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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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SUBSECTION TABLE OF CONTENTS: --
A real UN
fraud prevention programme --
External
experts oversight review --
General
Assembly audit subcommittee --
Annual
results reporting to the General
Assembly --
Annual
status reporting to the General
Assembly -- Geneva Group "due diligence" failure Anyone who has worked
their way through parts or even all of this archive, and particularly the
preceding sections on The UN, Alone and
UNaccountable , and on
Other Major Problems has seen IO
Watch's detailed case arguing that management accountability and the rule
of law is critically needed in the UN, but is hardly to be found at more
senior levels, the locus where mismanagement is most serious because of
the organizational power these people possess. The most detailed and
systematic analysis of the UN's operations, by Rosemary Righter in 1995,
provides a succinct summary of the UN's central accountability
problems. Thanks to the
continuing Secretariat failure to implement management accountability
reforms, it still offers a very accurate assessment of the UN's
debilitating accountability problems. 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 Groups
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 UNs 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, New York, 1995, pp.
280-281.
The UN, in short, has
had serious management performance problems for six decades, which
continue. Its accountability
and oversight efforts are still amateurish and half-hearted, i.e.
inadequate to the task. The
critical underlying factor for any organization or grouping -- the rule of
law -- does not exist in the UN, because of entrenched diplomatic, and
management, immunity and impunity.
And recent developments indicate that the UN is not presently up to
the task of leading global governance, does not participate in a welcome
global trend toward "a right to know", and loves to preach virtue without,
however, practicing it itself. For those who have
begun with this subsection of the archive in order to get to the bottom
line, this is it. However, IO
Watch wishes to present fourteen quotes from a "blue ribbon" list of
present and former UN senior officials (plus the recent head of the WTO,
and a very recent overall and in-depth assessment by an expert outside
body, the US Government Accountability Office.) These succinct summary
views set the scene for the reasonable, "doable," and specific reform
actions which IO Watch offers below.
They are also worth a reread, as a
"wrapup" group of quotes, by those who have already seen many of them
elsewhere in the archive. IO Watch would also suggest looking at one more
key subsection -- The UN Old Boys' Last
Hurrah? , which summarizes the major
troubling events and scandals which began to pile up in UN management and
operations in late 2004, and in 2005. They are severe symptoms of the
stresses and strains that may fatally undermine the organization if Member
States do not finally insist on establishing management accountability and
the rule of law in the UN Secretariat. The summary, scene-setting views are as follows. "For its friends,
of which we are two,
the problem [at the UN's 40th anniversary is]
.
that it is not particularly effective in averting conflict or fighting
poverty, [nor ready to reverse]
. these trends, let alone its own genteel
deterioration.
[Among other
things], the Secretary-General must have the basic authority to manage his
own organization; to hire and fire according to the highest professional
standards and thereby provide overall tone and leadership to the
system.
There must also be a higher caliber of appointments at the
top.
There is nothing wrong with political appointments if appointees
have a distinguished and relevant career record. But
governments have too often considered comfortable United Nations sinecures
a dumping ground for mediocre diplomats. A board of independent, eminent people
should be constituted to establish the desirable qualifications for each
senior vacancy as it comes up. If individual governments still insist
on sending poorly qualified time-servers, at least their actions would be
recognized for what they are." Sadruddin Aga Khan and Maurice F. Strong, "Proposals to reform the U.N., 'limping' in its 40th year, New York Times, October 8, 1985. [Note: Sadruddin
Aga Khan served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR).
Mr. Strong was head of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), and has served in other senior UN posts since.] "Declaring that
'justice delayed is justice denied' in a speech earlier this year, [UN
Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management Martti
Ahtisaari] described the delays in the UN's ['internal justice'] system as
'very bad indeed'.
he [cited] an 'indefensible
situation' where one case from 1981 was still there, four cases from 1982,
and ten from 1983. Lamenting that
'Something has gone very wrong with our processes', he stressed that
justice was not only important in itself, but was also a basic aspect of
good staff-management relations. Justice was a 'primary defense against
the buildup of feelings of arbitrariness and discrimination' which, he
warned, could undermine staff morale and 'finally destroy an international
organization however high its ideals and purposes.'" "Staff-management meeting to discuss justice administration reform and performance reports", Secretariat News [New York], 31 August 1987, p. 5. Mr. Ahtisaari also
subsequently served as the President of Finland and , most recently, in
leading the independent panel which investigated UN security management
lapses in the bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.]
