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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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The
General Assembly and its main committees (and many of its vast number of
subsidiary bodies) are a disorderly jumble of 190-plus Member States with
widely differing capacities and preoccupations. Delegates are diplomats, not
management people, and management itself is not really a General
Assembly
priority. Each
year the legislative bodies face formal agendas overcrowded with hundreds
of items, including more and more pressing decisions on worldwide
operational programmes. From
this muddle, the Assembly produces extremely vague and cryptic (because
based on consensus among the 190-some participating Member States)
resolutions and decisions for Secretariat programmes. The Secretariat then uses this
confused guidance as an excuse to set vague or no goals, and to evade
serious progress and performance reporting on
results. The
pressures and confusion are only enhanced by the fact that the General
Assembly must consider and deal with the work of a massive agglomeration
of subsidiary committees, commissions, expert bodies, and other organs
dealing with the whole range of global programme issues which the UN seeks
to address. This process
produces an incredible flood of documents and issues for the General
Assembly to deal with.
The
work of one single body, the Economic and Social Council, illustrates the
enormity of the "paper flood" which confronts the Assembly, as shown by a
detailed analytical report in 1984. These reporting quality problems
continue, with reports that are fragmented, poorly related to each other,
and have only recently (and not always) added such obvious format items as
tables of contents and summaries. In addition, even in the age of "desktop
publishing," UN reports contain very few "visual aids" -- charts and graphs, statistics,
or orderly factual comparisons, trends and results -- which would provide
transparency and permit Member States and other readers to understand what
is going on. And that
seems to be precisely the intention.
Joint Inspection Unit,
"Reporting to the Economic and Social Council", UN document A/39/ 281, 1984,
John
P. Renninger, "ECOSOC: Options for reform", Policy and Efficacy Studies
No. 4, United Nations Institute for Training and Research, New York,
September 1981, and
Joint Inspection Unit,
"Management in the United Nations: Work in progress", UN document A/50/507, 1995.
The
General Assembly still works at a leisurely, almost 19th-century
legislative pace that is ill-suited to pressing world problems. It considers overall management
issues only once every two years (alternating between odd-numbered
"budget" years (which really battle only over who gets how much money for
what programmes) and even-numbered "personnel" years (which really battle
over who gets what staff jobs, and under what procedures). Management reform only became a
separate and consistent agenda feature during the 1990s. However, it
appears under the very cumbersome title of "Review of the
efficiency of the administrative and financial functioning of the United
Nations,"
and is comfortably submerged within the sprawling discussions of personnel
(now "human resource") matters every second year. The
Secretariat's sketchy biennial reports on "human resource management
reform" and (ever more minimally on) "accountability" topics are followed
by General Assembly requests for renewed progress reports two years hence.
This leisurely pace postpones any real accountability actions on and on
into the indefinite future. Meanwhile, impunity and poor performance
continue, or are overcome only by the stubborn efforts and integrity of
conscientious individual UN managers, rather than by any disciplined and
systematic UN management culture. The
oft-stated assertion that the UN actually represents "We the peoples" of
the world also requires closer examination. The 189 Member State missions to
the UN are comprised of diplomats, none of whom (including Secretariat
officials from Mr. Annan on down) are elected in any popular voting or
even a transparent selection process making them directly accountable to
"the people." In fact,
countries belonging to the UN themselves range from
"relatively-less-corrupt" to "very corrupt" on global corruption scales,
and display similar wide ranges of achievement, problems, and
respectability on other global indexes assessing their records on
democracy, human rights, globalization, torture, social development, and
good governance.
Many
of the UN member "nations" are really "mini-" or even "micro-states" with
tiny populations (as few as 10,000 people). The majority of UN Member States
pay a petty obligatory contribution of only some $13,000 per year, which
calls into question the intensity of their concern as "stakeholders" with
how, and how well, UN funds are spent. In addition, on many issues the
Member States who want to
obstruct, undermine, or neutralize any global declarations and actions at
all on "good governance", human rights, or management reform or
improvement issues, may well be a significant
majority.
In
fact, the UN is quite simply "a trade-association of nation states". This
was illustrated at the 2000 UN "Millenium Assembly" when Secretary-General
Annan justified the exclusion of the
Dalai Lama from a meeting of global religious leaders due to
Chinese objections because "
this house is really a house for the member
states, and their sensitivities matter." Alvin Toffler, Powershift:
Knowledge, wealth and violence at the edge of the 21st century,
Bantam, New York 1991, pp. 456-457,
"UN spiritual talks to bar Dalai
Lama", AFP, International
Herald Tribune, August 25 , 2000, p. 10,
"UN head exhorts religious leaders",
International Herald Tribune, August 30, 2000.
