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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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In its earliest days the UN Secretariat was subjected to a harsh period of investigations as the UN struck a bargain with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to screen US staff members at the UN on their opinions, political sentiments, and private lives. Shirley Hazzard cites this as the "least mentioned official transaction in UN history," although it was later exposed in US Congressional hearings in 1952 and led to Secretary-General Trygve Lie's resignation from office. It was a harsh period for staff: "Staff representatives who [spoke
out against the] collaboration with the FBI and the United States State
Department were among the earliest and least ceremonious departures. The dismissals were accompanied by
intimidating and abusive statements from the administration to those
remaining.
The squalor of these conditions,
punctuated by announcements of summary dismissals, acted on the staff with
a combination of attrition, confusion and violence.
Each department had
its informers, and its victims. The total of United Nations
employees affected
undoubtedly runs into the hundreds
[but is
difficult to determine]
since employees were permitted to resign with
extra indemnities, 'in exchange for their silence'
[or in] terminations
disguised as 'economies,' or
deportations to the field, or careers
shunted [permanently] into sidings
[or] a secret blacklisting
Above all, there is no accounting
for the deterrent effect of Trygve Lie's policies on those who might have
wished to serve a differently administered United Nations secretariat."
Shirley Hazzard on the
situation in the UN Secretariat in the early 1950s, in Chapter Two,
"The purgatory of the investigations," in her Defeat of an ideal: A
study of the self-destruction of the United Nations, Macmillan,
London, 1973, pp. 15, 23, 34-35.
[emphasis added.]
The UN control and disciplinary climate then settled
in as a lower level, lower-visibility atmosphere of restricted staff
rights, Administration paranoia and controls, weak internal oversight and
a weak internal justice system with quasi-judicial procedures going on
behind it, including summary dismissal and a hidden group of displaced
staff, all as discussed in the preceding subsections on Staff
Rights?, Behind the
Scenes , and Unleashed
managers . The sub rosa disciplinary
activities did, however, maintain their nasty side, up to and including
abrupt "summary dismissals": "In cases of summary dismissal, which U.N. sources
say have been on the rise in recent years, the Secretary-General can fire
an employee on the spot for "serious misconduct", although this term has
never been satisfactorily defined in the last 40 years." "Summary
dismissal", letter of the New York Staff Committee president to the ASG, OPS
[personnel] of 5 May 1980, UN Staff News (New
York), July 1980, page 11, and
Jay Axelbank,
"Administrative injustice at the UN", UN
Special, (Geneva), December 1993,
pp.14-15.
Meanwhile, during the late 1980s and the 1990s,
worldwide attention to battling corruption led to the establishment of
inspector general units and professional investigation processes in many
public organizations. Both internal controls and independent scrutiny were
applied to monitor compliance with standards and deal with irregularities
and systemic failures. As an excellent OECD survey stated: "Taking action
against wrongdoing "Taking action against violation of standards is the
shared responsibility of managers and external investigative
bodies.
All [OECD] 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. ." "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]
In 1994 the new OIOS created a small, professional
Investigations Section in the UN Secretariat, even as the Administration
was also pushing strongly for much greater authority and freedom for
managers. As discussed earlier under Unleashed
managers , the OIOS
chose to encourage cooperative work with managers on investigations, and
managers gradually became more and more directly involved in them. In 1998
the Secretary-General gave prime responsibility for dealing with
performance failures to managers at all levels, with OIOS advice, and he
subsequently decided that managers could do preliminary investigations
themselves, not only in cases of alleged misconduct, but also of gross
negligence. These trends led to continuing and
aggressive behind-the-scenes activities, a hint of which was given in a
very cryptic 2-page report which had been requested by the General
Assembly.
The report was intended to deal with financial malpractice cases,
but instead discussed quite ambiguously the handling of possible
disciplinary and misconduct cases by managers in departments or with OIOS
and/or with OHRM, and some information on the various outcomes possible in
such cases: "Of the 61 cases
submitted in 1997 to the Assistant-Secretary-General of [OHRM], 7 were
referred as a result of an audit/OIOS investigation. Four of those
seven resulted in a decision of summary dismissal, one is being handled by
the [unit]
, one is being prepared for submission to the [JDC],
and one is
[being considered as a possible] disciplinary
matter." "Actions taken
against staff resulting from findings of malpractice discovered by the
Board of Auditors: Report of the Secretary-General", A/52/864 of 2 April 1998. [Note: the report
conspicuously ignored what happened to the other 64 reports, whether the
71 cases were for New York only or the entire global UN, and the pattern
and consequences and recovery (if any). Also, if 1997 was
typical, there should have been about 500 such cases in the seven years
since.
