An American whose protracted legal battle with the United Nations ended a nearly 30-year career there, cited an American law that requires such withholding if the secretary of state determines that the United Nations is failing to protect whistle-blowers from retaliation. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/aggrieved-un-whistle-blower-seeks-withholding-of-us-funds.html?ref=world  It has cast an unflattering light on UN internal protections, put in place more than six years ago, that were theoretically devised to shield whistle-blowers, but in practice appear to discourage them.   United Nations oversight panel judge’s decision last month to award him only $65,000 of his claimed $3.2 million in total damages had sent a message that “clearly tells U.N. staff that even when a whistle-blower wins, he loses.”  “ (The whistle-blower) Mr. Wasserstrom is far worse off financially than if he had simply remained silent.”
2007, he was the top anticorruption officer at a United Nations mission in Kosovo and reported signs of misconduct among other United Nations officials there to his superiors.  A few months later, his office was closed, his post was abolished and an internal United Nations inquiry into his own behavior was ordered that included searches of his home and car and seizure of his property. The Ethics Office had received at least 343 inquiries from whistle-blowers about protection against retaliation as of last June, according to the Government Accountability Project, but only 1 percent of them were ultimately validated as retaliation. Mr. Wasserstrom said in his letter that such a record “defies logic, probability and common sense.”