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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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Action in many underlying areas is required to maximize the potential and
productivity of UN staff resources.
Much effort has been made and new approaches are underway in
national governments and private sector organizations to best use the
people who increasingly make up the "service sector" worldwide. The UN, as
usual, has lagged behind. The ACABQ noted in
2000 that the Secretariat was [finally] undertaking a worldwide survey of
"work/life issues" that influence staff. The survey considered such issues
as facilitation of spousal employment [an important concern as part of UN
efforts to increase staff mobility]; provision of adequate childcare; and
staff health, safety and welfare concerns in the workplace. The ACABQ concluded
that: " … a competitive package of conditions of
service is an essential element in the successful achievement of the
goals set out in the report
of the Secretary-General [on
human resources management reform.]" "Human resources management reform …: Report of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions", UN document A/55/499 of 19 October 2000, paras. 18-19. The only area of real
activity on support issues during the 1990s was a gradual recognition of
staff mental health issues and problems. Spurred
by several staff suicides, the UN began efforts in 1991 to address the
mental health challenges of a large, international, multi-cultural
organization. Guidance was finally issued seven years later, in 1998, but
it lacked any status reporting or apparent subsequent action to identify
units with abnormal work-related stress and disability cases, or to help
individual staff transfer from units where they are caught in "poisoned"
interpersonal relationships.
UN
staff are particularly at risk in this area because of the many abusive
and unaccountable UN managers, who are the "power people" (and also too
often the "poisonous managers") most able and likely to be responsible for
workplace stress and long-term absence. "Working group on mental
health," UN Staff Report (New York), December 1996, p.
13,
and "Mental health - Medical and
employee assistance facilities," UN document ST/IC/Geneva/4423 of 18
June 1998.
The
Secretary-General's report on human resource management reforms in 2002
cited the goal of providing staff with a better work and life environment,
as a crucial element in order to attract and retain staff of high
quality. It stated that the
UN system organizations were making a comprehensive review of the pay and
benefits system to help attract and reward top staff. OHRM was also pondering the
results of the work-life survey mentioned above. For
the future, the report cited the Secretariat's determination to work
toward a competitive and streamlined pay system; simplify entitlements;
review policies relating to spousal employment with host governments; and
develop pilot schemes in "flexi-time" and "flexi-place" work, to be
expanded "in the light of experience." [In fact, a more enlightened
UN Secretariat had actually
experimented with flexi-time work and part time employment in the late
1970s and 1980s, but this
experience, and any lessons learned from it, have probably
disappeared into the sands of time.] "Human resources management
reform: Report of the Secretary-General," UN document A/57/293 of 8
August 2002, paras. 62-69. IO
Watch will update the Secretariat observations, promises, and intentions
for staff support made in the biennial human resources management of 2004
at a later date. In this
area, as in all others, there is much Secretariat work to be done.
There is not much time left to dally and ponder, given the extremely
competitive nature of modern work forces worldwide and rapidly changing
work situations, technologies, and challenges. OHRM may no longer be its
old "personnel administration" self, but it does not yet seem ready to
provide maximal support to UN staff and maximize their contributions, let
alone address the many drastic workplace and challenges of a UN which has
"freed the managers" and thereby greatly enhanced their
impunity. |
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