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UN Performance Problems UN Management Accountability Struggles Where is the Rule of Law? Inadequate UN Oversight Recent Developments
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ARCHIVE OVERVIEW The initial "Origins"
subsection of this archive notes the tremendous amount of international
activity of the twentieth century, which has been carefully chronicled in
four editions of an excellent book on the topic over the past several
decades, with the fourth edition appearing in 2001. It and its
predecessors provide a thorough, evolving analysis of the past, present,
and future of these organizations and their growth, the influences on
their membership, their scope and structures, their administration, and
their status as practical necessities to deal with developments and
challenges in all areas of human activity. The
book is Robert S. Jordan,
with Clive Archer, Gregory P. Granger, and Kerry Ordes,
International organizations: A comparative approach to the management
of cooperation, fourth ed., Greenwood/Praeger, The fourth edition, published in 2001, argued that a
shift from the primacy of the nation state to relations through
international organizations is now underway. However, the process is
incomplete and the outcome indistinct, because of its halting, largely
unplanned and unanticipated manner. The fourth edition emphasized in
particular the management of cooperation, in the belief that the
incomplete nature of the evolution of international organizations hinges
on the presence or absence of cooperation on given issues, and thus
requires the management of this cooperation. Robert S. Jordan, with Clive Archer, Gregory P. Granger, and Kerry Ordes, International organizations: A comparative approach to the management of cooperation, fourth ed., Greenwood/Praeger, Westport, CN (USA), 2001, pp. 1-2 and passim. The fourth edition therefore provides an important
general analysis of such international organization topics as management
efficiency, leadership effectiveness, organizational structures,
institutional governance, policymaking and implementation, and universal
international organizations as practical necessities, both at present and
on into the future. IO Watch seeks to expand on this effort, as noted in
the preceding "Origins" subsection, by exploring the critical areas of the
rule of law (more properly the lack thereof), management accountability,
transparency, and performance (not just talk) in terms of the best- known
international organization, the United Nations. Certainly the UN is the
one which, for the last sixty years and certainly at present as it comes
off an "annus horribilis" in 2004, is the most written about, criticized,
and discussed. IO Watch focuses here on the "United Nations" proper,
that is, primarily the Secretariat, the General Assembly, the Security
Council, and also, but less specifically, the major semi-autonomous and
voluntary-funded programmes, mainly the UNDP (development), UNHCR
(refugees), UNICEF (children), and WFP (food aid). The full UN
structure is found at www.un.org . The archive often mentions, but does not focus on,
the "United Nations system", which adds the specialized agencies, the
largest of which are the FAO (food and agriculture), ILO (labour), UNESCO
(education, scientific, and cultural), and WHO (health), plus smaller
technical agencies, all to be found at www.unsystem.org
. The focus on the UN proper, within the UN System, is
because it is by far the biggest agency, and the General Assembly
dominates (or tries to) the many other system governing bodies. It spends
some 80% of total system funds. In addition, most of the literature
concentrates on the UN, and adding the multiple other agencies would
complicate and blur the presentation. However, while the specialized
agencies are more focused on their particular areas of expertise and are
somewhat less political, many of the issues raised in this archive about
the UN culture, rule of law, management accountability, personnel system,
and operating problems generally are concerns in the UN system specialized
agencies as well.
The United Nations has long been known as a place
that "imports a lot of words and exports a lot of documents." This creates
a lot of information "noise," but precious little assessment of what all
this effort is actually achieving, and how and why it falls short of needs
and expectations. The UN Secretariat
has usually been considered a "black box" by the general public, a quiet
and often obscure process that performs neutrally and adequately. But
every organization must continuously assess its performance; use its
scarce resources wisely; combat fraud, waste, and abuse; and be held
publicly accountable. Recently, the UN has shifted away from its past focus
on "talk shop" functions. It has become a massive worldwide conglomerate
that spends $6 to $10 billion dollars of public monies each year, and
employs more than 35,000 to 40,000 people in urgent field programmes
spread around the world. It is also involved in almost every
global issue (i.e., spreads its capacities and its focus very thinly).
