UNICEF – very charitable, to its own big bosses?

Thursday-Friday blog

There have been quite a lot of ads on daytime TV recently for UNICEF. These ads, of course, show all the wonderful charitable work UNICEF is doing in desperate countries around the world and ask us plebs to donate our already heavily-taxed money:

The UK branch of UNICEF rakes in just over £160m a year.

Here are the salaries and benefits for some of the top UNICEF UK bosses:

• Joanna Rea Interim Deputy Executive Director for Advocacy, Programmes and Safeguarding – £145,072
• Mohini Raichura-Brown Deputy Executive Director, Partnerships and Philanthropy – £150,085
• Steven Waugh Chief Financial Officer – £153,447
• Jonathan Sparkes Executive Director – £184,493

You may think these are quite modest and deserved for an organisation which is raising and spending over £160m a year. But you also have to factor in that salaries, grants, and allowances paid by the United Nations to its staff, including UNICEF executives, are generally exempt from income tax. This is a standard practice for international organizations like the UN. 

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether UNICEF deserves our money or whether it is being excessively charitable to its own tax-avoiding bosses with our already heavily-taxed money.