How did they come out? ] In 2000 the OIOS reported, again in a report
specifically requested by the General Assembly, that although
investigation is a legal analytical process performed by specialized
professionals, many UN managers and others were making investigations
without any formal procedures. A large amount of quasi-investigative and
quasi-judicial activity -- including summary dismissals -- was going on,
and both the staff and the General Assembly grew increasingly
concerned.
"Rules and procedures to be
applied for the investigation functions performed by the OIOS
: Report of
the Secretary-General", A/55/469 of 11 October
2000,
paras. 20. [emphasis
added.] [Note: The details
of these developments and their discernable impact are provided in the
archive subsections on Unleashed Managers , Disappearing
Whistle-blowers , and Behind the Scenes .]
In 2003 the General Assembly requested a report on
these
"manager/investigators", and in February 2004 the OIOS provided it.
UN departments and offices had submitted a very patchwork and incomplete
reporting on the pattern of the investigations they had undertaken during
the year 2002 -- a total of more than 1,800, varying from quite serious to
traffic accident reports, and mostly concentrated in a few high-risk field
sites, such as the Congo, Sierra Leone, and East Timor. "Report of the
Office of Internal Oversight Services on strengthening the investigation
functions in the United Nations: Note by the Secretary-General", UN
document A/58/708 of 10 February 2004.
The OIOS also found that, despite increasing concerns
and discussions, there had been little progress in addressing three major
and obvious issues involved in the investigatory "free for all": (1) Independence: professional, objective and
impartial assessments are key elements [and obviously difficult for
managers to credibly provide when deciding when, who, and how to
investigate in their own units]; (2) Training: [much serious training is
needed for proper investigation work, but UN managers have little time and
actual training has been "virtually nonexistent"]; (3) Investigative procedures: [very few
exist]. More specifically, the OIOS observed that: "Throughout the
Organization, managers have responsibility for responding to matters
requiring investigations. This practice poses questions for both the
independence of management and the integrity of the investigative
process. While it is not suggested that
management should be precluded from having a rule in investigations, the
situations in which such participation is allowed need to be clearly
defined, kept within strict but reasonable limits, be subject to review
and oversight and be guided by the Uniform Guidelines." "Report of the
Office of Internal Oversight Services on strengthening the investigation
functions in the United Nations: Note by the Secretary-General", UN
document A/58/708 of 10 February 2004, para.
23 [emphasis
added.]
The OIOS concluded that professional investigation is
essential, but it must be effective and impartial. OIOS
classified high-risk, complex matters as "Category I" matters for
investigation by professional investigators (including fraud, other
serious criminal acts, abuse of authority or staff, gross mismanagement,
substantial resource waste, substantial violation of UN rules) and
lower-risk "Category II" cases for (trained) programme managers to handle
(such as personnel matters, simple thefts, contract disputes, basic misuse
of staff, basic mismanagement issues, infractions of rules, and simple
entitlement fraud). The OIOS also stated that "an appropriate policy must
be developed to clarify programme managers' role in investigative
activities", and promised to submit a follow-up report to the General
Assembly within the next year. "Report of the
Office of Internal Oversight Services on strengthening the investigation
functions in the United Nations: Note by the Secretary-General", UN
document A/58/708 of 10 February 2004, paras.
24-30.