The UN has some very strong and loyal supporters and
some angry opponents. But most people still know it only very generally as
a sprawling organization, a debating society, and a rather bumbling
red-tape bureaucracy that supports many special world conferences and
meetings.
The United Nations does a good job of publicizing its
positive activities. Yet its actual operations and effectiveness remain
very vague. At least one knowledgeable observer has called it "the least
accountable public-based bureaucracy in the world." It is a place
of noble words, diplomatic maneuver, pontificating, and posturing. It has
no elected representatives, and is in fact quite distant from "the people"
(or at least it was until late 2004 and early 2005 when its real
roles and performance suddenly came into deepest question.) The Secretariat and other bodies have many competent
and dedicated staff, and some truly outstanding and heroic ones,
particularly in its peacekeeping and humanitarian field missions. IO Watch has
the good or outstanding work of these many UN staff fully in
mind in constructing this archive, and the hope that their commendable
efforts will be encouraged and recognized, not wasted. However, major problems of incompetence, waste,
cronyism, mismanagement, and abuse gravely undermine almost all aspects of
UN performance.
These organizational "diseases" arise, and harm the UN, in eight
major ways, which are discussed in detail in the various sections of this
archive. 1. Incompetent or
self-serving people have consistently been chosen to fill too many UN
posts, often at rather high levels. This not only wastes resources, but
blocks creative, highly-motivated, and skilled people from filling those
posts.
2. In the
UN, the many competent are actually called on to do the incompetents' work
for them, which is not only grossly unfair but clearly obstructs and
diminishes their own work. 3. Because the
incompetent, the ambitious, and their cronies are often placed at higher
levels but lack basic managerial skills, they can seriously disrupt UN
programme planning, leadership, and implementation. 4. The
incompetent also hide behind the competent, wrapping themselves in the
UN's noble moral tasks and good work, while obstructing (or negating)
accountability mechanisms and oversight which would expose and end their
own non-performance. 5. This
entire situation is obviously very damaging to organizational morale,
resulting in the departure of good staff from the organization, or
pressing them to submit themselves to the status
quo (since raising objections only brings retaliation.) 6. As word of
poor performance gradually leaks out, however, it also becomes very
damaging to the UN's overall reputation. 7. Because UN
Member State contributions to the UN budget are obligatory, the UN pays
little attention to its fiduciary duty to use global taxpayers' money
wisely.
8. Worst of all,
poorly-implemented UN programmes may cheat and fail their clients,
especially in life-or-death peacekeeping, humanitarian, and human rights
missions. To improve its operations in these critical areas, the UN should
continually confront itself with the brutal but essential accountability
question, "How many lives and how much suffering have our past operational
mistakes cost, and how can our more diligent efforts save lives in the
future?"
Global society cannot continue to rely on a bumbling
Security Council, General Assembly, and Secretariat in the turbulent
twenty-first century. An extensive body of knowledgeable, and surprisingly
consistent, analysis of UN operational weaknesses has built up for some
sixty years. These insights could do much to remedy the UN's persistent
performance shortcomings and their increasingly grave consequences, but
they have mostly been lost in the flood of documents about the UN's noble
intentions.
There is also a basic lack of real public interest --
some observers feel that the UN is the most "underreported" and
"under-analyzed" story in the world, and it seems that general public
knowledge about it is "a mile wide and an inch deep". Every organization in the world must work hard to
establish sound management and develop processes of accountability,
transparency, performance management, and above all the rule of law.
During the 1990s, Member States pressed the UN Secretariat for major
management accountability and oversight reforms, without much success. The
many current criticisms of UN performance thus repeat those made 30 or
even 40 years ago, with little real change. Those who pay for, and rely on, the
Organization are the losers.
The UN has always been quite defensive and quick to
dismiss its critics. It brushes aside the criticisms, or
acknowledges them but makes no real change, and usually labels the critics
as: -- mere
"troublemakers" pursuing their own agendas (i.e., ad hominem attacks); -- "uninformed,"
particularly if they can be faulted for minor errors in describing any of
the bewildering technicalities and endless acronyms of UN proceedings; or,
worst of all, -- people who
"don't understand the special and unique nature of the UN", the "special"
being the intense political maneuvering that underlies almost every UN
action, but the "unique" being a continuous appeal for exemption for the
many operational shortcomings found in "the world body" because of its
high moral calling and noble aims (and evasive Secretariat and
often-meddling Member States.)
