Criticism
In 2007 the five biggest donors to UNODC's budget were, in descending order: European Union, Canada, United States, UN and Sweden. The United States have repeatedly threatened to withdraw funding unless Costa assured that the UNODC would abstain from any expression of support for harm reduction measures in general. According to the Transnational Institute this explains the fact that - unlike other United Nations bodies like WHO and UNAIDS - UNODC does not promote harm reduction policies (e.g. needle exchange and Heroin-assisted treatment).
Costa has also been criticized for having reports published that seem to be designed to please donor countries and to support their prohibitionist policies, such as the 2006 UNODC report Sweden's Successful Drug Policy: A Review of the Evidence.(Sweden's financed in 2005-2006 about 4% of UNODC's budget)
His latest controversial statement has been to state that only drug money saved the world financial system from a complete collapse, effectively identifying major banks as money-launderers for about $325 billion in proceeds.
Read more about this topic: Antonio Maria Costa
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)