4 - Mountain Agenda sidelined as the conflict of political and personal interests at ICIMOD outbalances everything else (i)

Despite its bright past and some outstanding works, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is now giving the worst performance when it comes to advocacy of Mountain Agenda in the HKH region as well as outside, including major international processes. Please note, being a regional intergovernmental organization, ICIMOD's main focus is regional cooperation and policy advocacy.

Experts tell us this is primarily because of lack of vision, feeble leadership and serious lack of management skills of the present Director General (DG) Dr. David Molden who is neither a mountain expert nor a mountain thinker. Given a long list of weakness and inexperience of the Director General other senior staffs at ICIMOD are playing with his mind, manipulating the facts and imposing activities to fulfill their vested interest. Please find below list of selected activities, how they evolved in the past, their glory and how those success stories are unnecessarily killed by Director Molden and other senior management staffs at ICIMOD:

CASE I: Rio+20 Process – Preparations and Follow-up:

Evolution: 

Under the leadership of Dr. Madhav Karki, former Deputy Director General (DDG), ICIMOD made most important contribution to Himalayan and global mountain community by putting high the Mountain Agenda in the Rio+20 process. Started in April 2011, the Rio+20 preparations included several sounds of virtual as well as face to face consultation in the HKH as well as Southeast Asia Pacific Region. Several other experts played key role in making this process inclusive and voices heard. Dr. Golam Rasul, Programme Manger at ICIMOD played key role in developing concept of Green Economy in the context of developing and mountainous countries. Mr. Tek Jung Mahat, Project Manager and Node Manager – Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) took this discussion among the youth and organized the largest ever e-conference among Asian youth that included over 550 contributors. 44 selected youth from 17 countries were invited to gather in Kathmandu in August 2011 for the Asia Pacific Youth Forum on Mountain Issues who later developed the Asia Pacific Youth Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, and the Asia Pacific Position Paper on Rio+20, the only input from Asian Youth to this global process. The team prepared Sustainable Mountain Development Assessment reports for the HKH and Southeast Asia Pacific region, issued Policy briefs and brought together Asia Pacific stakeholders (government, civil society, youth and media) to make the impacts larger in this process. This preparation was linked with activities in other regions led by trusted partners such as CONDESAN, SDC, UCA among others and the concept of Mountain Pavilion was realized during the Rio+20 conference itself, in which several advocacy programmes were organized, including a very high level meeting led by the Government of Nepal, which was attended by then Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, HE Gyan Acharya, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, Ministers and senior policy makers from several other mountainous countries. As a result of series of organized preparations, ICIMOD together with number of other global partners, was able to ensure presence of 3 paragraphs dedicated to mountains and mountain issues. Following to this Mr. Mahat involving several local partners organized another youth forum in 2012 in Katmandu and trained 40 youth from 13 Asia Pacific countries on Mountains and Green Economy. He furthered the initiative by developing National Youth Forums on Green Solutions in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan and trained other 280 plus youth in their own countries considering the local reality and actions needed.

Failure: 

Despite huge success and a strong need to continue mountain issues advocacy works in the Post Rio+20, Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drafting process, ICIMOD failed taking initiatives after December 2012, when Dr. Karki got retired. Several consultation meetings organized by UN systems, Civil Society (called Major Groups), regional institutions and interest groups in the Asia Pacific have not seen any mountain advocates after this (except occasional presence of representatives of the Government of Nepal). By now at least 5 major global initiatives have already completed their regional and thematic consultations on these topics and sadly ICIMOD was nowhere during those meetings. Staffs involved earlier were found complaining about ICIMOD system, lack of vision of its leaders and poor bureaucratic model that has paralyzed staffs from making any contributions. Such failures have caused mountain issues going under noticed in these discussions. If a mountain dedicated institute fails in ensuring these basic preparations or mountain advocacy, what can we expect from ICIMOD in future? How can the thought, vision and plan-less leadership at ICIMOD convince billions of stakeholders in the HKH on what they are doing for mountains and mountain people?

Why ICIMOD failed to continue this legacy?