At
the same time, Czech president Vaclav Havel made a plea that the UN should
finally come to "represent the people." In fact, many UN member states
have long resisted recognition of and meaningful collaboration with NGOs
and other civil society groups.
While no nation is untainted, the UN Commission on Human Rights is
a prime example of a centrally-important UN policy area increasingly
influenced, if not yet captured, by countries whose own human rights
records and motivations are in serious doubt (see the subsection
on Human Rights under
the section on UN Performance
Problems.) Steven Erlanger, "Hear the 'voice of the
people', Havel implores world bodies", International Herald
Tribune, August 23,
2000.
The above facts
underscore the UN's serious legislative and oversight limitations. The
General Assembly's (Fifth) Committee on administration and budget has no
subcommittees or staff experts of its own to analyse and oversee
management reform and Secretariat programmes. Instead, its 189 Member
States endlessly debate and dilute every management issue in public
sessions or in critical backroom "informal" sessions, because all member states want to
"participate" fully in the deliberations that lead to "concensus"
resolutions (or to stalemate and inaction).
Childers
and Urquhart made a detailed analysis of UN legislative problems in 1994.
They observed that: "The UN deals in one way or
another with virtually every aspect of the human condition and the natural
environment. Its
decision-making processes have inevitably become a maze of reports and
resolutions. Like any
fifty-old machinery it needs overhauling, and its operators need to
improve and update their techniques.
In the short term, member-states
should establish
an intergovernmental expert group that should begin by
commissioning a review of the business flows through the machinery by an
international team of top-quality professional legislative managers.
The second requirement for
effective reform
is to open up the working calendar.
trying to fit the world's
economic, social and environmental agenda for the 21st century into the
forty-five-year-old calendar of an organization that then had only 28
percent [of] its present membership is
absurd. Extending sessions across the year
will certainly cost more money.
The extra cost should, however, be examined against the ultimate
cost of continuing the calendar compressions. Poor or mediocre intergovernmental
decisions in the UN system end up costing considerable sums in the
delegation and secretariat time that has to be spent later in re-examining
what was too hastily adopted (not least on UN reform
itself.)" Erskine Childers, with Brian
Urquhart, "Renewing the United Nations system", Development
Dialogue 1994:1, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation and Ford Foundation,
Upsala, Sweden, 1994, Chapter VIII, "The decision-making
machinery," pp.119-141 [121,
139.].
Ronald
Spiers made similar expert observations on the worsening legislative
problems, and key obstructive factors: " The quality of the General
Assembly's work has deteriorated in recent years. Its agenda is extremely resistant
to being streamlined or rationalized, and many agenda items are trivial,
overlapping, or of very narrow interest to the member states.
In addition, the right of any
member state to place any item on the agenda, no matter how parochial or
trivial, continues to be sacrosanct.
As a consequence, the assembly's agenda has grown to over 150 items
during the fall session.
The General Assembly's
most
important function is the consideration and approval of the organization's
biennial budget. However,
this function is essentially entrusted to the lower-level representatives
in the Fifth Committee, whose meetings the ambassadors seldom attend. [The committee favors]
micromanagement [and]
little
attention is paid to the big issues which should underlie discussions
about the utilization of resources.
Were the General Assembly to
institute reforms [to provide]
fewer but more-important agenda items,
fewer constraints on its operating schedule, and a more manageable
committee structure, and were the Fifth Committee to become less
bureaucratic and engage the attention and participation of senior UN
officials, this would [considerably]
enhance its relevance and
effectiveness." Ronald I. Spiers, "Reforming the United Nations," in Roger A. Coate, ed., U.S. policy and the future of the United Nations, Twentieth Century Fund, New York, 1994, pp.19-40 [29-31.] [Note:
Mr. Spiers served an Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in
New
York in the early 1990s.]
Several General
Assembly Presidents have also spoken pessimistically about the complexity
and slowness of the Assembly's work. The Finnish President of the 2000
General Assembly stated frankly that the jumbled agenda made meaningful
achievement on serious matters almost impossible. "The 55th session of the U.N.
General Assembly ended on Monday with its outgoing Finnish president
criticizing the body's hit-or-miss agenda which left too little time for
important issues. Specifically, Harri Holkeri, a
former Finnish banker, said
the assembly's agenda spread itself too thin
with 200 issues, many of them overlapping with the 'big issues'
hidden. The Assembly has 189 members and
controls the budget and general programming of the United Nations. While its decisions on political
issues express the will of the international community, they are not
mandatory ...
