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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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Transparency is widely recognized as absolutely essential for good
governance worldwide, as shown in the work of such organizations as
Transparency International. At a forum in Brazil in 2001 in Brazil, some
450 senior officials from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) and Latin American countries discussed inter
alia the importance of establishing sound transparency processes in
government, engaging citizens in the spending of public money, and fiscal
reforms which both increase transparency and limit executive discretion in
the spending of public
resources. The
UN, however, as already discussed, is an awesomely complex and jerry-built
organization, which is a product of: -- a haphazard jumble of competing
units built up over decades of additions (and almost never reduced); -- multiple and continuing
organizational restructurings; -- elusive and confusing staffing and
funding patterns; -- and weak controls and
oversight. To purportedly explain,
control, and operate this agglomeration, the UN has a basic set of staff
and financial regulations and rules, and Secretary-General's bulletins and
other official issuances. This guidance has accumulated massively over the
years, and it became a maze of complexities and contradictions which only
"insider" Administration veterans can understand, decipher, and cite in
staff matters as they see fit.
It has also become a process of "smoke and mirrors." Complexity
reigns, and transparency is scarcely to be found. In
its 1986 report which launched the current era of UN management reform,
the "Group of 18" experts highlighted two critical areas regarding
personnel. The first was
sharp criticism of politicized staff selection. The second was the importance of
the rules. The report stated,
at some length but with tremendous clarity: "The efficiency of
the United Nations depends to a large extent on the performance of its
Secretariat and other organs; the quality and usefulness of the
Secretariat are, in turn, dependent upon the quality and dedication of its
staff. … The Group is convinced that efficient management of
the staff should rest on clear, coherent and transparent rules and
regulations. This will enable
the Organization to secure and retain the services of staff meeting the
highest standards. Clear and coherent
rules and regulations are not in themselves, however, sufficient
… The officials responsible for the
management of the staff, that is, not only the office responsible for
human resources management, but also every manager who is in
charge of a unit … must implement these
rules and regulations and create a
challenging environment where the staff can and are motivated to give
their best efforts to further the goals of the Organization. It is
important, indeed fundamental, to develop an institutional spirit in the
Organization and to strengthen it as an entity. In this respect, staff members at
every level have an indispensable role to play. Special
responsibility for creating a healthy climate rests with the senior
managers. In
this respect, the importance of selecting high-level officials with the
necessary management skills cannot be over-emphasized. … Recommendation 42 The personnel
management of the Organization must be based upon clear, coherent and
transparent rules. Present
inconsistencies and ambiguities should be eliminated. The current staff rules and
regulations should be revised to take into account the resolutions and
decisions on personnel policy
already adopted by the General Assembly … measures to
implement [them] should be clearly set out in a personnel manual which
should be widely available and kept up to date. …" Report of the
Group of High-Level Intergovernmental Experts to Review the Efficiency of
the Administrative and Financial Functioning of the United
Nations,
A/41/49, 1986, paras. 45, 47, 48 and Recommendation
42. [emphasis
added.]
Progress
in implementing this resolution was quite slow. Nine years later, in 1995, the JIU
issued a report on management reform progress in ten areas, in four of
which little had been happened and much remained to be done. The first of these was the rules
and regulations. The JIU
noted that the Secretary-General's 1994 report on reform had emphasized
(a) that staff responsibilities must be clearly defined, and (b) that the
legislative norms to which all staff are accountable must be clear,
unambiguous, coherent, comprehensible, duly promulgated and available to
both the supervisors and those supervised. The 1994 Secretary-General's report
was "Establishment of a transparent and effective
system of accountability and responsibility: Report of the
Secretary-General", UN document A/C.5/49/1 of 5 August 1994, paras. 12 and 109.
The
1995 JIU report noted that the Secretariat had a list of a dozen areas
where specific revisions were needed. However, officials were quite
vague about their status, and completion dates and preparation
responsibilities were generally indeterminate. The JIU cited the particular
importance of reestablishing the Organization Manual, the Personnel and
Financial manuals, and a field administration handbook. Clear and complete guidance was
obviously important because the Administration was stressing the urgent
need to delegate authority throughout the
Organization. Joint Inspection Unit,
Chapter II.B., "Progress required," in "Management in the United Nations:
Work in progress", UN document A/50/507,1995, paras. 59-66.
Subsequently,
however, the shift to new accountability, oversight, and decentralization
issues and processes resulted in a
jumble of new guidance.
Increasingly, in various ways, at various times, and with various
degrees of specificity, the Administration introduced new or revised
guidance on conditions of service rules and standards. They dealt inter alia with
accountability; carefully-documented management decisions; investigations
of waste, mismanagement, abuse of authority, and fraud; harassment;
transparency; performance appraisal; core values; organizational
competencies; integrity and probity; post classification; redeployment
programmes; staff relations with government representatives; procedures
for investigations; and personal conduct.
Second, this guidance has been introduced
and continues to appear in a seemingly never-ending stream from multiple,
competing, and sometimes conflicting channels. They include General
Assembly resolutions and follow-up guidance; public statements of
principle and intent by UN senior officials; new Staff Regulations and
Rules and added commentary thereon; Secretary-General's Bulletins; and
administrative bulletins and various instructions and detailed
implementing guidance.
The
Secretary-General's August 2000 reform report stated that a new human
resources handbook would appear by the end of 2000. However, the report
admitted that "task tools" still needed to be developed to "assist"
managers in applying the rules, and that work was only ready to
begin on the simplification of the substantive aspects of the rules
themselves. "Human resources management reform:
Report of the Secretary-General", A/55/253 of 1 August 2000, paras.
26-32.