·         After retirement of its DDG in December 2012, ICIMOD lacked a leadership to continue this legacy and keep the momentum going at global and regional level. Sadly, inadequate vision of present DG, political conspiracy in the background and power games at the Centre created a situation in which ICIMOD was not able to recruit the DDG, who had been leading such initiatives. Interestingly the post of DDG is still vacant (for more than 11 months) and many believe this is another conspiracy being hatched by the DG with other staffs at ICIMOD and select interest groups (few member countries) to sideline the Nepali community at ICIMOD and deviate ICIMOD’s interest from Nepal.

·         Even when previous leaders were leading this process there was extremely high level of opposition and no-cooperation from the DG and other staffs at ICIMOD as they were not able to fulfill their vested interest through ICIMOD preparation from Rio+20. Such oppositions had delayed production of assessment reports, affected several network meetings, and halted advocacy works. Most importantly ICIMOD’s work with Government of Nepal was largely affected as DG was always against Nepali Government and Nepali community at large.

·         Related to previous point, the DG is neither a mountain expert nor mountain thinker. So he rarely cares about such important events. For him keeping few people in his group is more important than overall achievement of the Center and Mountain Agenda.

·         Young professionals coordinating this process during preparations were badly discouraged from taking any actions as the DG and people close to him felt Mountain Agenda is personal work of former DDG and ICIMOD should not work on them anymore.

What a pity situation? If the Rio+20, Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) activities were personal work of former DDG Madhav Karki, let’s ask present Director General Dr. David Molden, what are his institute’s present works and priorities? – spoiling ICIMOD’s management? Marginalizing Nepali staffs and communities? Breaking laws of the host country? Making ICIMOD a battleground of Nepali and Non-Nepali staffs?

3 - ICIMOD milestones - ICIMOD may never see again such beautiful works

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) used to be seen as major hope for advocacy of Mountain Agenda and scientific developments in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region and globally when noted experts below offered leadership to some of the most recognized works of ICIMOD. Please find below a tentative timeline (in chronological order):

Dhital, M. R.; Deoja, B.; Thapa, B.; Wagner, A. and number of other experts pioneered work on Mountain Risk Engineering (MRE) in the early 1990s, whose handbook provided ready references of number of major construction works in Himalayas throughout 1990s and 2000s.

Prof Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, an Indian National working at ICIMOD was leading drafting of Chapter 13 of Agenda 21 (output document of the UN Conference on Environment and Development-UNCED, aka Rio Conference or Earth Summit) during early 1990s.

Prof. Narpat Singh Jodha, an Indian National working at ICIMOD defined mountains in terms of Mountain Specificities during late 1980s/early 1990s, which is still seen as the most widely accepted way of defining mountains and analyzing mountain issues and several positive and negative attributes.

Dr. Mahesh Baskota, a Nepalese National and former Deputy Director General of ICIMOD pioneered Mountain Agenda Advocacy in the entire Asia Pacific region by leading organization of the Sustainable Development of Mountain Areas of Asia (SUDEMAA) Conference in 1994, that institutionalised global Mountain Forum in Asia Pacific region through establishment of the Asia Pacific Mountain Network at ICIMOD with more than half dozen sub-nodes across the region. This pioneer work formally linked ICIMOD with rest of the world for Mountain Agenda advocacy.

Mr. Surendra Shrestha, Mr. Basanta Shrestha, Nepalese Nationals working at ICIMOD and others founded MENRIS division in early 1990s, which pioneered GIS and Remote Sensing work in the entire HKH region and trained thousands of experts in all ICIMOD countries.

Mr. Pradeep Mool, Mr. Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya, Mr. Basanta Shrestha, Mr Sharad Joshi (Nepalese nationals) and Mr. Deoraj Gurung (Bhutanese national) working at ICIMOD, among others, broke the silence about scientific understanding of Ice and Glaciers related researches in the region by developing baseline data in early 2000s and periodically updating them until recently.

