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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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On See "Strengthening emergency
relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction and prevention in the aftermath of
the This subsection is one of
only two topics under Other Major Problems with a title
that ends with a question mark, because it is presently only an emerging
UN major operation (the other, Manager/investigators? , concerns
a submerged programme.)
Like the UN-administered oil-for-food programme in
The tsunami disaster came
at a very difficult, but propitious, time for the UN, as nicely summarized
by a January 2005 article. "The [December 2004 tsunami
disaster] is proving to have many unintended political consequences, not
least its impact on the United Nations. Isolated diplomatically over
Last month, Kofi Annan, the
beleaguered secretary general, hosted a secret meeting of his supporters
with the aim 'to save Kofi and rescue the UN.'
[After] the end of the Cold War
the UN
idea of being a world policeman
fell apart once again.
That should have left the
autonomous UN agencies -- tasked with everything from feeding refugees to
protecting world heritage sites -- to get on with their unglamorous but
invaluable role.
The best solution [to the UN's
current problems] is a new secretary general
perhaps a former prime
minister or president
It might also be more efficient, in the light of the tsunami
experience, to hive off the UN's overlapping civil emergency organizations
[and merge them] into a single international rescue agency
" George Kerevan, "Has impotent UN
finally outlived its usefulness?", The Scotsman, UN officials and
supporters quickly seized on this opportunity, as indicated by the
following quotes. "Talk about a busy week. As head of the United Nations
Development Program, 51-year-old Mark Malloch Brown has spent the past few
days hopping from one disaster-struck region in [Question:] Is this a chance for
the United Nations to show that it is truly a viable organization
? [Answer:] This is one of the things that
even the United Nations' critics usually acknowledge it's good at --
humanitarian intervention. We
had disaster teams on the ground within a day. We have very strong country
offices in all the [affected] countries
already at work. We have a network of disaster
partners from around the world who were quickly mobilized by this. We do this well. We couldn't do it without
the logistics backbone of the "These were poor people: The Last
Word: Mark Malloch Brown", Newsweek International, "
Former 'No
one has questioned the commitment or the integrity or the impact of the
United Nations humanitarian efforts', he said in response to a question on
the Oil-for-Food allegations.
'That has not even been a matter in dispute.' The
White House website, he pointed out, has UNICEF and the overall UN relief
effort on its list of charities that are reliable. 'So there is absolutely no dispute
about that as far as I know
across the political spectrum in
"UN undertaking
management review in response to early findings in Oil-for-Food probe",
UN News Service, [Note: This sweeping
public statement is of course contradicted by all the material cited in
this subsection, in the title of the UN's own article above which
contained Mr. Clinton's assertions, and especially in the subsection of
this archive on the In addition, Mr. Annan
then appointed Mr. Clinton in early February to be his special envoy for
tsunami aid and perhaps some peacekeeping work in the tsunami area. This action revived past talk of
Mr. Clinton as the next UN Secretary-General, although most feel this is
very, very unlikely to occur since he comes from a [the?] major (with a
veto) UN member state. See Mark Turner, "Annan appoints
"Two very different scenes have
been unfolding dramatically on separate floors at the United Nations
headquarters in Elsewhere in the building, the
team co-ordinating the international response to the Indian Ocean tsunami
catastrophe is establishing a web-based financial tracking system that
will enable anyone, including the public, to trace where relief dollars
are coming from and how they are being spent. It is also setting up a squad to
investigate credible allegations of fraud and waste. PricewaterhouseCoopers is helping
to build the system, which will be overseen by an external advisory board.
I witnessed [this contrast]
throughout my own tenure at the UN.
Whereas traditionalists treat
opaqueness as a strategic asset, for modernists transparency is the key to
institutional success.
[Kofi] Annan is by instinct a
modernist
As [he] goes about rebuilding his senior management team, he
would be well advised to add to each job description: only modernists need
apply." John Ruggie, "Modernists must take
over the United Nations, Financial Times
( [Note: Mr. Ruggie served under Mr.