This initial report is very useful, but there are
many things seriously wrong with the situation. First of all,
it is very late: untrained managers have been conducting "investigations"
(or deciding not to) of their operations since 1998. The right to do so is
a great opportunity for abusive UN managers to "settle scores", and there
is no telling how many staff have been harassed or subjected to
miscarriages of justice by this process in the Secretariat. The categories I and II seem awkward, with some quite
important issues to be left to managers to handle (how independently does
a manager handle staff accusations of his mismanagement?) Once again, the
managers set "free to manage" in the past decade have benefited quite
nicely in the investigative area as well. As will be discussed in the "Answers" subsection
which follows, IO Watch believes that it is clear and obvious that in a
real "fraud-fighting UN" there should be enough professional investigators
to do the job, and that a larger Investigations Division is urgently
needed, rather than entrusting many of the Category II
cases to involved managers to "take care of." [And, at
present, even the OIOS has been occupied with investigating its own
investigators, after internal allegations of mismanagement were made
against its head, Dileep Nair.] In many respects, a real risk exists that the UN
Secretariat will return to the ugly and repressive days of the 1950s under
this manager/investigators system. Even if all the OIOS recommendations of
2004 are implemented, it will take several years to train managers and
establish a control system. And even then, there must continue to
be real doubt that managers can or will report serious matters to an OIOS
that has no time to check on every case. Thus, overall, there has been a great increase in UN
managers' impunity in the last decade, rather than the management
accountability, sanctions, and independent and professional investigations
that the General Assembly clearly intended and sought in 1993 and
1994.
There is also a very
interesting specific example. The biggest case ever of a "UN
manager/investigator" situation is the "independent" inquiry led by Paul
Volcker in 2004-2005, into the many allegations of corruption and
mismanagement in the UN Iraq
oil-for-food programme(see the fuller specific
discussion in that subsection following.) Secretary-General Annan reportedly first announced an
investigation (by the OIOS, although OIOS had already done some 55 audits
of the programme), then -- when this was rejected as insufficient -- named his own "independent"
commission (although half-a-dozen serious other outside inquiries are
already underway in Member States) with some prestigious figures (but
notably, no
high-level specialist on fraud, which is the key point at issue) in
mid-2004. Mr. Annan urged the inquiry toward a quick (two to
three months) effort to see first if any UN staff were involved. The group
reportedly had problems receiving subpoena power, and encountered
budgetary and staffing start-up problems. It did produce two interim
reports in early 2005 on UN staff involvement, after which Mr. Annan
promptly pronounced himself "exonerated" (and some inquiry group members
strongly disagreed). The overall inquiry then dragged on
well into the summer of 2005.
IO Watch wonders if the
UN's own inquiry is indeed not an independent one, nor one that is
receiving full UN cooperation. As all UN
managers "investigating" in their own units know, he who sets the scope,
the resources, and the terms of reference (and who intimidates
whistle-blowers) largely shapes the entire investigation inquiry (and then
has the decision-making power to accept, reject, or modify whatever
recommendations are made.) IO Watch believes that
the UN Secretariat's present permissive process of unchecked manager
investigations of their own programmes (or worse, managers investigating their
subordinates) is extremely unfortunate and highly
improper. Now half-a-dozen years old, it only reinforces the vast
management impunity which "empowered" UN managers already enjoy,
particularly in the fundamental absence of Secretariat-wide accountability
mechanisms and sanctions. The 1993-1994 reforms intended to hold UN managers
(the "power figures") accountable, particularly through a new system of
professional internal investigations, has thus been transmuted by the
Secretariat into, inter alia, a process for
managers to hold their staff accountable (and investigate them) in a very
aggressive and unfettered one-way process. Unfortunately, the General Assembly gave its "seal of
approval" to this manager/investigator process in a resolution in April
2005. It
decided that OIOS may entrust "trained programme managers" to conduct
investigations in its behalf. The Assembly requested the
Secretary-General to provide more investigation "training" for handling
misconduct matters, and to develop written procedures for proper conduct
of investigations (both to be done now, but only after almost a decade of
manager/investigator activity). The Assembly also went so far as to
identify sexual harassment as a serious ("Category I") matter, but to then
note that OHRM and programme managers may be "entrusted to conduct
investigations" in this area. "Report of the [OIOS] on strengthening the
investigation function in the United Nations: Note by the
Secretary-General", General Assembly resolution 59/287 of 13 April 2005, paras. 6-10. The amazing thing to IO Watch about this General