Dr. Madhav Karki, Dr. Kamal Baskota and Dr Bhaskar Singh Karky, Nepalese nationals, among others penetrated climate change discussions at ICIMOD and took ICIMOD to global stage to advocate Mountain Agenda within climate change discussions from 2004-2012. These experts conceptualized and established provision of organizing dedicated Mountain Day as part of the UNFCCC meetings, helped prepared Government of Nepal to establish the Mountain Initiative (aka Mountain Alliance Initiative), helped Government of Bhutan for successful Living Himalayas Climate Summit and helped Indian mountain stakeholders replicate and learn from Mountain Initiative of Nepal.

Mr. Tek Jung Mahat and Mr. Daan Boom, Nepalese and Dutch Nationals working at ICIMOD gave a new height to the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) from 2007-2013, making it the most active virtual network of mountain stakeholders globally, conceptualizing and establishing first and largest platforms to capacitate and engage Media and Youth in Mountain Agenda Advocacy. During this period APMN trained over 570 youth from 20 Asia Pacific countries and over 75 media persons from all HKH and South Asian countries to research, understand, take action and report as well as advocate mountain issues, and developed a virtual network of over 6,000 stakeholders. This partnership also gave new directions to Knowledge Management approach at ICIMOD with development and introduction of a large set of KM tools, such as preparations of thematic digests, back to office reports, e-conference, e-surveys, e-election, digital photo contests, knowledge forums and brown bag seminars, write-shops etc.

Dr. Madhav Karki, Dr. Golam Rasul and Mr. Tek Jung Mahat, Nepalese and Bangaladeshi nationals together with global mountain stakeholders such as Mountain Partnership, Mountain Forum, CONDESAN, BIND, NTFP-EP, Indian Mountain Initiative and Governments of Nepal, Peru, Switzerland and Austria, and HE Gyan Acharya, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States and Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations as well as Chair of the Global Coordination Bureau of the Group of Least Developed Countries organized massive preparations to find better place for Mountains in the Rio+20 processes in 2011/12. Supported with more than 30 major events and number of background studies, success of this work is seen in the form of Rio+20 Outcome Document, in which three paragraphs are dedicated to mountains. This is the most important achievement so for the mountain stakeholders worldwide.

Sadly with the ongoing politics at ICIMOD, most of these contributors are maintaining a distance with ICIMOD and we fear ICIMOD may never see again such beautiful works if the present mismanagement at the Centre is not corrected.

1 - Unlawful recruitment of inappropriate staffs at ICIMOD (Part 1)

Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has become new hub of illegal employment of foreigners who are on short visit to Nepal without work permit or proper visa to work in Nepal. Sources claim there are more than a dozen such cases, who are employed illegally and following to staff pressures, their visas are converted at the later stage. But questions here are – How can one time criminal be excused for breaking law of Nepal and given the privilege and immunities of a diplomat as a staff of ICIMOD? How can ICIMOD continue such malpractice violating Nepalese law and breaking all norms and values of a diplomatic mission? If this is happening and Government of Nepal is aware of it, why ICIMOD is not trashed from Diplomatic Mission? And if ICIMOD wants to function as neutral Diplomatic Mission in town, why it doesn’t fire such inappropriately recruited staffs and publicly apologize with the Government of Nepal?

Interestingly the list of inappropriately recruited staffs includes several key positions that are expected to keep institutions clean, transparent and healthy. However when they are recruited illegally and inappropriately, wouldn’t it be a foolish thought to believe ICIMOD operates fairly anymore? Few examples of such recruitment:

1.      Miriam Lindwer, Senior Officer, Human Resources / Organizational Development, Unit Head HR/OD: Former low profile worker at a Hotel in Kathmandu, Ms. Lindwer was recruited by ICIMOD to help with its human resources management and capacity building activities. Partial funding for her recruitment was offered to ICIMOD by Centre for International Migration and Development (CIM) run by German Development Mission Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Upon knowing that Ms. Lindwer do not meet minimum requirements to work in Nepal, CIM requested ICIMOD to go for other candidate as CIM didn’t want to rule against Nepalese law and the recruitment was delayed by few days. However, then ICIMOD Director General Andreas Schild recruited her anyway without any correction which is against the Human Resources Policy of ICIMOD and existing law of Government of Nepal. With changing time, Ms. Lindwer now heads Human Resources  Unit of ICIMOD since 2011 trashing away decades old experiences staffs. As a result, ICIMOD HR system is now badly spoiled  and we will be presenting many such cases in days to come. Here what else one can expect from ICIMOD head and inappropriately recruited HR Unit head?

