George Mark Malloch Brown, Baron Malloch-Brown, KCMG, PC (born 16 September 1953) is a former Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British government with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the United Nations. He left his role in October 2009 as part of a reshuffle and was succeeded by Glenys Kinnock.

Previously he was briefly United Nations Deputy Secretary-General. His term of office at the UN began on 1 April 2006 and ended on 31 December 2006, when he was succeeded by Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania; however, he was quite active in his UN service and cut a high profile while in office. He is a former journalist, development specialist, and communications consultant.

Following his appointment to government, Malloch Brown was created a life peer on 9 July 2007 as Baron Malloch-Brown, of St Leonard's Forest in the County of West Sussex (his title is hyphenated but his surname is not) and took his seat in the House of Lords that same day.

Early life and education

Malloch Brown grew up in the United Kingdom, the son of a former South African diplomat. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a First Class Honours Degree in History from Magdalene College, Cambridge and a Master's Degree in Political Science from the University of Michigan. He is an only child but has four children (Madison, Isobel, George and Phoebe) with his wife Trish.

Early career

He was the political correspondent at The Economist between 1977 and 1979, and founding editor of the Economist Development Report.

Following this he worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where he worked for Kofi Annan, and was stationed in Thailand where he was in charge of field operations for Cambodian refugees. Malloch Brown contemplated running for the SDP in the 1983 UK General election but was not selected as a candidate.

In 1986 Malloch Brown joined the Sawyer-Miller Group as the lead international partner. While at Sawyer-Miller he was among the first communication consultants to use US-style election campaign methods for foreign governments, companies, and public policy debates. His international assignments included work in Chile, where he advised the opposition in its successful challenge to former dictator Augusto Pinochet, and in the Philippines, where he worked with Corazon Aquino in the campaign against the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. He also worked in Peru and Colombia.

World Bank and United Nations

In 1994 Malloch Brown joined the World Bank as Vice-President for External Affairs, which included responsibility for relations with the United Nations.

In 1999, he moved back to the United Nations where he was appointed Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) by the recently elected Kofi Annan. During his time he spear-headed a number of reforms, including following up the creation of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG),by Kofi Annan in 1997. The group, chaired by Malloch Brown as the Administrator of UNDP, has tried with mixed success to co-ordinate the activities of all the UN's development programmes. Internally at UNDP, which was facing increased competition from the World Bank in its areas of responsibility such as capacity building, governance and emergency recovery, he tried to re orient UNDP's activities (sometimes controversially), because of competition with other UN agencies who were also adapting to the demands of a globalizing world. Compared with his predecessor, he improved resource mobilisation from donor countries. Perhaps most importantly, he claims he was one of the key architects of the Millennium Development Goals which were adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in December 2000.

In January 2005 Malloch Brown was appointed Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, retaining his position as Administrator of UNDP until the appointment of his successor.

Deputy Secretary-General

On 3 March 2006 it was announced that Mark Malloch Brown would succeed Louise Fréchette as United Nations Deputy Secretary-General on 1 April 2006. He was the second person to hold this post in the UN's history. As the appointment is made by the UN Secretary-General and not the UN General Assembly, Malloch Brown's term of office ended with the completion of Kofi Annan's term at the end of 2006.

Association with George Soros

Malloch-Brown has been closely associated with billionaire speculator George Soros. Working for Refugees International, he was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia in 1993-94, formed by George Soros. He has since kept cordial relations with Soros, and rented an apartment owned by Soros while working in New York on UN assignments. In May 2007, Soros' Quantum Fund announced the appointment of Sir Mark as vice president. In September 2007, The Observer revealed that he had resigned this position on becoming a government minister in the UK. Also in May 2007, Malloch-Brown was named vice chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute, two other important Soros organizations.

Public speaking controversies

Oil for food

Malloch Brown publicly defended handling of the Oil-for-Food Programme by the UN in general, and Kofi Annan in particular. While he countered critics that "Not a penny was lost from the organization," an internal UN audit of the Oil-for-Food programme revealed that there had been overcompensation amounting to $557 million.

A separate audit of UN peacekeeping procurement concluded that at least $310 million from a budget of $1.6 billion could not be accounted for..

Malloch Brown, briefing the Security Council, argued that, while the situation uncovered by the audit was "alarming", and that nearly $300 million out of a $1.6 billion budget was involved, it showed more that there was significant waste with only narrow instances of fraud. He noted that the UN Secretariat, based on the reservations expressed by the department being audited, did not entirely accept the auditor's conclusions.

In the same meeting, the Japanese representative said he was very disturbed by significant incidences of fraud and mismanagement, and the apparent "grievous lack of internal controls and non-adherence to the existing controls".

Criticisms of the George W. Bush administration

On 6 June 2006, while addressing a conference in New York, he criticised the United States administration for allowing "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping". He stated that much of the political dialogue in the US about the UN had been abdicated to its most strident critics, such as conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News cable channel and, as a result of this, the true role and value of the UN has become "a mystery in Middle America" . These remarks resulted in a backlash from the White House and some US conservative commentators, culminating in a call for an apology by the US envoy to the United Nations John Bolton. Bolton added to reporters, "I spoke to the secretary-general this morning, I said "I've known you since 1989 and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior U.N. official that I have seen in that entire time." Some US commentators also focused at this stage on his pronouncing Limbaugh "Lim-bau", rather than "Lim-baw".

John Podesta and Richard C. Leone wrote that Bolton's comment "distorted Mr. Malloch Brown’s remarks by calling them an attack on 'the American people', and ... by conflating Rush Limbaugh and Fox News with the American people. ...Mr. Malloch Brown had to break with the niceties of diplomatic tradition to plead for such leadership. ... Mr. Malloch Brown is surely correct: the people of the United States deserve better leadership and diplomacy to represent their interests in the world’s most important international body." Malloch Brown himself rejected the need to apologise, and received the support of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said that his deputy's comments "should be read in the right spirit".