UN performance
failures and stumbles have grown very rapidly in the past decade,
especially in peacekeeping and humanitarian programmes and the battle
against continuing instances of genocide. The UN critics therefore deserve a much
more public and careful hearing. -- Far from being "troublemakers", they are deeply
concerned with built-in UN performance failings and associated
incompetence, carelessness, and corruption, and the urgent need to put a
stop to it. -- They are not
"uninformed."
Most of them in fact have extensive experience inside the UN or
working alongside it, or have followed its activities for extended
periods. -- They do indeed
"understand" the UN culture all too well. In particular, they protest
performance failings which occur because the UN continues to engage in
moral posturing, self-indulgence, and cronyism among its senior ruling
class. IO Watch believes that such critiques, if finally and
seriously recognized and addressed, could do much to revive a faltering
UN. This IO Watch archive is thus a first-ever systematic attempt to "bear
witness," to finally present at least some of the rich lode of assessments
made by participants and observers of UN performance and accountability
problems. Their voices provide cogent analyses and evaluations, excellent
insights, some wonderful writing, and valuable proposals for change. These analysts focus not on the perpetual but elusive
"what could be," but "what is," warts and all, and then urge actions to
improve it. IO Watch believes that if the UN can finally
establish
and apply the rule of law and management accountability, and open
up its operations to public scrutiny, it could become far more effective
and disciplined in helping to solve pressing global problems. If not, the
Member States who pay its bills and rely on its services, and "We the
peoples of the United Nations …" cited in the first words of the UN
Charter, should urgently seek alternative processes to enhance
(rather than impede) collaborative global governance efforts. After a brief illustrative sampling of the quotations
which are at the center of this archive, a very concise summary of the
archive's structure and content concludes this subsection. A
SAMPLING Lest a skeptical potential user still suspect that
the above overview leads to the usual musty, dusty archive, or even "much
ado about nothing", IO Watch offers below nine representative quotations
which illustrate the main issues discussed throughout this website, and
underscore the need for urgent and decisive change. " …. any respect
for the institution of management within the UN has largely disappeared.
[Unavoidable staff cynicism] thankfully does not affect …. their belief in
the value of what the organization does, …. [but] centers on the
perception that there is little or no relationship …. between the value of
the work one performs and the rewards, psychic or tangible, likely to be
received …. Cynicism is a
corrosive quality. …. it ultimately becomes very difficult indeed to
maintain an increasingly abstract pride in an Organization's ideals and
purposes when you despise many of its nominal leaders, and most of its
standards for selecting those leaders. As was the case …
40 years ago …. the U.N. has no 'unifying directive on the functions of
management.
…. All it would take is the implementation of a meritocratic
standard for advancement at all levels of staff employment. Do this ….
and virtually all other problems would fade away …. Make quality
leadership and good management qualities the hallmarks for praise and
promotion, and at the very least we will have, finally, a mature United
Nations …. with a proud, strong, unified staff to do the work." Stephen Baldwin,
"Good management in the United Nations", Secretariat News (
"Accountability, that
source of institutional health, had been excluded from United Nations
experience; and, along with it, indivisibly, the stimulus of direct public
engagement and response. 'It is not a United Nations
Organization', Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was to say, in his Nobel address of
1970, 'but a United Governments Organization.' In offering
itself as the mere creature of its member governments, the United Nations
system entered a state of arrested moral development, marked by the
habitual emblems of immaturity: demands for approval, and incapacity for
individual or collective self-questioning." Shirley Hazzard, "Breaking Faith: I", The New Yorker, [Note: Ms. Hazzard worked at the UN for ten years,
resigning in 1962 to become a very successful full-time writer.]
"Current problems
in what you [Secretary-General Butros Butros-Ghali] have correctly
identified as 'the present outmoded system of personnel management'
constitute a major stumbling block to true reform within the Organization.
Defects exist in
nearly every aspect of present personnel practice. Recruitment
has been undertaken on a more or less haphazard basis and consumes an
inordinate amount of time. Training programmes are
insufficient.