Annan as a UN assistant secretary-general from 1997-2001. His optimism for
the UN tsunami coordination team seems excessive on several counts. PricewaterhouseCoopers are the experts in financial tracking
systems and oversight (see the quote of In fact, IO Watch has
found that the UN has developed a consistently poor record over the years
in attempting to provide effective humanitarian relief coordination, a
pattern which may well still continue at present. The most incisive book
ever written about UN operations, by Rosemary Righter in 1995, summarized
these efforts very well. She began by citing a book by
" Rosemary Righter,
Utopia lost: The United Nations and world order, Twentieth Century
Fund, [Note: The book referred to is
Randolph C. Kent, Anatomy of disaster relief: The international network
in action, Frances Pinter, In fact, Ms. Righter
observed, in most humanitarian crises people give most of their money not
to the UN but to the Red Cross, to charities, or to their own governments.
In 1971, however, the General Assembly established the most long-lived
(and most feckless) coordination unit, the Office of the UN Disaster
Relief Coordinator (UNDRO).
It was intended to "mobilize, direct and coordinate relief" in
response to requests from a "stricken" country. But Ms. Righter found
that, "In practice, UNDRO rarely managed to act even as traffic policeman,
let alone the focus for action."
She cited a severe report by the UN Joint Inspection Unit in 1980
(after nine years of UNDRO existence) which found
that: "[UNDRO]
had no authority as a
coordinator, had developed no strategy for disaster relief operations, was
almost useless as an information center, and had done little or nothing
'to reduce waste and inefficiency in relief administration.' The inspectors' final report,
acknowledging the view of many officials that UNDRO should be abolished,
recommended halving its staff, [and] restricting its brief to 'sudden
natural disasters
'" Rosemary Righter,
Utopia lost: The United Nations and world order, Twentieth Century
Fund, The JIU report was
"Evaluation of the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief
Coordinator", JIU/REP/80/11, The General Assembly
persistently ignored this performance failure. In 1982, it reaffirmed UNDRO as
the "focal point" for UN coordination and agreed euphemistically to
"strengthen" it. After the UN
failed to alert the world to the Ethiopian famine in 1984, Ms. Righter
cited a small new unit that was set up as the Office for Emergency
Operations in Africa (OEOA).
It established a strong team and computerized disaster resource
allocations, and gained the enthusiastic support of the major donors and
voluntary organizations. But after less than two years it was disbanded,
having displeased other UN organizations. The General Assembly once again
solemnly reaffirmed the importance of strengthening UNDRO. Ms. Righter noted that in
1989 the General Assembly did draw up an "International Framework for the
International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction" (Assembly resolution
44/236) and called for "strengthening further" the UN capacity to organize
humanitarian assistance. In 1991, however, the Kurdish refugee crisis in
northern "It is time some lessons were
learned. If the UN cannot
provide the framework that the voluntary agencies and the governments that
provide relief agree is needed, alternatives should be considered. [The
1971 report establishing UNDRO]
stated bluntly that 'the principal
organs equipped for international emergency relief are and will continue
to be the League of Red Cross Societies, other voluntary organizations and
church groups, and Governments
the United Nations System is not geared
for action of this kind, nor is it realistic to suppose that, given its
structure, it could become so.'
Where the UN could help was in
promoting national disaster
prevention and control measures
assembling computerized data on
conditions in disaster-prone countries
and on possible sources of
assistance
and negotiating with recipients as well as countries through
which supplies would have to pass." Rosemary Righter,
Utopia lost: The United Nations and world order, Twentieth Century
Fund, Ms. Righter concluded
that this modest role was more appropriate. In peaceful countries disaster aid
was usually government-to-government, and in obstructive disaster
situations the UN is often hampered by protocol (80 percent of aid to
war-torn Rosemary Righter, Utopia lost:
The United Nations and world order, Twentieth Century Fund,
In their concurrent and
excellent report in 1994 on renewing the UN system, Erskine Childers and
Brian Urquhart concluded that in the area of humanitarian emergency
machinery: "
governments have for many
years been trying to improve the operations of a number of separately
established bodies that provide humanitarian emergency assistance. A major resolution in the right
general direction was adopted by the General Assembly in 1991, but has
manifestly been insufficient to overcome the separatism, competitiveness,
and lack of coordination which governments have built up in this area
It
is time to end the tinkering.
