Heard the one about the World Bank President who launched a personal crusade against corruption in developing countries, only for the world to learn that he instructed the Bank to pay his girlfriend way over the odds for her job in the same institution?
Oh, you have? Well, how about this, then: Heard the one about the head of the US Agency for International Development who predicated USAID’s HIV strategy on sexual abstinence, only for the world to learn that he was a customer of an escort service?
No, it’s not April 1st: read the full story over at Obsidian Wings. US Deputy Secretary of State and head of USAID, Randall Tobias, has resigned following the revelations. All this would be hilarious if it weren’t so damaging to two of the world’s more significant aid donors. The FT observed just a couple of days ago how the Wolfowitz saga is already denting the Bank’s credibility on the ground:
Two bank officials told the FT that a bank staffer in Aceh, Indonesia, was mocked when he raised concerns about the use of tsunami relief money. In another, two officials said, a staffer was asked by a policeman in the Democratic Republic of Congo whether reports about the president’s girlfriend’s pay were true.
Shall we just nominate Dick Cheney to be the next UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and have done with it?
