks what should be done about the situation the response is usually just a shrug of the shoulders and someone says ‘it is only dlrs 600 million so it doesn’t really matter.”

 Britain and the United States together with other Western countries have fought an on-again, off-again battle with Dr Diouf and his wily Lebanese predecessor, Edoaurd Saouma, to prevent the agency spending too much on administering itself.

 Britain has not yet decided whether it will present a candidate to succeed Dr Diouf, who bizarrely was elected unopposed to his latest term of office.