Promotion exercises have become inordinately complicated to the
point of being nearly unworkable … Discipline and dismissal procedures are
encumbered by seemingly interminable appeals processes. The result is too
much 'deadwood' doing too little work and too few good staff members doing
too much, over-extending themselves sometimes to the point where they have
become counter-productive." Dick Thornburgh, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, "Report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations" ["The Thornburgh report"], 1 March 1993, pp. 8-9. "At a UN conference in Mohammed Sahnoun, as
quoted in Ray Bonner, "Why we went: How the United Nations turned
its back on
[Note:
Secretary-General Butros Butros-Ghali summarily fired Mr. Sahnoun, his
Special Envoy to "In considering [a
major UN staff-management dispute] … a critical question has been avoided:
what is the rationale for increasing the vulnerability of staff to unfair
and/or arbitrary judgements by administrators ? The pat
answer to that
-- it will allow "managers to manage" -- is unconvincing because the most serious problem
affecting the efficiency and effectiveness of the UN Secretariat has been
bad management. … The Secretariat
reforms proposed by the Secretary-General would … remove a
range of checks and balances built into the international civil service
for the very obvious reason that in in a multicultural, multinational
context, justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. The United Nations will clearly [face] … wrenching changes in the period ahead, and it would be both unfair and counterproductive to do away now with the only means staff have to hold managers accountable." "Staff-management
spat with possible serious impact reflects a joyless 50th anniversary," International Documents Review, “For years Western
governments have complained about the lack of accountability prevailing in
UN organizations, but in practice they have tolerated a degree of opacity
that would be considered totally unacceptable for any civil service in a
democracy.
The Geneva Group’s ‘zero-growth’ policy has been the nearest they
have come to sanctions, [but it] … has had only limited success in
compelling secretariats to cooperate in discussing management practices
and opening the books. Inadequate internal auditing and
slipshod evaluation procedures have not only shielded inefficiency, waste,
maladministration, and downright fraud; they have deprived the UN’s member
states of the information they need to identify the organizations’
weaknesses -- and strengths. … … [No] amount of
exhortation – as the years have proved – can compensate for the lack of
routine inspection under established rules of ‘open government.’ Evaluation
would require … built-in procedures requiring the UN bureaucracies to
respond to criticisms. So ingrained is the collusion between
the permanent representatives to these organizations and the secretariats
that a majority for such an initiative among the UN membership would be
difficult though not impossible to muster. But many UN staff members would welcome
more rigorous scrutiny …” Rosemary Righter,
Utopia lost: The United Nations and world
order, Twentieth Century Fund, "I hope to provide
an 'inside story' which will allow the public to peer behind the facade…
This is sorely needed because the UN's culture of 'self-justification' and
'self-exoneration' has disseminated so much propaganda about 'the
accomplishments' of the system and how 'doomed' the world would be without
it, that it has become extremely difficult for many people to see the
organizations for what they are. This can only be done by dispelling a
number of myths … Taxpayers and
governments should no longer be duped into financing these institutions in
their present form. They should only pay if these
organizations become streamlined, efficient institutions, devoted to
serving the international community; not corrupt, inefficient,
disreputable bodies staffed mostly by deadwood incompetents living in
grand style. There are in fact a
number of U.N. employees who, in one whole year, do not write one sentence
for the Organization or spend one single hour working for it in any way,
yet receive unbelievable salaries at the end of each month. Such a
situation does not exist anywhere else in the world, not even in the
bureaucracies of the least developed countries." Houshang Ameri, Fraud, waste and abuse: Aspects of U.N. management
and personnel policies, University Press of America, Lanham, MD (USA),
June 2003, pp. viii-ix.
" … after all these years,
the United Nations is still struggling to adjust its human resources
policies and practices to the reality that surrounds it. … In [a highly
competitive international] environment, the UN will have to reform its
reforms, or go down reforming. Several dilemmas
that have crippled the UN for generations, however, remain unresolved, and
this organizational pathology stands in the way of the UN's efforts to
remain meaningful. When it comes to managing human
resources, the following are [some of] the obstacles that the UN must
overcome: ?
Its addiction to
the trappings of a careers-for-life staffing model, with its emphasis on
seniority … ?
