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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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Another UN scandal is a very brief and simple one, but a major problem
nonetheless because it is a "con game" that UN publicists have been
playing, and getting away with, for many years. As Shirley Hazzard noted three
decades ago: "The myth that the annual United
Nations budget runs around $200 million was circulated for so long that
even UN leaders appeared to believe it. Declaring the United Nations' cost
to be 'less than that of the Fire Department of New York City,' Kurt
Waldheim echoed, in 1972, the UN's favorite, and unfounded, slogan. A
recent schizophrenic UN press release [containing that figure]
[later
remarks that] 'Member States are contributing about $870 million a year to
the United Nations system
References to waste
are cheerful
-- 'I'd be satisfied,' one official declares, 'if what we're doing is
fifty per cent effective.' Achievements are cited, and re-cited, with
triumph and even with wonder -- as if an organization that has, over
nearly three decades, employed tens of thousands of persons at a cost of
tens of billions of dollars could scarcely have been expected to have much
to show. In some United
Nations operations the effort to augment funds has consistently taken
precedence over the need to develop quality. An attempt at public discussion of
United Nations financing will bring the Pavlovian and often belligerent
reply 'Only a fraction of what nations spend on armaments'
" Shirley
Hazzard, Defeat of an ideal: A study of the self-destruction of the United
Nations,
Macmillan, London, 1973, pp. 118-120.
Of course, as the
tremendous expansion of UN field programmes has occurred during the past
decade or two, the numbers have had to go up. But the pattern is still the same,
that of a "poor little UN", as stated, for example, in a September 2003 on
UN struggles and Secretary-General Annan's search for radical
reform: "The United Nations, with a $1.2
billion budget
supports more than 9,000 employees worldwide and dozens
of peacekeeping and relief missions." Felicity Barringer, "Outlook for UN: Radical overhaul",
International Herald Tribune, September 22, 2003.
In fact, the most
recent annual report on UN staffing states clearly that the total UN staff
is more than four times the 9,000 figure given
above: "As of 30 June 2004, the
total number of staff of the UN Secretariat and special status
units]
holding appointments of one year of more amounted
to 37,598. Of that
total, 14,823 paid from various sources of funding are assigned to
the Secretariat and 22,375 are assigned to other entities of the
United Nations." "Composition of the Secretariat: Report of the Secretary-General",
UN document A/59/299 of 26 August 2004, para. 11. [emphasis added] The figure of 9,000
staff that was cited is thus based on the total regular budget posts of
8,799 [15 percent of which are stated to be vacant, by the way], and omits
the some 22,000 staff assigned to "other entities", as well as about 6,000
more staff in the Secretariat who are paid from non-budget funding
sources.
There is still one
more major staffing category ignored, which the alert reader may already
have spotted. The 37,705
total represents only staff "with appointments of one year or more",
thereby ignoring several thousand temporary and short-term staff. Thus, the UN staff total amounts to
40,000 or more, not the 9,000 cited. The financial figure
cited in the September 2003 article, $1.2 billion, is even more
misleading. Again, it also
represents only the (annual share of the biennial) UN budget. As discussed under Resource ambiguities
in the preceding section on The
UN, Alone and UNaccountable ,
the financial totals are very vague, fluctuating, and hard to obtain. There is a useful
source for overall UN financing by year for recent years, but it is found
not at the UN or in its public reports but in work performed by the
Global Policy Forum , an NGO which monitors UN policy making,
promotes accountability, educates, and advocates on international peace
and justice issues. It has developed extensive material on the UN
financial crisis, and prepares charts which show total UN system
expenditures from 1986-2004, which have ranged from as low as $9.3 billion
a year to as high as $13.4 billion (with the UN share of this total
ranging from about $6.4
billion up to $10.5 billion
per year.) "Total UN system expenditures: 1986-2004", compiled by Klaus Hόfner, March 2004, Global Policy Forum , at www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/tabsyst.htm .
There are two problems
with this data, neither one of which is the fault of the Global Policy
Forum. First, the UN is
running two years behind with annual information on its largest category
of funding -- voluntary contributions expenditures: the last information
provided was for 2001.