"Current problems
in what you 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."
The United Nations
presently is almost totally lacking in effective means to deal with fraud,
waste and abuse by staff members of the type which has so recently been
highlighted in the reports of audit agencies and in the news media.
[Reform is] especially
crucial given the mounting concern of major contributing Member States
over the rising level of [UN] expenditures
Member States, deserve the
reassurance that
their contributions are being wisely and prudently
utilized ." Dick Thornburgh,
Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, "Report to the
Secretary-General of the United Nations," 1 March
1993, pp. 8-9, 29-31.
"
there was little
progress [in Somalia]
until Boutros-Ghali appointed Mohammed Sahnoun [of
Algeria] as his special envoy in April 1992.
He was a
brilliant choice.
Sahnoun won
the admiration and cooperation of the international relief
organizations.
Unlike prior UN workers, he lived in Mogadishu, enduring the heat,
mosquitoes, filth, lack of water, electricity, and basic comforts. [Said
Geoffrey Loane of the Red Cross], "And he worked like hell. He worked
seven days a week, constantly. He inspired all of us.'
. Sahnoun was
succeeding
where others had failed. But
Sahnoun spoke publicly about the
failures of the UN. Believing his criticism would make
people aware of the UN's mistakes and save lives by preventing UN
officials from making them again, Sahnoun did not flinch from expressing
his views. At a UN conference in Geneva on October 12, 1992,
Sahnoun was direct. 'A whole year slipped by whilst the UN
and the international community, save for the International Red Cross and
a few nongovernmental humanitarian organizations, watched Somalia descend
into this hell.
The damage will not be repaired.' During this period '300,000 Somalis,
mostly children, have succumbed, some of them in agony' he said.'
[On October 19, 1992], Boutros-Ghali sent Sahnoun a letter ordering
him to refrain from public criticism of the UN. Such comments
were 'deeply damaging to the organization's reputation.' [He
then] quickly appointed a successor
" Ray Bonner,
"Why we went": How the United Nations turned its back on Somalia and
subverted the best chance for peace", Mother
Jones, (USA), March-April 1993, pp.
54-60.
[Note: the full
article is available at MotherJones.com under the
author's name.]
"The effectiveness of an oversight office depends to
a large extent on how senior officers perceive their roles. The concept
of management accountability in the United Nations has not been
consistently applied.
no system of accountability will be effective without the assurance that
sanctions will be promptly applied when violations occur. I strongly
recommend that any new system of accountability and responsibility include
specific penalties or sanctions for United Nations managers and other
staff who disregard United Nations regulations and rules or who are
negligent in the conduct of their duties and responsibilities.
During this first
year, [the new office] has addressed symptoms but has not yet been able to
address the root causes of many [UN] problems. I refer to such issues as
recruitment and promotion policies, the administration of justice,
management reporting systems, staffing and financing of peacekeeping
operations and contract management. A vast amount of work remains to be done before the
United Nations has management structures and a management culture adequate
to the great tasks entrusted to it
. " Mohamed Ali Nyazi,
Assistant-Secretary-General, longtime UN internal auditor, and first
head of
the transitional oversight body preceding the Office of Internal
Oversight Services, in his introduction to "Report of the Office of
Inspections and Investigations", UN document A/49/449, 28 September 1994, pages 5-6.
"[This report]
outlines a strategy to modernize and re-energize human resources
management in the [UN Secretariat]
[While the UN's
role and mandates have expanded], commensurate changes and modernization
in human resources management have not occurred. As a result,
[such] management has been fragmented, bureaucratic and incapable of
dealing expeditiously with ever-changing demands
The Office of
Human Resources Management
has been largely unable to address
properly [its essential] planning and management functions.