Its fear of
offending Member States that exert political pressure -- by not insisting
on merit in staffing, even at the highest levels; ?
Its reliance on
patronage as a survival strategy, especially where outputs are nebulous;
… ?
the persistent gap
between its perennial promises to improve human resources management and
its capacity to deliver; and ?
Its obsession with
cosmetic reforms, hiding the root causes of dysfunctionality. For most
pathologies, there is a cure. For the UN, faith healing will not
suffice." Dirk Salomons,
"Good intentions to naught: The pathology of human resources management at
the United Nations," in Dennis Dijkzeul, and Yves Beigbeder, eds., Rethinking international organizations: Pathology and
promise,
"The [United Nations is]
suffering from two self-inflicted wounds ,,, a kickback scandal of
multi-billion dollar proportions swirling around the UN-run oil-for-food
program [in Urgent steps,
including high-level demotions and dismissals, are already underway to
address the security failures. Ferreting out the murky details of the
financial scandal, and meting out appropriate punishments, is no less
urgent. … UN officials
clearly failed to supervise effectively the roughly $10 billion a year in
transactions and may have been involved in illicit deals. … Now there is
finally
some political will to investigate, and details of the corruption
are emerging …
The investigators must put aside diplomatic niceties and
concentrate on cleansing the UN's reputation." "Clean up the UN,"
International Herald Tribune,
ARCHIVE STRUCTURE The FIRST
major section of this archive, on UN Performance Problems, provides
hundreds (eventually expected to be well over a thousand) quotes analyzing
more than half a century of UN performance shortcomings. The section
begins with a six-decade overview of UN operational problems, and then
provides a set of UN performance assessments over the years. Sixteen subsections then review performance problems
in specific areas: above all personnel, but also structure and operations,
leadership, management systems, and past management reform efforts. The next
three sections explore the functioning of the Security Council, General
Assembly, and other conference and negotiation issues, followed by
sections on the problems in the very demanding (and struggling) field
operations for peacekeeping, humanitarian, and nation-building efforts.
Assessments of development assistance work, efforts for human rights and
women, and interactions with NGOs and civil society follow. The section
ends with some anecdotes and observations on UN "goings-on", and
references for those who want to study the UN's versions of things. The SECOND
major archive section, UN Management Accountability
Struggles, begins with material on corruption as a
pervasive operational hazard in all organizations, and the accountability
and transparency processes which seek to prevent it, both generally and in
the UN. A
summary of overall UN reform efforts over the years shows how difficult
this process is. Among them, an excellent 1993 General Assembly initiative
to establish firm management accountability in the Secretariat has largely
failed, although dramatic performance problems since 2003 may
constitute a "tipping point" at which real UN reform (or collapse?)
finally becomes unavoidable, as discussed in this archive's pivotal
subsections on management accountability reform under The UN old boys' last
hurrah?. In addition, the UN's attempts to reform its various
management systems have continued to be patchy. In contrast, successful
Secretariat initiatives to "free the managers" have brought troubling
problems by liberating both good and bad UN managers, establishing amateur
internal investigations by managers of staff, making whistle-blowers
disappear,
and, not surprisingly, creating a strong new need for staff to
defend themselves. The THIRD major archive section, Where is the Rule of Law?, examines the pressing core question: How can it be that the UN
is still unable, despite decades of "reform" efforts, to cope with its
legal, management accountability, transparency, and corruption
problems?
The answer is that the UN operates with diplomatic
immunity, and is above (or at least outside) the law of nations. The
Secretariat was scarred by an ugly staff "loyalty" scandal in the early
1950s, which subsequently led all Member States to seek staff posts in a
highly-politicized process, and made subsequent Secretariat operations
cautious and fearful of transparency and accountability. In addition, the Secretariat leadership became and
remains very autocratic, and immunity has gradually turned into management
impunity.