Second, one must wonder about the management accountability and
internal systems of a major worldwide organization like the UN, which has
$6 to $10 billion of annual expenditures and 35,000 - 40,000 employees,
but leaves it to an NGO to figure out how much it spends annually. (This
type of situation leads to the troubling query in the preceding subsection
on Is the UN another
Enron? ) This "poor little UN"
syndrome has created four very negative elements, which have been applied
for years but need to be reversed with a policy of much greater openness
and accountability: -- the impoverished
financial image leads UN leadership to be quite defensive about a lack of
funds to do anything meaningful, or to manage it carefully, as well
expressed in the quote from Shirley Hazzard above; -- focusing the total
resources images on the small headquarters meetings, research, and
administrative staff and funding, clearly misrepresents the dominant UN
staff and funds in the critical, dramatic, and very demanding field
programmes in crisis areas around the world; -- there is a
long-standing UN arrogance and eagerness (as the "800-pound gorilla" of
the UN system) to grab positive recognition from the specialized agencies
whenever possible, in a one-way relationship. When any of those those agencies
accomplish something that is high-priority and well done, as most recently
in the health area, the UN is right there to share or even claim major
"New York" credit, but when the agencies have problems or issues of their
own, the UN 'doesn't know them"; and -- finally, the assertion that the UN
could achieve much, much more, but only if it received some truly serious
resources, a claim which is cast further in doubt by the major problem
topic which follows on Grand lack of focus
.
There are many
unanswered questions about the size, shape, and above all the application
and results of the total UN resources above, and especially the dominant
but largely-ignored extra-budgetary "portions" of the UN staffing and
finance puzzles. They include
concern with sloppy and disconnected UN fund-raising and subsequent use;
temporary staffing issues and patterns; "in-kind" financing; unpaid staff
and services and support; the "Ted Turner" funding;
Mr. Annan's many special advisors and their roles; weak management of the
many diverse UN trust funds; sub-contracting costs and performance; and
other topics. To give only one
positive example of promising developments in international organizations'
financial accountability and transparency elsewhere, and to contrast it to
the continuing UN insistence on "give us the money", IO Watch offers the
two following quotes: "In the world of international
relief agencies, it's known as "the fog of disaster." Brought on by
calamities
Getting the necessary donations to
buy the right supplies and get them to rescuers on the scene can be a
bureaucratic nightmare. But
[the Red Cross (IFRC)] has
instituted a new web-based technology designed to cut through the
confusion and paperwork of a crisis. [It]
. can track donations of
money and supplies in real time
[and] allows aid groups to make an
instant and accurate accounting for every dollar a donor
gives. The software couldn't come at a
better time. According to the
World Disaster Report, 226 million people were hit by disasters in
2002. A study by the IFRC
shows that the software [can]
speed up the relief process by 20 to 30
percent." "Technology: Online relief," Newsweek International,
September 15, 2003.
"Japan, the second largest
financial contributor to the United Nations, plans to cut its support by
one-quarter in coming years
Japanese diplomats calculate that
Japan's gross domestic product is only 14.4 percent of the global
economy. But Japan pays 19.5
percent of the United Nations budget
By contrast, the United States
figures [are 30 percent of global GDP, but it pays only 22 percent
] 'Japan cannot just give sweet
faces to everybody," [said a spokesman.] Moving on programs with weak
constituencies, politicians have cut Japan's overall foreign aid budget
by 15.5 percent
"We should get a seat on the
Security Council
" said a spokesman. 'No taxation without
representation is the basic idea.' Japan's $1 billion slice of the
United Nation's [biennial] budget is more than the combined payments of
four out of five
permanent members of the Security Council: Britain,
China, France and Russia." One United Nations official
here who asked not to be identified said that cutting support would not help
, arguing
'If their quest is for the Security Council seat, it is not smart
politics. They are not
creating an image that Japan is a team
player.'" James Brooke, "Japan to cut its financial support to U.N.", New York Times, January 20, 2003. [emphasis added.]
IO Watch believes it is long past time for the UN -- with its 40,000-plus
staff and $6 to $10 billion operations each year -- to itself begin to
become "a team player" and to provide a clear and transparent report every
year to the General Assembly to detail and explain the vast total
resources it receives and how they were applied. This theme is returned to
under Answers: A Starting
Point in the topic on Annual status reporting to the General
Assembly (as well as the critical
parallel proposal for Annual results reporting to the General
Assembly .)
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