2.      Amy Elizabeth Sellmyer, Publication and Editing Officer: ICIMOD recruited Ms.  Sellmyer, an American as head of the Publications and Editing unit without any formal recruitment process or announcements. Prior to that she was associated with ICIMOD as a proofreader. This comes as a big surprise to many people who know ICIMOD for long time as the post of coordinating editor is highly valued and critical for ICIMOD’s work and it was previously occupied by some well known editors such as Dr. A Beatrice Murray, Ms. Greta Rana among others. Since ICIMOD follows British English it is unnatural to have an American Editor at ICIMOD. When approached no one at the Centre had answer to the question - what made a low profile proofreader Publication and Editing Officer overnight and how ICIMOD will maintain quality of its publications in coming days that are already noticed downgraded. However this recruitment was not free from opposition. When opposed, sources claim it was Ms. Anja Møller Rasmussen, Senior Manager, Knowledge Management and Communication at ICIMOD, who interfered in this matter and instructed to recruit Ms. Sellmyer without any delay avoiding all other formalities and her proposal was supported by Senior Management Committee (SMC) at ICIMOD. Like Ms. Lindwer, Ms. Sellmyer was also employed inappropriately when she neither had work permit nor valid visas. She was first recruited in 2012 (without work permit or valid visas) by another American Ms. Andrea Perlis, who was heading publications unit at ICIMOD in 2012.

These are only representative examples. We will soon disclose many other cases that exist at ICIMOD. With this information, we request the concerned authorities to do investigation about staffs recruitment and management issues at ICIMOD, stop all unlawful practices, and immediately remove from the post inappropriately recruited staffs and deport them as per the existing law of Nepal.

ICIMOD - 'for' or 'against' Himalayan people?

What do you expect from a regional intergovernmental organization like the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) who is tasked to work for better livelihood of mountain people and ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region by promoting regional cooperation among the countries in the region (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan) and developing partnership with other mountainous countries across all continents for  global benefit. Headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal, ICIMOD presents itself as a learning centre promoting knowledge, policy formulation and actions through organized research, better governance and equitable benefit sharing approaches.

However, sources reveal, in contrary to the mandated approach and expectations from it, the centre is involved in several other activities that overrule the law of the Government of Nepal (host country), promote position, gender and color based discrimination,  manipulate institutional realities, advance suspicious activities in selected member countries, and partner with corporate houses that are found environment unfriendly and suspected for their involvement in trade of plant and animal products violating provisions associated with indigenous knowledge and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Sources add, the governance at the centre itself is questionable as many staffs are recruited without meeting minimum criteria and fully ignoring, avoiding and overruling the Centre’s agreement with the Government of Nepal and Board of Directors approved institutional documents that should guide activities at the centre. Furthermore, several staffs at the Centre are questioned for violating and abusing diplomatic immunities and privileges offered thus affecting the economy of the host country and creating unnecessary divides between national and foreign staffs working at the centre. The Centre’s approach to work with media is also questioned as some sources close to centre find them fishy. Sources claim most of these activities are taking place with direct protection and instructions from Centre’s  Directors themselves, which is a serious threat to Centre’s progress as a well disciplined entity. Contacted ICIMOD staff and well-wishers revealed whoever questions on these malpractices, they get removed from the Centre without any logic. They referred some organised conspiracy against honest staffs who raised these issues and requested to keep their name private.

Urging to expose these bitter realities we have received 33 compelling real stories from concerned people, that we will be relieving one after other, with the aim of informing respective governments, donors, media and civil society and create pressure so ICIMOD management takes necessary actions to correct the mistakes as soon as possible so it can flourish as a clean and healthy regional institution in the years to come.