[This in
turn has] partially contributed to the slow deployment of field missions,
inadequate people management, low staff morale, and insufficient
mobility.
Thus, the time is overdue
to introduce changes to maximize the
contribution of [UN] human resources." "A strategy for the
management of the human resources of the Organization: Revised estimates
: Report of
the Secretary-General [Butros Butros-Ghali]", UN document A/C.5/49/5 of 21 October 1994, paras. 1 and 23. "The [UN]
Secretariat's current personnel procedures are inconsistent with the
development of the competent meritocracy that is required to deal with the
important problems faced by the United Nations. As a
consequence of years of improvised, backward, and careless personnel
practices, staff morale has been severely damaged. Numerous deficiencies are apparent in the personnel
practice of the Secretariat. For instance, it lacks a worthwhile
staff-evaluation system
Moreover, promotion within the Secretariat is not
competitive nor is it based on merit, and staff discipline is very low in
some departments. In addition, the policies for
recruiting new Secretariat personnel are unclear, and professional
training is almost nonexistent. Collusion between staff members and
state delegations seeking to justify the continued employment of their
nationals is quite common, and often leads to 'requests' by the General
Assembly for prolonged studies and reports that have no purpose and will
never be read." 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. 25-26. [Note: Mr. Spiers
served as a UN Under-Secretary-General in New York in the early
1990s.]
"The issue of
'deadwood and mediocrity': Constant talk about
'deadwood', 'mediocrity', 'bloated bureaucracy,' etc., does not promote
optimism about any significant improvement. What is desperately needed is serious
work on the problems. The General Assembly should request the
Secretary-General to organize an independent commission of internationally
respected civil-service and recruitment specialists. It must be so
composed as to enjoy the trust and cooperation of staff associations as
well as of the member-governments. It should carry out a thorough
screening of the actual competence for their designated posts of officials
at mid-professional and above grades. Such a process alone would reliably
establish how many existing staff actually have a useful function in UN
service.
Responsibility for the costs of the termination of those who do not
must be shared by member-governments.
. Sweeping talk of
'mediocrity' is unprofessional and misleading.
. The
potential of a significant number of staff is simply not known because of
poor job assignment, indifferent supervisors (themselves inadequately
supervised by poorly chosen department heads), and the lamentable paucity
of in-service training and retraining. The real extent of irredeemable
'mediocrity' can only be identified by proper, independent
screening." Erskine Childers,
with Brian Urquhart, Chapter X, "The international civil service", in
"Renewing the United Nations System", Development
Dialogue, 1994:1, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden, 1994, p. 165. [Note: Mr. Childers
worked for the UN for 22 years, including assignments as special adviser
to the UN Director-General for Development and in many UN system
organizations in all regions and at all levels. Mr. Urquhart
was one of the first UN staff members, served under five
Secretary-Generals, and was Under-Secretary General for Special Political
Affairs from 1974 to 1986.]
"The United Nations
of today
is a better Organization in many respects, than, say, five
years ago, and enhanced oversight has played its part in that change. However, further
improvement within the United Nations is still necessary in many
ways.
Internal controls are not strong enough yet; accountability
continues to be blurred and misunderstood; delegation of authority must be
effectively executed; and human resources management is in need of further
reform, particularly in the areas of career development, intensified staff
rotation, enhanced substantive support in respect of staff-management
relations and the system of personnel assessment.
The operational and
psychological distance between Headquarters and the field, that is, the
other duty stations
remains a problem. Beyond these
managerial challenges, some more general phenomena have been of concern to
me throughout my tenure here, and remain complicating factors in the daily
struggle of the Organization: A staff-management
relationship that is characterized by antagonism rather than the spirit of
cooperation
" Karl T. Paschke,
Under-Secretary-General and head of the Office of Internal Oversight
Services, in "Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the
Office of Internal Oversight Services" A/54/393 of 23 September 1999, Preface. "Challenges to implementation
No amount of
money or resources can substitute for the significant changes that are
urgently needed in the culture of the Organization.