Holkeri also criticized the
number of conferences held throughout the world that he said 'cost big
money.' If the assembly
trimmed its agenda, such issues could be [discussed] during the body's main session.
'There is a tendency to do too much
at the same time,' Holderi said, adding, however, that 'This is a
bureaucratic institution.
Nothing happens overnight.' Holkeri also grappled with reform
of the U.N. Security Council which has gone nowhere for eight years.
he said he would promise that
when Finland 'in about 2000 years,' gets the presidency of the assembly
again 'I am not going to be available for that position.' Evelyn Leopold, "UN General Assembly president laments free-for-all agenda," dailynews.yahoo , September 10, 2001. The
JIU included a subsection on "Accountability for accountability" in its
1995 report on progress in UN management reform efforts. It observed
that: "
The ultimate leadership, responsibility,
authority and accountability for the
[UN's] management, good or poor,
rest with [both] top management
[and] the General Assembly.
governing
bodies set the tone for their entire organization. They must show through their
actions and determined follow-up that they give high priority to firm
accountability,
effective oversight, a performance culture, wise
resource use,
and maximum
implementation
of organizational missions
The Fifth Committee,
as a "board of
directors" with 185 Member States considering all types of management
issues, can hardly operate effectively.
Many governing bodies in the United Nations
system now have or are
establishing specialized subcommittees
to devote more
continuous attention to administrative, management and oversight
matters.
if professionalism and competence [and full
transparency and reporting] can be assured, three new subcommittees could
be [established]: Peace-keeping management subcommittee [for the
greatest single burden of
Fifth Committee work];
Strategic planning and management subcommittee;
Oversight subcommittee.
Finally, many national governments
have legislative staffs and analysts to help them [with
oversight.] JIU proposed
this idea of modest staff resources to assist the CPC in 1984, but the
Secretary-General was opposed
establishing a few posts for
[each of the above committees] could have a great positive impact on the
future oversight and decision-making effectiveness of the Fifth
Committee." Joint
Inspection Unit, "Management in the United Nations: Work in
progress", Chapter
VI.A.,
Finally,
the UN Secretariat blames much UN bad management on Member States
that attempt to
"micro-manage" day-to-day UN operations in their own interests and on
behalf of staff (or job candidates) from their countries. Such interference does indeed
exist and is very damaging, but it is almost entirely on the personnel
"input" side.
On the output side,
however, IO Watch finds that where Member States should closely monitor
Secretariat performance and results, there is almost no oversight effort.
The input meddling, however, has led to the clever Secretariat
counter-strategy of "free the managers" as already discussed, and a
lawless and unaccountable UN operating "behind the curtain." Sadly, this "free the managers"
counter-attack is the only actual major reform that the Secretariat seems
to have actually implemented in response to the management accountability
reforms that the General Assembly insisted on in
1993. Many
other United Nations system governing bodies have made some significant
progress in recent years in streamlining and rationalizing their governing
body work methods and functioning, often as a regular agenda item. In addition, various specific
efforts were undertaken in the 1990s to improve governing body oversight,
reporting, external review, and transparency by establishing or improving
specialized committees for management and implementation matters.
Joint Inspection Unit, "Accountability,
management improvement, and oversight in the UN system", UN document
A/50/503, 1995, Part I, Chapter VIII, "Oversight governing bodies",
pp. 48-54, and Part II, Table 12, pp. 24-27. The
UN's Fifth Committee is far behind in such reforms. It presently performs its
oversight responsibilities poorly, and with many major barriers. The diplomat/delegates lack
expertise and are uncomfortable with management audit and investigation
matters and responsibilities.
They prefer to rely on an
established but archaic system of "expert" advisory bodies (see the
next subsection) that is preoccupied primarily with financial, budgetary,
and system-wide input issues, rather than with "output" results and
performance.
The
Fifth Committee is also woefully dependent on the evasive, often
non-transparent, and frequently tardy "reform" or "performance" reports that the Secretariat
places before it every biennium, and it can only give back more vague and
evasive "reform guidance" to the Secretariat in return.