Staff rights have been tightly controlled, a homemade "internal
justice" system has performed poorly for decades, and some ugly "behind
the scenes" disciplinary activities have continued on and on. More recently, major internal justice flaws have been
exacerbated by new policies and issues of conduct and misconduct, abuse,
fraud, "freeing" UN managers to manage, harassment, accountability,
investigations, and whistleblower issues. This has led to a muddled staff
code of conduct, an even more outdated internal justice system, very
serious legal loopholes, and, inter alia,
grave human rights issues of refugee protection in UN humanitarian and
peacekeeping programmes in the field. The UN has meanwhile become increasingly involved in
advising Member States on improving legal and judicial processes, while
not reforming its own practices. But new investigations processes are
indeed finally sending at least some UN staff to national courts, as the
cloak of UN impunity begins to lift. There is some further hope in new General Assembly
concerns with internal justice defects. Reasonable reform opportunities are
available to properly revise the UN staff code of conduct, commission an
expert external review of the UN's administration of justice system,
provide independent internal judicial oversight, and establish an
independent human rights ombudsman to monitor the UN's own overall human
rights performance in its worldwide operations. The
FOURTH
major section, Inadequate UN Oversight, discusses
the troubling deficiencies of UN personnel management (the Office of Human
Resources Management, OHRM), particularly in its assigned role of
interpreting and enforcing the UN rules and regulations and the full
implementation of General Assembly human resources mandates. The new
Secretariat internal oversight body since 1994 (the OIOS) could be a
powerful actor, but its diplomat/leaders have chosen to emphasize close
cooperation with managers rather than essential investigations functions,
to the serious detriment of UN corruption-fighting. The main external oversight body for the UN and the
UN system (the Joint Inspection Unit, JIU) is a very small and outdated
group of diplomats who issue a few unimpressive reports each year. And the
190-some Member States in the General's Fifth Committee (Administrative
and Budgetary), and its "expert" advisory committees are not capable of
effective management oversight either. Only the UN Board of Auditors
brings professional skills and discipline to oversight work, but it is
underutilized. Multinational corporations and other international
organizations themselves have some severe accountability, governance, and
corruption-fighting problems. They do not do much better than the UN,
but at least they have made (or been forced to make) some serious reforms
(particularly corporations which are subject to the rule of law as the UN
and its sister organizations certainly are not). .
The FIFTH and final major archive section, Recent Developments, begins with
the topic of global governance and how the UN fits in among emerging
worldwide networks, power sources, and issues -- definitely
not at the pinnacle as it would like to be. The archive also examines the emerging
interest in a new international "right to know" to obtain much greater
transparency, accountability, and comparative assessment of governments'
and organizations' (including international ones) performance
worldwide.
IO Watch then examines the UN's awkward exercise of its "moral
authority" -- which is fine in general, but not when directed only to
others but not to itself. The next three subsections of the archive are all
very much "to be continued." The first explores nine aspects of the
UN's awkward status as an unaccountable organization in the 21st
century.
The second cites a dozen major problem areas which the UN must
confront -- and resolve -- if it is to maintain or regain its
credibility.
The third and final wrap-up subsection offers eight
"answers" as
starting points for real UN reform (to accompany the three already
proposed under the rule-of-law section) to end the UN's rule-of-law and
management accountability deficits. They are: a serious UN fraud prevention
programme; external expert reviews of defective UN oversight and of
personnel decision-making; a true global strategy -- instead of doing a
little bit of everything unsatisfactorily; establishment of a General
Assembly audit subcommittee and two new annual Secretariat reports, on UN
results obtained and on the use of human and financial resources; and a
serious strengthening of UN monitoring and oversight processes by major
donor countries. All of these suggestions have been applied elsewhere,
or proposed before, but they are still quite feasible, modest, and
reasonable steps. They would go a long way toward creating a law-abiding
and much more transparent, accountable, and credible UN, instead of
defending the old entrenched management culture of impunity of the past
six decades. In the final two subsections, IO Watch offers an
informal selection of the most relevant sources it has found related to UN
management accountability. They begin with an overall "Top
50" list
of material from all sources, followed by separate lists of what IO Watch
considers to be the 50 most useful books, reports, articles, and
assessments of UN field operations. A similar subsection provides
information on more than two dozen sources and websites that IO Watch has
found informative and helpful. IO Watch will update all these lists as new
material comes to light. The full detailed structure of the archive and these
five major sections just described can be found on the Archive Site Map. |
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