People
everywhere are fully entitled to consider that [the United Nations] is their organization, and as such to pass judgement
on its activities and the people who serve in it. Furthermore, wide
disparities in staff quality exist and those in the system are the first
to acknowledge it; better performers are given unreasonable workloads to
compensate for those who are less capable. Unless the United Nations takes steps
to become a true meritocracy, it will not be able to reverse the alarming
trend of qualified personnel, the young among them in particular, leaving
the Organization. Moreover, qualified people will have no
incentive to join it. Unless managers at all levels,
beginning with the Secretary-General and his senior staff, seriously
address this problem on a priority basis, reward excellence and remove
incompetence, additional resources will be wasted and lasting reform will
become impossible." Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations [the "Brahimi report"], UN document A/55/305 -- S/2000/809 of August 21 2000, p. xiv. [Note: The full document is available at http://www.un.org/documents/ under the A document number. Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi has most recently served as the UN Secretary-General's special envoy in Afghanistan and in Iraq.]
"Challenges that
must be globally managed keep popping up: genetic engineering, AIDS, and
global terrorist networks. Yet
the global landscape has
dramatically changed in the last 50 years, but the institutions serving
the world have not. The institutions
cannot reform themselves. Two generations of institutional
contamination and tenured self-interest ensure that this deadlock
continues.
But this lack of coherence damages their collective credibility,
frustrates their donors and owners, and gives rise to public
cynicism.
There is a consensus that something must be done, but no consensus
on how to go about it.
. It's time
for a small group of national leaders to take on the challenge of
reforming and rebuilding global governance. They should build this effort around
the issue of the democratic deficit in multilateral institutions. The
leadership must come from the top.
. Otherwise, endless seminars and
conferences will inevitably bog down the process in the name of consensus
." Similarly, [senior
officials in national legislatures] should form a democratic caucus to
provide systematic oversight of international institutions, focusing
particularly on increasing the transparency of these institutions.
. [This
informal] caucus would strengthen national governments in their role in
holding these agencies to account." Mike Moore, "Multilateral meltdown", Foreign Policy, March/April 2003, p. 75. [Note: Mr. Moore
was Director General of the World Trade Organization from 1999
to 2002 and a former Prime Minister of New Zealand. He is the
author of A world
"Saying that the
United Nations had come to a 'fork in the road', Secretary-General Kofi
Annan argued Tuesday that fundamental weaknesses in the architecture of
the institution must be remedied for it to retain any effectiveness in
combating genocide, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
. He was stern and
passionate Tuesday as he lectured the assembled delegates from 191
nations, saying that the institution and its more than 9,000 employees
belong to them, and they must do a better job of protecting them.
. But the overarching
theme of the speech was that the need to change the institution is urgent.
Central to any
change, he said, was reforming the Security Council.
. He chastised his
audience for debating this issue for more than a decade without taking
action.
. He added: 'history
is a harsh judge; it will not forget us if we let this moment pass.' He then said that
he intended to set up a panel of 'eminent personalities' to assess the
current security threats and the best use of collection action to respond
to them.
This group, he proposed, could also recommend changes in the
institution and processes of the United Nations." Felicity Barringer, "Annan puts urgency in his call for UN reform", International Herald Tribune, September 24, 2003. "An independent
panel investigating the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in
Baghdad said today that the UN's security systems were 'dysfunctional'
What procedures
were in place in Baghdad when the 19 August attack took 22 lives were
'sloppy' in observance, and non-compliance with regulations was
'commonplace,' according to the report of the panel led by Martti
Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland [and also a former UN
Under-Secretary-General for management].
'The main
conclusion
is that the current security management system is
dysfunctional.
It provides little guarantee of security to UN staff in Iraq or
other high-risk environments and needs to be reformed,' the panel
said. The panel labelled
as a major deficiency a 'lack of accountability for the decisions and
positions taken by UN managers with regard to the security of UN
staff.' 'The United
Nations', it said, 'needs a new culture of accountability in security
management.'