Worst
of all, the Fifth Committee will not establish any subcommittees on oversight, or
management, or any other matters because, as one senior official put it,
"everyone wants to
participate". Of course,
190-plus cooks can spoil any recipe, especially since one or more of them
can almost always be relied on to object strenuously to any specific
remedial management improvement or oversight proposal which might
jeopardize their pet programmes. In
addition, the Fifth Committee really does not know what to do with
specific OIOS reports or OIOS annual reports. Mr. Paschke observed several times
that those reports were piled up in front of the Committee, still awaiting
action after a considerable time lag. Further, when they are
discussed, it is only in
considerable (but sporadic and poorly-focused) public (and then informal)
meetings.
The
discussions thus stretch sporadically over several months of each annual
session, in the vague catch-all agenda item "Review of the efficiency of
the administrative and financial functioning of the United Nations", in
which they often are buried among many other, more pressing, operational
and policy matters. As a result, the Fifth Committee often just "takes
note" of them or does nothing, and it did not even pass annual resolutions
on OIOS work for several years. As the head of OIOS
expressed it in his final annual report: "As I write these lines, three
previous [OIOS] annual reports, as well as several individual reports of
OIOS, transmitted and introduced a long time ago, have still received no
formal response from the Fifth Committee, although they have been
thoroughly discussed and commented upon in that
forum. I can only express my hope that
this impasse will eventually be overcome and that the value added to the
work of the United Nations by independent internal oversight will be
recognized by all stakeholders." Comments in the "Preface" to the
last OIOS annual report prepared by Under-Secretary-General Karl Paschke,
in "Report of the
Secretary-General on the activities of the Office of Internal Oversight
Services" A/54/393 of 23 September
1999.
Discouragingly,
the Fifth Committee launched a required 5-year evaluation of OIOS
performance in 1998. But,
after an attempt to state some specific improvements needed in OIOS work
led to disputes, the Assembly finally passed only a very dry
resolution. It asserted that
it had "evaluated" OIOS, that the Office was functioning satisfactorily,
and essentially that it should carry on as before but strive in general to
improve. The Assembly stated
that it would "evaluate" the OIOS again, presumably in the same toothless
fashion, in the year 2004. In
light of recent oversight and management scandals, IO Watch wonders if
they will finally find some more substantive comments to make this
time. "Review of the implementation of
General Assembly resolution 48/218B", General Assembly resolution 54/244 of 31 January
2000.
The
1995 JIU report on management reform progress observed that the General
Assembly and its Fifth Committee must join the Secretariat top leadership
in setting the tone for the entire organization. If they do not insist on
systematically and seriously assessing programme and policy implementation, then the
Secretariat will not spend serious efforts on this function either. The JIU concluded its examination
of "accountability for accountability" by stating
that: "The
United Nations has often been criticized for establishing many grand
objectives and goals in all areas over the years, without paying much
attention to whether the Organization's subsequent programmes actually
contribute to progress toward those goals. The Fifth
Committee, with reforms
must be a critical leader and 'linch pin' in the new system of
accountability and responsibility, driving the United Nations continuously
toward the management reforms and 'transparency and effectiveness' which
the General Assembly has repeatedly called
for." Joint
Inspection Unit, "Management in the United Nations: Work in
progress", Chapter VI.A.,
A decade later, the
General Assembly has failed to meet these challenges. The situation only seems to be
getting worse, even as the complexity of global problems and needs for
effective global action increase.
In 2002, as part of his "second wave" of reforms, Mr. Annan
acknowledged the problems of "Allocating resources to priorities." He admitted
that: "The present United Nations
programming and budgeting system is complex and labour-intensive. It involves three separate
committees, voluminous documentation and hundreds of meetings. Changes proposed
include a
medium-term plan covering only two years (rather than four)
The budget document itself would
be less detailed and more strategic, and would give the Secretary-General
some flexibility to move resources according to needs. Also
intergovernmental review
should henceforth be conducted exclusively in the Fifth Committee of the
General Assembly [rather than shared with the CPC]
[and] measures will
be taken to streamline peacekeeping budgets, and to improve the management
of the large number of trust funds through which Member States provide
voluntary contributions to supplement the regular
budget." "Strengthening of the United Nations: An agenda for further change:
Report of the Secretary-General," UN document A/57/387 of 9 September
2002, "Summary,section V," p. 3.
IO Watch will
add more material on the Assembly's role and weak performance as time goes
on. This archive also
addresses the consequences of this present faulty oversight and guidance
situation under the Recent Developments
section of this website, in the subsections on an unaccountable UN, recent
scandals, and possible answers.
Most important of all are the subsections under "Answers" on annual
status and results reporting to the General Assembly, and on a General Assembly audit
subcommittee. |
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