The 2002
management reform report stated that between June 1997 and August 2001,
some 460 documents were abolished.
An electronic human resources handbook had been launched. Regular updates and streamlining
would continue. However,
work had still not begun on simplifying substantive aspects
of the Staff Rules and Regulations, in part due to UN system-wide
discussions. This
inaction therefore leaves the central 1986 recommendation of the Group of
18 (see the citation above) still unaddressed, some 16 years
later. "Human resources management
reform: Report of the Secretary-General," UN document A/57/293 of 8
August 2002, paras.
20-25.
The
long-standing UN guidance accretion of overlapping and outdated rules has
therefore apparently been mostly cleaned up. However, the complexity,
scope, and tone of UN rules has also considerably increased in light of
all the new operating reforms discussed above. This is nowhere more
evident and important than in the new standards of staff conduct that were
issued in December 1998.
Their overall tone shifted drastically from an earlier, balanced
code of conduct which emphasized both staff rights and responsibilities,
to a new version which seems brusquely and almost exclusively focused on
staff responsibilities. "Status, basic rights and
duties of United Nations staff members," ST/SGB/1998/19 of 10 December
1998. The
GAO report on incomplete UN human resources management reforms of February
2004 noted that the UN Human Resources Handbook had been placed online,
although several years late.
UN staff, in a survey, had cited the streamlining of UN rules and
procedures as the "most successful" such reform implemented since 2000.
U.S. General Accounting
Office, United Nations: Reforms progressing, but comprehensive
assessments needed to measure impact, GAO 04-339, February,
2004, p. 15.
One
must wonder, however, if the critical step of simplifying
substantive aspects of the rules, which the Secretariat admitted in
2000 and again in 2002 had not even begun (as cited above), has been
achieved or even started. Overall, the "old" UN Secretariat had a terrible
muddle of rules and regulations, and the "new" one has now been
"streamlined." But a crucial
question remains: has the UN Secretariat thrown out the precious "baby"
(proper UN accountability, transparency, and oversight functions) with the
"bathwater" (the pile of accumulated old rules)? In
fact, Secretary-General Annan's human resource management reform
intentions of 1997, emphasizing his "quiet revolution" to "transform" the
organization, started at the correct point but then jumped toward a
deprecation of such rules, as stated in a 1998 OHRM
document: "'We are
too complicated and too
slow. We are
over-administered … and have too many rules and too many regulations' [Mr. Annan] told
staff on 29 October. [He
called] for … simpler procedures and more authority for managers
… The Secretary-General
and his senior managers are addressing shortcomings that impede the
effective use of staff resources. Chief among them: Managers have limited
responsibility over their human and financial resources. This leads directly to the erosion
of accountability at all levels of the
Organization; Complicated rules and procedures
have served to discourage the recruitment, advancement, and mobility of
staff, affecting the UN's capacity to move the right person to the right
place at the right time. This
is essential in a global organization which is increasingly expected to
act quickly to address complex crises and changing
priorities; "Staff
become focus of United Nations modernization: New management culture key
to revitalization," United Nations Focus Series, No. 4, November
1998, pp. 2-3. Finally
and most importantly, UN managers simply ignore the rules, streamlined or
not, when it suits them. The
greatest hidden barrier to UN operational transparency and the rule of law
continues to be the autocratic right granted to the UN Secretary-General,
and delegated to dozens of his staff, to apply exceptions to UN Rules, and
-- equally damaging -- of the inept internal justice system to provide
redress where UN rules concerning staff have been violated, often
flagrantly.
Member
States and their representatives (and indeed, often staff) seeking
accountability and oversight must not only struggle with a complex,
bureaucratic, and still largely non-transparent organization, but also
with administrators who can and do invoke "exceptions" -- very quietly,
deep in the background, and with little if any explanation ever
given. This hidden regime of
rule manipulation and evasion is an ever-present "anti-accountability"
element in the many topics discussed in the major section of this archive
on Where is the Rule of
Law? . In
2005, Secretary-General Annan seems to have hit the panic button on the
question of UN rules in his report proposing "huge" overall and management
reforms of March 2005, as cited below. While the "purge" of staff and
"comprehensive review" of human resources rules he proposed might of
course be highly beneficial, his efforts of the last few years to free
managers and loosen up UN Secretariat rules suggest that these hurried
major moves might also become very damaging for UN staff and for UN
operating effectiveness.
The
devil, as always, is in the details, and IO Watch believes that the
Secretariat proposals on staff "buyouts" and fundamental staff rules
changes which emerge during 2005 must be regarded very carefully and
cautiously.
"C. The
Secretariat 184. A capable and effective
Secretariat is indispensable to the work of the United Nations. … In 1997 I launched a package of
structural reforms … and followed up with a further set of managerial and
technical improvements in 2002 … 185. … But these reforms do not go far
enough. If the United Nations
is to be truly effective the Secretariat will have to be completely
transformed. 186. … The Secretary-General and
his or her managers must be given the discretion, the means, the authority
and the expert assistance that they need to manage [the] organization …
Similarly, Member States must have the oversight tools they need to hold
the Secretary-General truly accountable for his/her strategy and
leadership. 190. … I therefore request the
General Assembly to provide me with the authority and resources to pursue
a one-time staff buyout so as to refresh and realign the staff to meet
current needs. 191. … I ask Member States to work with
me to undertake a comprehensive review of the budget and human resources
rules under which we operate. 192. Thirdly, we must continue to
improve the transparency and accountability of the Secretariat.
…" "In larger freedom: towards development, security
and human rights for all" Report of the Secretary-General", UN document
A/59/2005 of 21 March 2005. |
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