In his briefing,
Mr. Ahtisaari said
"We need a much more professional approach, a
professional staff
'" "Iraqi bombing panel finds UN security systems dysfunctional, in need of reform," UN News service, 22 October 2003. "Why GAO did this
study The U.N. Secretary
General launched two reform agendas, in 1997 and 2002, to address the
U.N.'s core management challenges -- poor leadership of the Secretariat,
duplication among its many offices and programs, and the lack of
accountability for staff performance.
In 2000, GAO reported that the
reforms were not yet complete. What GAO found
First, the
Secretariat has taken positive steps to strengthen its human capital
management, but reforms in this area are ongoing and additional challenges
remain.
Second, the U.N. has begun to adopt results-oriented budgeting, but
its monitoring and evaluation system does not measure program impact.
UN reform faces
several challenges. For example, the Secretariat does not
conduct comprehensive assessments of the status and impact of U.N.
reforms.
In addition, the reform agendas lack clearly stated priorities,
interim goals, and target dates for overall completion. Other
challenges include resistance to change from program managers and possible
resource constraints. What GAO
recommends
the [US]
Secretary of State and [US Mission to the UN] should work with other
member states to encourage the Secretary-General to (1) report regularly
on the status and impact of reforms; (2) identify short- and long-term
goals and establish target end dates for remaining reforms; and conduct
assessments of the resulting resource implications." U.S. General
Accounting Office, United Nations: Reforms
progressing, but comprehensive assessments needed to measure impact,
GAO 04-339, February 2004, "Highlights" page.
[emphasis added.]
[Note: the complete report is available at www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-339.] The above quotes provide incisive and consistent
criticism of UN accountability failures from very close observers over the
years, and they bring the situation right up to the present. Strong
actions are needed, perhaps more than ever before, in the UN's long,
wavering, and very unenthusiastic march toward true management reform and
accountability. Rosemary Righter concluded her 1995 examination of
the UN by noting that multilateral cooperation activities are here to
stay, that there are new forms beyond UN "universality", and the
weaknesses and rigidities of the UN as a multilateral vehicle. She then
analysed in detail the increasingly moribund character and marginalization
of the UN in global discourse, despite the repeated attempts at
restructuring and reforming it. Ms. Righter offered a set of pragmatic options that
Western governments [who "pay the bills"] could use to finally make the UN
more relevant and useful: (a) to simply drop out of the organization; (b) to attempt structural reform from within; (c) to continue "faηade management" of participating
in the UN (apart from the Security Council) in name only; or (d) a strategy of "positive discrimination". Ms. Righter recommended the last choice, using the
West's power of the purse, organizational abilities, and political
influence to build up those UN units capable of doing good work, while
letting its worst units wither on the vine These real reform actions would
concentrate on the most urgent needs for global cooperation, and expose the UN
to healthy and much needed competition with other cooperative processes.
Rosemary Righter,
"Introduction: The United Nations at a watershed," in Utopia lost: The United Nations and world order,
Twentieth Century Fund, New York, 1995,
particularly pp. 5-10.
A decade later, however, UN managerial self-reform
and self-regulation are still failing. The prevailing "facade management"
results in funds squandered and global problems poorly addressed. It is finally
time, after six decades of faltering experience, for Member States, their
missions to the UN, and the citizens (and taxpayers) of the world to
act. The
"global community" must insist that effective UN programmes be rewarded,
while sanctioning and overcoming UN performance failures and the
debilitating (and unchecked) UN management culture. Above all,
the UN must become (not just perpetually promise to be) firmly and
transparently accountable. IO Watch believes
that eight more critical factors must be stated before presenting eleven
subsections that offer doable, not expensive, and already available
(at least elsewhere) answers as a starting point to overcome the UN's
plight.
Eight are in this subsection: three others are presented in the
last subsections of Where is the Rule of Law?
. First, the UN must
finally admit and systematically address its corruption problems (and
indeed it is especially vulnerable to corruption given its high-pressure
global operations under emergency conditions, and poor accountability and
transparency practices), and recognize that it does not stand on a
pedestal above the rest of mankind: "The essays in this
book
probe the whys and wherefores of contemporary corruption. They raise
deeper philosophical issues about the nature of this particular form of
human wrongdoing, how people confront it, and what they expect others to
do about it.