After many unsuccessful rounds
of reform Member-States should recognize that the continued scattering of
humanitarian emergency response capacities among separate funds does not
and cannot enable the coordination that they have agreed is needed.
"
Erskine Childers,
with Brian Urquhart, "Renewing the United Nations System", Development
Dialogue, 1994:1, Dag Hammarskjφld Foundation,
It is not clear whether
the past decade has changed this rather discouraging picture in any
substantive way, but the challenge of the enormous relief, rehabilitation
and reconstruction efforts required in the In 1998 the Department
was transformed into the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs and reduced somewhat in size. Conveniently for the current tsunami
challenge, it issued a report in November 2004 as requested by the General
Assembly, on its evolution, current functions, ambitions, and desire for
more "secure funding" to enhance its coordination work. The Assembly too
has increased its pronouncements on humanitarian disaster work and
strategy, as shown by no less than four resolutions in late 2004 and early
2005. The Secretariat report
is: "Defining the administrative
functions of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
Report of the Secretary-General", UN document A/59/562 of The recent General
Assembly resolutions are: "International cooperation on
humanitarian assistance in the field of natural disasters, from relief to
development", 59/212 of "International strategy for
disaster reduction", 59/231 of "Natural disasters and
vulnerability", 59/233 of "Strengthening emergency relief,
rehabilitation, reconstruction and prevention in the aftermath of the
Just as there is a "fog
of war", there is also a "fog of disaster relief" (and of disaster funding
and use). To identify some of the key entrenched elements before moving on
to actual tsunami relief efforts in 2005, IO Watch wishes to provide a
dozen or so quotes which illustrate the Secretariat's past experiences and
struggles in this field. "In
international humanitarian efforts, United Nations relief
undertakings -- greatly expanded in the
nineteen-seventies, as the victims of prolonged conflicts and natural
disasters multiplied --- were gratuitously obstructed by
the U.N. pattern of subservience to governmental pressures, of
administrative havoc, and of feuds nurtured within U.N. agencies
themselves. While the public
was encouraged to regard
[a UN relief mission] as a concerted endeavor by
the organization, devoted workers in the field were repeatedly frustrated
in essential tasks by the confusion and politicization of a top-heavy
headquarters bureaucracy.
Nothing in the United Nations' attitudes and structure had prepared
the system to respond with coordinated intelligence to an unprecedented
volume of calamities -- which
were associated, in Shirley
Hazzard, "Breaking Faith: II", The New Yorker, Note: Ms. Hazzard worked
at the UN for ten years, resigning in 1962 to become a very successful
full-time writer.]
"
[The UN programs which eat] up the great bulk of U.N. resources
the
economic, social and humanitarian programs aimed at development, emergency
relief and 'better standards of life' around the world
[get little
scrutiny.]
Clearly,
the United Nations employs many hard-working and idealistic people. [But]
parts of the system are
overstaffed and lethargic, while others, particularly field offices in
unpleasant places, are overstaffed and overworked.
Local
employees tend to bear the brunt of disciplinary action
when fraud or
abuse are discovered
while erring international professional staffers
often survive and even advance in the organization. At the same time, U.N. employees
who complain about irregularities [lose promotions or must transfer
elsewhere.] It
is a system that tends to cover up its abuses and discourage
whistle-blowers.
