02, May 2018 | CJP Team

A Guardian investigation has found that the United Nations staff pension fund has about $1 billion dollars invested in companies engaged in actions that contradict the UN’s basic values and programmes. The fund was set up by the UN General Assembly in 1948, and supplies disability, retirement and death benefits to UN staff. It currently has more than 200,000 beneficiaries, and a market value of $64 billion. $1.5 billion of this is invested in publicly listed firms. Many of these firms have previously been tried for corruption, are are currently embroiled in such legal cases,  have been accused of human rights violations, or are connected to environmental disasters. For example, the fund’s biggest investment is $210 million in the oil company Shell, which a UN report found was partly responsible for causing environmental damage from oil spills in Ogoniland in Nigeria.