If other forms of misbehavior, once commonplace and legitimate,
have become increasingly unacceptable, why does corruption persist and
expand?
One message that
comes through
is not so much that people do not know what to do about
corruption as that they tend to lack sufficient will, fortitude, stamina,
resolution, and persistence to do anything about it.
This book [attempts
to]
throw light on the most important concerns.
[It] has something for
everyone,
from the simple concerns of fairly clean governance in one part of
the world to the worries of citizens experiencing very dirty governance in
another. from long-term institutional failure to short-term success, from
the pessimistic to the optimistic, from the circumspect to the ambitious,
from the half-hearted to the resolute, from the idealistic to the
pragmatic.
All of these reflect the current state of the art." Gerald E. Caiden,
O.P. Dwivedi, and Joseph Jabbra, eds., Chapter 1, "Introduction", in Where Corruption Lives, Kumarian, Bloomfield, CN
(USA), 2001, pp. 1-13, [2, 6, 9.] Second, the UN could
obviously benefit from participating directly itself in its own Global
Compact, and thereby avoid great hypocrisy on its part. In an
interview in July 2001, a senior UN official explained how multinational
corporations participate in the Compact as a foundation for a learning
network where they can share "best practices" in accord with United
Nations human rights, labor, and environmental principles. He judged that
"One year in, we've seen the companies building the kinds of practical and
intellectual bridges we [the UN] were hoping for." He explained (rather
smugly) that, once companies make their commitments to observe the Compact
principles (as the UN should definitely do), and have chosen their methods
of carrying them out "they engage in an open dialogue on how they were
doing so
[and] are subjected to critiques -- by their own
employees as well as outsiders including human rights and environmental
groups and labor unions. Irwin Arieff,"Some
300 firms sign up for global compact", Reuters, July 28, 2001.
[emphasis added.]
Third, the UN suffered in 2004 from two severe
scandals, one involving probably the greatest humanitarian assistance (and
one of the largest international financial) scandals ever, and a tragic
accident largely attributable to severe security management failures: "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 Iraq]. The other is
that oversights in UN
security management may have worsened the toll in last August's terrorist
bombing of the Baghdad headquarters. 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, April 8, 2004.
Fourth, the way out
of this morass was stated clearly in the aftermath of the Somalia disaster
of a dozen years ago. Subsequent events only underline the
continuing need for Member States, and the General Assembly, and
Secretary-General Annan, to apply transparency and accountability: "There is no shortage of suggestions for reforms at
the United Nations,
[but] if, in the future, the UN hopes to avoid failures like that in
Somalia, it will need to change on a more fundamental level. Above all, if the UN is going to be effective, it
must be accountable. 'The UN is probably the least
accountable government-based bureaucracy in the world -- a main
reason not only for the cataclysm in Somalia, but for the persistence of
famine throughout Africa' said Alex de Waal, a British anthropologist who has
studied the UN's response to famines. 'Officials who are responsible
for hundreds of thousands of deaths must face the prospect of prosecution,
not promotion.'
There is also the
need for a freedom of information act, so UN officials cannot hide from
the public everything from their salaries to their mistakes to how much
they're spending on public relations. And, finally, or perhaps first, there
must be an independent watchdog organization with full power to
investigate UN agencies. The General Assembly has the authority
to establish a commission of inquiry to examine what went wrong in
Somalia, but it has never examined its own performance." Ray Bonner,
"Why we went": How the United Nations turned its back on Somalia and
subverted the best chance for peace", Mother
Jones, (USA), March-April 1993, pp. 54-60
[60]. [Note: the full
article is available at MotherJones.com under the
author's name.]