In July 2006, during the Israel-Hezbollah crisis in Lebanon, Malloch Brown said America should allow others to "share the lead" in solving the Lebanon crisis, and also advised that Britain adopt a lower profile in solving the crisis, lest the international community see the negotiations as being led by the same team that instigated the invasion of Iraq. These comments again drew criticism from some American officials, including the US State Department, a spokesman from which stated "We are seeing a troubling pattern of a high official of the UN who seems to be making it his business to criticize member states and, frankly, with misplaced and misguided criticisms."

Malloch Brown responded in an interview with PBS:

"I don't think the US has anything to object to in the comments. I was really in fact in the interview calling for the US to reach out to France and others to make sure it was demonstrating a broad multilateral coalition and within a single news cycle of my calling for that, it was doing it." He added "I may be prophetic but I wasn't critical".

When Bolton later announced his own resignation in early December, Malloch Brown made his delight clear, telling reporters "No comment — and you can say he said it with a smile".

After the United Nations

On 15 December 2006, he was named a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and announced plans to focus on writing a book on changing leadership in a globalized world while in residence during the spring semester.

Malloch Brown was knighted in the British New Year Honours 2007.

UK Minister

On 27 June 2007 it was announced that Malloch Brown was joining the Government of incoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the United Nations. It was also announced that Malloch Brown would receive a peerage to enable him to sit in the House of Lords; he was also appointed to the Privy Council. Plans for his appointment and peerage had been leaked to The Observer's Pendennis column in November 2006.

Following the decision by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to refer the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi back for a second appeal against conviction, Dr Hans Köchler, UN-appointed international observer at the Lockerbie trial, wrote on 4 July 2007 to Malloch Brown reiterating his call for a "full and independent public inquiry of the Lockerbie case". Köchler addressed the letter also to First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, Foreign Secretary, David Miliband and Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

In November 2007, the conservative British magazine The Spectator drew some attention with its criticism of the Malloch Brown family's occupancy of a government-owned, so-called "grace and favour" apartment in London, previously used by the former Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. On November 18, 2007 The Sunday Times fuelled the controversy by reporting that "some see the hand of Miliband behind the savaging of Malloch Brown in The Spectator".

On 7 July 2009, Lord Malloch Brown announced he was stepping down from his position as Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the United Nations at the end of July 2009, citing personal and family reasons.

Styles & Honours

• Mr Mark Malloch Brown (1953-2006)
• Sir Mark Malloch Brown KCMG (December 2006-July 2007)
• The Rt. Hon. The Lord Malloch-Brown KCMG, PC (July 2007-)

References

1. Randeep Ramesh in The Guardian, "Meet Kofi Annan's right hand man", 12 January 2005
2. Los Angeles Times - "Sawyer-Miller Group"
3. Benny Avni in The New York Sun, "Ex-Deputy U.N. Chief Joins With Soros", 7 May 2007
4. Och, look. A new rich friend for Mr Brown The Observer, 16 September 2007
5. Wall Street Journal, "Axis of Soros", 9 May 2007
6. United Nations Office of Internal Oversight, "Findings Resulting From Oversight Activities of the Oil-for-Food Programme", 2004
7. UN Security Council, "SC/8645 UN Security Council Minutes 5376 Meeting (AM)", 22 February 2006
8. Alec Russell in The Telegraph, "US failing to aid the UN, says Annan's deputy", 8 June 2006
9. Fox News, "Speech by U.N. Leader Draws Angry Response From U.S.", 7 June 2006
10. John Podesta and Richard C. Leone in the Tne Century Foundation, "Time for U.S. Leadership, Not Bullying at the United Nations", 16 June 2006
11. James Bone and Richard Beeston in The Times, "Apologise or we'll cut your funding, US envoy tells UN", 9 June 2006
12. Reuters, 2 August 2006
13. PBS NewsHour, "Talks for International Force in Lebanon Stall in U.N.", 2 August 2006
14. Edith M. Lederer 5 December 2006; " Bush Agenda Came 1st for Bolton at U.N."; The Associated Press. Retrieved on 3 December 2007
15. AP in The International Herald Tribune, "U.N. official named fellow at Yale", 15 December 2006
16. New line-up in Gordon Brown's team
17. Foreign Office ministerial appointment
18. UN observer calls for fresh Lockerbie probe
19. Köchler calls for independent inquiry into Lockerbie
20. Profile: Lord Malloch-Brown
21. BBC UK News, 8 July 2009

External links

• Deputy Secretary-General former UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown official biographies from the UN
• The Times - "Apologise or we'll cut your funding, US envoy tells UN" 9 June 2006
• UN News Centre - "Deputy Secretary-General calls for stepped-up US engagement with UN" reports 6 June 2006 speech, followed by "Annan backs deputy’s call for greater US engagement with UN" on 7 June with transcript of 6 June 2006 speech and transcript of Ambassador John Bolton's reply
• NY Sound Posse - "The Best Hope for Peace in Darfur" recorded on 19 April 2006 at The New York Society for Ethical Culture mp3 format
• The Guardian - "Meet Kofi Annan's right hand man" interview 12 January 2005
• UN Television - "World Chronicle: Microfinance" transcript of a half-hour interview with UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown on 20 December 2004
• The Guardian - "UN appoints Briton as new chief of staff" 4 January 2004
• The Daily Telegraph - "Key role for Briton in halting crisis at UN" 4 January 2004
• The Times - "British aide heads Annan reshuffle at UN" 4 January 2004
• Los Angeles Times - "Sawyer-Miller Group" 24 November 1991