Assembly endorsement of manager/investigators is the history and context
of this activity from about 1997 to 2005, as follows. -- this archive's subsection on Unleashed Managers discusses seven
areas in which the Secretariat has aggressively expanded the powers and
impunity of its managers in the last decade, the most grievous of which,
during Mr. Paschke's era of "partnership" with managers, was turning them
into amateur investigators of their own operations and subordinates, a
task which they could fulfill, including even "seeking criminal
prosecutions", because they were already "familiar
with" such processes; -- the same subsection discusses the 2000 OIOS report
which emphasized that investigation is a "legal, analytical process
undertaken by specialized [and highly-skilled and specially-trained]
professionals", and which then observed that many non-OIOS people
(managers, boards of inquiry, disciplinary committees and the security
services) conducted investigations in the Secretariat, although none of them "had published, formal procedures"
for their activities. "Rules and procedures to be applied for the
investigation functions performed by the OIOS: Report of the
Secretary-General", UN document A/55/469 of 11 October
2000, "Summary", paras. 1-3, 20. -- After some observers expressed concern about this
amateur process in a very serious area, the OIOS reported again, in
February 2004 as discussed above, that a great deal of quasi-investigative
and quasi-judicial activity was indeed going on, and that: "Throughout the Organization, managers have
responsibility for responding to matters requiring investigations. This
practice poses questions for both the independence of management and the
integrity of the investigative process. While it is
not suggested that management should be precluded,
the situations
need to be clearly defined, kept within strict but reasonable limits, be
subject to review and oversight and be guided by the Uniform
Guidelines." "Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on strengthening the investigation functions in the United Nations: Note by the Secretary-General", UN document A/58/708 of 10 February 2004, para. 23 [emphasis added.] -- In 2004 and 2005, as discussed
under The UN Old Boys' Last
Hurrah? and in Other Major Problems, there have since
been many disturbing revelations of mismanagement and abuse in the Iraq
oil-for-food programme, security mismanagement, refugee abuse, and other
grave problems. -- In June 2004 the UN Board of Auditors severely
criticized the lack of fraud awareness, prevention plans, policies, and
mechanisms throughout the UN Secretariat, and recommended comprehensive
and decisive corrective action, which the Secretariat airily brushed aside
as a serious problem (see the subsection on A real UN fraud prevention
programme). -- In May 2005 the Secretariat finally issued a
dramatic mea culpa in its 2005 Reform
Programme, which made no mention of the Secretariat manager/investigators,
but stated that: "Perhaps the most obvious shortcomings identified by
the Volcker Inquiry and other crises are in the area of
oversight and accountability. The current 'control' systems for
monitoring management performance and preventing fraud and corruption are
insufficient and must be significantly enhanced." "Frιchette unveils UN reforms responding to Volcker
panel's criticisms", UN News Service, 17 May 2005.
The General Assembly resolution of April 2005 on OIOS
itself stated that "
independent investigation is in the best
interests of the Organization;
Re-emphasizes the principle of separation,
impartiality and fairness on the part of those with responsibility for
investigation functions;
"Report of the [OIOS] on strengthening the
investigation function in the United Nations: Note by the
Secretary-General", General Assembly resolution 59/287 of 13 April 2005, preambular paras. 4-5. Yet the Assembly allows the Secretariat, in the midst
of mismanagement crises and criticisms, to determine that "trained"
managers are free to make investigations, like Peter Sellers' Inspector
Clouseau. First, any "training" can never be more than minimal relative to
such a serious task as investigation, and clear policies and guidelines
are still not established despite years of talk about their importance.
Second, while good managers are busy with their own
work and will turn the work over to OIOS professionals (if OIOS is
sufficiently staffed, which does not now seem true), meddling and abusive
managers will be only too glad to bully and intimidate their subordinates
with this powerful punitive tool. (If this statement seems excessive in
its concern with the impact of bad managers, please see a full discussion
of these problems over the past 60 years in the archive subsections on Unleashed Managers, Staff Self-Defense, and Behind the Scenes.) Third, the dangers that such manager/investigators
will contaminate the investigations process with shabby work, insert their
own biases and objectives (no "fairness"), head off serious investigations
in their units by making preemptive "investigations" of their own,
undermine staff morale, and most certainly raise doubts about their
objectivity, are very large, and immensely counter-productive. And fourth, Secretariat managers have often been
cited for their foot-dragging on management accountability and programme
evaluation matters over the past few decades, arguing that they are too
busy managing to assess their performance and learn how to manage better.