Fifth, and returning once more to Mr. Ahtisaari, he
observed in commenting on his panel's report on the bombing of the UN
headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 and the severe UN security management
problems that the panel found, that: "Everybody bears responsibility, the Member States,
who are asking the UN
[to act] and of course the Secretary-General
himself -- the buck stops
always with the Secretary-General.' "Iraqi bombing
panel finds UN security systems dysfunctional, in need of reform," UN News
service, 22 October 2003. The sixth and seventh
quotes come from a very recent assessment by Claudia Rosett, with both of
which IO Watch is very much in agreement. The first is an imagined statement
which she wishes Secretary-General Annan had made, and the second her
assessment of the entrenched "accountability deficit" still to be found in
the UN today: "NEWS FLASH -- In a stunning development that even the [UN's]
fiercest critics will surely hail as a turn for the better,
Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced yesterday that he is entirely
disgusted with the U.N. art of investigating itself. 'It's a way
of deflecting criticism, not solving problems,' said Mr. Annan, adding
that 'The U.N. Secretariat has become a secret society, swathed in
privilege and shielded by immunities. As secretary-general, tasked with
upholding the integrity values and moral authority of the [UN], I am
authorizing a new policy of complete transparency, financial and
otherwise, in the workings of the Secretariat, starting with full
disclosure of all internal debates, correspondence, memoes, audits,
expense accounts and cafeteria subsidies. Oh, and by the way, I apologize for
presiding over the biggest swindle in the history of humanitarian
relief, the Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq.' OK, all right, just
kidding.
This is raw fantasy. Mr. Annan never said any such
thing."
"[The UN integrity
survey] is of course just one of the UN's various investigations into
itself.
Does anyone see a
problem here? The basic flaws are
simple.
Any time you create a large institution, accord it great privileges
of secrecy, give it a big budget and have it run immune from any sane
standard of accountability, you are likely to get a corrupt organization.
The problem with
the Secretariat isn't "tone" at the top. It's accountability at the top and
secrecy throughout.
Someone needs to
help this institution, and it's not a consulting team hired by the same
institution, nor is it a batch of investigators operating under terms
defined by the U.N, nor is it a grand gathering of staff members being
urged to risk reprisals by telling tales of earlier reprisals. A better place to
start is to
withhold part of the U.N.'s budget
[or] tackle the system
that engendered Oil-for-Food
For now, I'm [starting to believe] that in
reforming the UN, the only thing worse than having the U.N. ignore a
problem is to have the U.N. investigate it." Claudia Rosett,
"The problem with the Secretariat", The Wall
Street Journal, June 16, 2004.
Eighth and finally, the pivotal factor has been noted
in many places, including the UN's own pious Global Compact advice for
others expressed in the July 28, 2001 quote above. This is the
need for independent outside assessments of any organization -- and
especially the secretive, and immunity and impunity-bound UN -- as promoted
by, and found in, OECD countries in general: "Taking action
against wrongdoing Taking action against violation of standards is the
shared responsibility of managers and external investigative
bodies. OECD countries recognize that
disciplinary actions against a breach of public service standards should
be taken within the organization where the breach occurred. All
governments have developed a general framework for disciplinary procedures
that both allows managers to impose timely and just sanctions and
guarantees a fair process for the public servants.
Although public service managers have the primary responsibility for initiating disciplinary measures in their agencies in a timely manner, they may also receive assistance from specific external institutions. These external institutions are the primary instruments for investigating and prosecuting misconduct in the public service. These bodies have the power to bring suspected cases of corruption directly to court in all OECD countries. Moreover, two-thirds of countries have procedures and mechanisms to enable the public to signal wrongdoing to bodies exercising independent scrutiny on public service activities." "Annex I: OECD public management policy brief on building public trust: Ethics measures in OECD countries," in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Public sector transparency and accountability: Making it happen, OECD, Paris, 2002, p. 192. [emphasis added]
With the above, introductory, senior officials'
assessments of the UN's management struggles, the subsequent observations
on the urgent need for real accountability and transparency in UN
operations, and the wise OECD guidance, IO Watch suggests the following
eleven "Answers" (eight here, three in Where is the Rule of Law?)
as key starting points for finally creating an accountable, transparent,
law-based, and effective UN. |
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