A
European U.N. official, who recently left his agency in frustration,
[said] 'A certain enabling environment
allows {fraud} to happen. The question is not whether you do
it or not, but whether you're stupid enough to be
caught." "Basically,
there's a lack of determination to combat the sleaze factor' he said. 'In an environment where
mediocrity has a strong self-protective interest, these things
flourish.'" William Branigin, "The
U.N. empire: polished image, tarnished reality", "As U.N. expands, so do
its problems: Critics cite mismanagement, waste", Washington Post,
"[Concerning
allegations of corruption at UNHCR in articles in the Washington Post in
September 1992] with respect to discipline in UNHCR, a courageous staff
member in In
the more complicated Lukika case in
Arthur E. Dewey, "No
laxity", UN Special ( [emphasis added] [Note: Mr. Dewey was
deputy high commissioner of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees from 1986-1990.]
"The
United Nations is losing an estimated £270 m. each year because of
corruption, waste and mismanagement, an investigation by the Sunday
Times Insight team has discovered. The
new evidence of widespread financial abuse
comes [from]
'Operation Irma", the
trouble-ridden evacuation of wounded refugees from
The
disclosures will fuel growing international criticism of the U.N. and its
controversial refugee agency [the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees], accused of incompetence and red tape.
An
estimated £1 m. has been
raised in one week in public donations, but aid agencies are bitter and
angry that hundreds of times that amount of cash has been squandered by
the U.N. so far this year. Jeffrey
Clark, deputy director of the Refugee Policy Group, an international
agency helping refugees in Bosnia, said: 'At the very moment when the U.N.
needs to persuade people and governments to spend more on expanded
operations its credibility is undermined by waste, mismanagement,
ineptitude, and pure stupidity.'" Nick Rufford, Ian
Burrell and David Leppard, "Scandal of U.N. 'lost' millions", The
Sunday Times, [The above are only a
few of the comments on UNHCR among those excerpted in the UN
Special (Geneva),
October, 1993, pp. 20, 22, 27.]
"On
the very day the Sunday Times published [the above] report, I received the
news of the killing of one more UNHCR colleague, Boris Zeravcic, in
The
Staff Council in UNHCR agrees with the thrust of the criticisms. The staff wants to weed out
corruption, mismanagement, nepotism, double-dippers, desk-warmers, and all
other irregularities
Staff
representatives have been tirelessly pointing out unsavory management
tendencies and reported to the governing body of UNHCR
on how to
strengthen the organization and to ensure the effective use of its human
resources. The question is:
what do these government representatives do with these reports when they
return to their capitals
UNHCR
staff on the gound work with dedication and have twice won the Nobel
Peace Prize, but they are demoralized when subjected to unjustified
criticism. UNHCR staff needs
the help of the media to further strengthen its humanitarian commitment to
work for refugees." Nasr Ishak, "HCR staff
replies", UN Special ( [Note: a
reply letter to the Sunday
Times, by the Chairman of the Staff Council, UNHCR].
"
the bulk [of financial abuses] usually occurs
in emergency operations
where cash or supplies are being moved
[urgently], or where contracts
must be issued under great pressure.
Given the appalling under-staffing of peacekeeping operations and
the disorganized state of humanitarian emergency assistance the surprise
if any is that there is not more fraud and waste in these operations.
A
further ironic consequence of zero-growth demands has been the severe
under-staffing of the Internal Audit Division [IAD.]
neither Secretaries-General nor
member states have paid enough attention
[thus there have been only some
30 fully qualified auditors and 6 [professional evaluation staff] to cover
the entire [UN} work programme in thousands of expenditure lines, carried
out at New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi, five Regional Commissions,
over a hundred country offices, huge world conferences and in addition
over a dozen complex peacekeeping operations.
" Erskine Childers, with Brian Urquhart, "Renewing the United Nations system", Development Dialogue, 1994:1, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden, 1994, p. 146.
"As
the leaders of every nation on earth mark the 50th anniversary of the
United Nations this week,
. they must do more than fill the General
Assembly hall with platitudes
.