(Their ongoing resistance to accountability and evaluation reform
requirements is discussed in this archive's subsection on Non-implementation of the
resolution for management
accountability of 1993.) Yet they do seem quite enthusiastic about
interrupting their busy managerial schedules for extra investigation work
to hold their subordinates accountable, up to and including possible
criminal charges (see below). IO Watch must also note that the lead
"manager/investigator", Secretary-General Annan, who has arranged many
"independent" investigations over the past decade, has now set as his
ultimate investigation target the OIOS itself. The May 2005
management reform document states that: "In November 2004, the Secretary-General recommended
to the General Assembly that the [OIOS] undergo a comprehensive external
review to strengthen its independence and authority while ensuring it is
fully equipped
to carry out all aspects of its work.
In
addition, the General Assembly has asked the Secretary-General to report
on how to guarantee the full operational independence of OIOS at the
upcoming session this fall [of 2005]. Status: The Secretary-General's recommendation is
currently before the General Assembly
[and preparation of his report is
underway.]" "UN management reforms 2005: Management reform
measures to strengthen accountability, ethical conduct and management
performance", May 17, 2005, p. 3, available at
www.un.org/reform/reform_update.html.
Four authoritative sources argue against this
dangerous "manager/investigator" process in the UN. They come
from the UN Board of Auditors (the only
effective and professional oversight body in the UN); the OECD's
examination of public sector accountability; the UN's own advice for
multinational corporations associated with Mr. Annan's "Global Compact" of
good organizational behaviour; and the United Nations Charter. "Integrity, objectivity, and independence The External Auditor should be straightforward and
honest in performing professional work.
The External Auditor should
be independent in fact and appearance.
Professional Competence and Due Care The External Auditor in agreeing to provide
professional services implies that there is a level of competence necessary to perform
professional services
and that the knowledge, skill, and experience of the External Auditor will
be applied with reasonable care and diligence. Auditors should therefore refrain from performing any
services, which they are not competent to carry out unless
advice and assistance is obtained to ensure that the services are
performed satisfactorily. The External Auditor should perform professional services with due care, competence, and diligence and has a continuing duty to maintain professional knowledge and skill at a required level to ensure that the audited entity receives the advantage of competent professional service based on up-to-date developments in practice, legislation, and techniques." on Standards".]
"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]
"[A UN senior spokesman]
said companies participate in the Global Compact by making
a commitment to observe a series of general principles on
human rights, labor relations and environmental protection, and to engage
in open dialogue on how they were doing so. Once their chosen methods of carrying out those
guidelines are posted on the Internet, they 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]
"Article 100.
2. Each Member of the United Nations
undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the
responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to
influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities. Article 101. 1. The staff shall be appointed by the
Secretary-General under regulations established by the General Assembly.
3. The paramount consideration
in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the
conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency,
competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the
importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as
possible." Charter of the United Nations, 1945, Articles 100 and 101.
[emphasis added]
The fundamental question raised by all of the above,
very troubling, issues, is How cculd the United Nations Secretariat (with
General Assembly approval) get so far off track in an area where the
fundamental UN Charter principles of competence and integrity are of such
central concern? In summary, IO Watch believes that five final quotes
highlight the pivotal events or circumstances in the entrenched, and
defective, UN Secretariat management culture which permitted this
situation to emerge: 1. The enthusiasm of the first
diplomat/inspector, Mr. Paschke, for partnership with Secretariat managers
rather than an arms-length oversight relationship, led quickly to their
participation in the new investigations function,even for the most serious
matters. "It is
my observation that the [Investigations Section] is
increasingly seized with more and more complex
investigation matters, many of which are raised with us by programme
managers
This year
major commitments to investigate [criminal cases]
were made by the Governments of Kenya and Switzerland. There is also
substantive and consistent commitment to such cases by the concerned
programme managers in
Geneva and Nairobi.
These
decisions by programme managers to seek criminal prosecutions,
in order to send a message that criminal conduct can result in criminal
prosecution
represent hard evidence of the realization of the
Secretary-General's determination to increase accountability as part of
his reform programme. " "Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of
the OIOS", A/53/428, 23 September 1998, Preface, p.
