Mission East is a Danish relief and developmentNGO. The organisation was founded in 1991 by Rene Hartzner, and works with emergency reliefaid, rehabilitation and development in Afghanistan, Armenia, Burma, Iraq, Nepal, North Korea, Romania, Syria and Tajikistan. Mission East works with a broad variety of developmental issues, including assistance to improve clean water supply, health and hygiene awareness, household agriculture, the building of access roads to isolated areas, people with disability, infrastructure, and passing on skills to local people. Specific projects include a beekeeping cooperative in Afghanistan, a clubroom project in Armenia for children with and without disability, livelihood support of children in Nepal, livelihood projects in the Roma community in Romania and small-scale agriculture projects in Tajikistan. Mission East also works with an array of partner organisations.
2020 controversy
In June 2020, Managing Director, Kim Hartzner, was dismissed by the then board of directors due to financial irregularities. The issue goes back to 2006 when the independent auditor, Deloitte, had criticized Mission East’s accounting practices for being unlawful. Income from the following year was included in the accounts for the current year to make it look better than it was. The board at the time demanded from Kim Hartzner to make sure the practice was changed. When that did not happen, the board resigned in . At the organization’s annual meeting on June 21st 2020, Kim Hartzner’s father, René Hartzner, brought forward a vote of no confidence against the board; according to him, there was no fault to be found in the accounting practice that Deloitte had criticized. 37 out of the 38 present members passed the vote of no confidence. A new board of directors was elected with no further questions from the assembled. Encouraged by René Hartzner, the new board reinstated Kim Hartzner as Managing . The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked for a written statement from Mission East about the course of .