Without significant changes in organization and behavior, the UN
will lose its remaining effectiveness and public support.
. On
financial management, there has been significant progress in the last two
years. The main problem now
is the continued insistence of member countries on imposing expensive and
unsuitable patronage appointees on the Secretariat and UN agencies. No political body is free of
patronage, but profligate waste at headquarters while the UN and its
agencies run out of funds to meet emergency human needs in the field is
intolerable." "A hard look", The
Washington Post, in the International Herald Tribune,
"
.
The
United Nations refugee relief agency is weakly managed and needs more
oversight -- in part because member nations use
it as a patronage pit -- and its dependence on host
countries to provide services is another breeding ground for
corruption. But the agency is
dealing with a dangerous and difficult mission: 24 members of its staff,
and 23 workers for the World Food Program, have been killed since
1992. The reluctance of
donors has also crippled the agency, which finds it easier to raise money
for emergency appeals than to alleviate the chronic miseries of most
African refugees." "Refugee crisis in
"A
former [senior official of the UN Commission for Human Rights, Alan
Parra], told The Observer
that the UN has 'an absurd and unaccountable system of abuse, embezzlement
and ineptitude.' [He
said] 'It's very difficult to dig out and punish abuse in an organization
where it is the norm. Of each
dollar spent by the United Nations only an infinitesimal amount gets
anywhere near the project on the ground' .
Last
week Parra described a series of cases that included: assistants to a
senior official based in another country not realizing for more than a
year that their superior had died; an official report on the human rights
situation in Czechoslovakia, written by an overworked official by 'cutting
and pasting' a report from Columbia. 'It
told us all about guerillas and narco-traffickers. The words
' He
also criticized 'an addiction to perks and luxury.' When one UN official in
Jason
Burke, et. al., "UN rocked by flood of fraud cases: Officials were
'addicted to luxury," The Observer International
( Note:
any such interviews with OIOS staff and dynamic results with criminal
cases (see following item) seem to have come to an abrupt end since the
2000 report, as OIOS information on its investigation work became very
low-key and vague.]
"There
are several United Nations.
There is the international body of nations which does so many tasks
-- from vaccinating children to distributing food -- with considerable success.
Another
United Nations, perhaps the most intractable, was made up of the vast and
largely autonomous baronies constituted by the various agencies which
carry out the UN's development and relief work.
Undoubtedly they contained time
servers, like the central secretariat itself
because of the quotas
insisted upon by governments.
Moreover, the agencies guarded their sovereignty as fiercely as any
member state and fought any attempts to diminish their autonomy through
coordination. Directors would
not hesitate to call upon their own national governments to fight any
attempt by the secretary-general to dismiss incompetent senior staff or to
rationalize their cost.
" William
Shawcross, Deliver us from evil: Peacekeepers, warlords, and a world of
endless conflict,
"Non-governmental
organizations will become more numerous, prominent and powerful in 2001
than ever before. Now 30,000
international ones exist; 50
years ago, there were just a handful.
. In
poor countries they will multiply especially fast. An NGO is an efficient tool with
which to harvest donor money.
Rich governments have lost their appetite for handing over checks
to poor, corrupt, and dictatorial regimes. So they hand them to NGOs
instead. And not only money
passes hands. In 2001 large
numbers of expatriate (usually white) workers will be dispensing the aid
and giving assistance.
. aid groups will get more money
for their work: between 1994 and 1997 the European Union's aid spending
via NGOs rose from 47% to 67% of the relief budget. Far
harder to measure is their power. On some issues
they will set the terms
for public debate. One
sign of clout is how much annoyance they will cause.
. Globally
the bigger ones are already more influential than some smaller
governments. They have large
budgets and highly skilled staff. They
will also get a greater say in the UN
." Adam Roberts,
"International: NGOs: New gods overseas", The world in 2001, The
Economist, 2000, pp. 73-74.
"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 | |||