5, last para.,
and para. 121.
2. The basis of the manager/investigator
concept in the UN fascination has been the long-standing view that
Ambassadors are wise men who can do anything, leading to a fundamental
(and destructive) Secretariat emphasis on selecting generalists, not
professionals, for leadership and managerial posts: "A distinguished professor of international law once
deplored the fact that 'the League of Nations has been abandoned to the
diplomats', but the UN Secretariat is much more dependent on the national
diplomatic bureaucracies. They derive invaluable flexibility and
power from having additional posts at their disposal
to confer favors but also to displace unwanted staff.
the incentives are all the greater because many UN posts, especially the
senior ones, are much sought after because of the [high] scales of pay
and the prestige they carry. A diplomatic ideology has even developed at the UN,
[that] there is no higher
dignity than that of Ambassador, holders of this title being by definition
capable of taking up any high-ranking post, even in a technical
field.
This naturally generates a bias in favor of 'generalists' at the
expense of other professionals." Maurice Bertrand, "The recruitment policy of United Nations staff", in de Cooker, Chris, ed., International Administration: Law and Management Practice in International Organisations, UNITAR, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, the Netherlands, 1989, II.2/1-9, pp. II/2 and /3. [Note: Mr. Bertrand served as an Inspector in the UN Joint Inspection Unit from 1968-1985.]
3. The very casual approach by the Secretariat (and the
General Assembly) to some "training", when even a casual examination of
the work of the global organization that certifies, supports, and promotes
fraud investigation shows the tremendous amount of basic education,
training, and steadily updated retraining, that such work requires.
The website of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) is
found at www.cfenet.com/home.asp
and the demanding regime required to "become a CFE" is laid out there in
detail. [Note: In this area, it would be interesting to know how many of the OIOS professional investigators are among the some 34,000 ACFE members or the 16,000 of them who are professionally certified, and whether the consultant Mr. Annan chose to advise on for Secretariat whistle-blower enhancement was an ACFE member, particularly since ACFE has an excellent Ethics Hotline, which the UN could use instead of its present OIOS "fig-leaf" mechanism or the "many reporting sources" approaches now being advocated -- see the following subsection on Suppressed Whistleblowers .] 4. Mr. Annan made a pivotal pronouncement
in 1995, as a past head of personnel and the then-head of UN peacekeeping,
that the days of "gifted amateurism" in the Secretariat were past, leading
to his major reform drive as Secretary-General (see the archive subsection
on "The Winner:
Free the Managers". In fact, the
mismanagement crises and resulting reform announcements of May 2005 make
it abundantly clear that the old amateurs were not gifted, and that
"modernists" are only expected to appear in merit-based Secretariat
leadership selection processes of the future. "Inspectors score U.N. staff recruitment procedures",
Diplomatic World Bulletin, March 20-27, 1995, p. 1. 5. The General Assembly's trusting, timid,
tired, and not even well-formulated reminder to Mr. Annan in April 2005 to
-- oh, by the way -- protect whistle-blowers, shows a basic unawareness of
the "behind the scenes" Secretariat reality that such
protection has been almost non-existent in the UN Secretariat over the
past decade, as the staff clearly recognized in the Integrity Survey (and
see the next section on Suppressed
Whistleblowers.) "The General Assembly,
15. Requests the Secretary to ensure that
an appropriate mechanism is in place to protect staff members who report
misconduct within the Secretariat against retaliation." "Report of the [OIOS] on strengthening the
investigation function in the United Nations, General Assembly resolution
59/287 of 13 April 2005.
In view of all these essential factors, IO Watch
believes that the severe pollution of internal investigation work in the
UN Secretariat must be stopped. The solution is not another
"independent investigation" arranged by Secretary-General Annan (which
could preclude any other action as the Volcker Inquiry did for more than a
year, and which he makes as a 'lame-duck" Secretary-General). Instead, the
UN should act decisively and directly to correct the newly-admitted
"obvious shortcomings in oversight and accountability" through the
combination of A real UN fraud prevention
programme, an External experts oversight
review, and a General Assembly audit
subcommittee. These important
steps are discussed under the Answers: A Starting Point subsection
of this archive. |
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