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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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Any
governmental organization at any level should provide the public with
straight-forward and comprehensive information on the resources it was
given and how they were allocated and used. In the UN, however, this has
always been very difficult.
However, the UN's handling of its funds and reporting thereon has
always been rather disorderly, and extremely nontransparent. Finding out what is really going
on has always been quite difficult, whether it concerns financial
resources, staffing, or fund raising. On FINANCES, as
Shirley Hazzard noted in 1987: "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.
Sixteen years later,
little had changed. She examined the situation again and found
that: “Press reports concerning the
United Nations’ ‘regular budget’ refer mainly to funds committed for
administrative needs, and exclude the far greater operational costs of the
U.N. System. The annual over-all budget of the U.N., has, of recent years,
been informally estimated at six billion dollars. However, I find it
impossible to establish a reliable yearly total for the U.N.’s attestable
over-all expenditures, which appear to be vastly in excess of that sum.
The organization informs me that no comprehensive figure can be provided.
And piecemeal calculation cannot hope to include the costs of every
affiliate, subsidiary, and ad-hoc undertaking of the U.N. system. …
.
It is my impression that no one knows
even the approximate cost, to world citizenry, of the United Nations
enterprise. in June of 1979, [an article by
Ronald Kessler, in the Washington Post] dealing with the
U.N.’s finances brought denunciation from both the United Nations arid the
U.S. State Department, [The latter] ,,,. conceded that the Post’s
figures were accurate, but claimed, according to the
Post,
that the intricate
nature of the United Nation’s system … cumbersome administrative
structure, … jealously guarded in [many agencies,] … precluded assessment by
outsiders.’ Shirley Hazzard, on a 1979 attempt to track UN finances, and her
own inability to do so 12 years later, in “Breaking Faith I”, The New
Yorker, September 25, 1989, pp. 63-99, [89].
[emphasis added.]
A 1986 assessment of
UN financial decision-making by Frederick Lister outlined the unique,
complex, and tortured nature of basic UN financing processes:
" In drawing up [budgets] … , the
Secretary-General must calculate the costs involved in carrying out the
many activities that the U.N.'s intergovernmental bodies have
approved. At the same time,
he tries to ensure that the total budget does not exceed what member
states, and particularly the main contributors, are prepared to pay. … it
is not easy to find a generally acceptable balance
… [In addition] … the regular
budget controls only a fraction of the total [UN] expenditures. As much as 70 percent of the U.N.'s
outlays are funded by other means … the various peacekeeping forces … most
of the humanitarian and development activities … and the main voluntary
funds … Finally, … the power to initiate and in
effect authorize program activities is shared among [many]
intergovernmental organs.
… … Since all the many [approved]
activities cannot be adequately carried out … there is a good deal of
uncertainty as to which of them will in fact be pursued and with what
degree of due diligence. The latitude that this leaves to lower-level
intergovernmental organs and to Secretariat officials may have certain
advantages, but it increases the difficulty of setting central priorities
and of allocating limited financial resources in a rational way. This great dispersion of
programming power prevents the Assembly from taking full charge … a
situation that concerns (or
should concern) all the U.N.'s members, whether big or small." Frederick K. Lister, , Fairness and accountability in U.N. financial decision-making, United Nations Management and Decision-Making Project UNA-USA, by the United Nations Association of the United States of America, New York, 1986, pp. 13-16, 22-24.. [emphasis added.] A 1987 US analysis
noted the burgeoning growth of the UN Secretariat over the
years: "The call for U.N.
reform U. S. taxpayers always have borne
the lion's share of the U.N.'s assessed and voluntary contributions,
pouring more than $15 billion into the organization since the first
General Assembly in 1946.
Then, the U.N. staff numbered 1,500; last year it was over
11,000. Meanwhile,
the budget of the entire U.N. system has grown five times faster than the
inflation rate. There seems to be a near
consensus within the U.N. that management has not kept pace with this
dizzying growth. Throughout
almost every level of the U.N.,
financial, administrative, and personnel controls have been either
nonexistent or broken. … Congress and the Administration
should insist that the Secretary-General become more involved in the
U.N.'s financial management.
His aloofness thus far, compounded by the various U.N. bodies'
inability to take reform seriously, casts a pall over the promise of U.N.
reform. …." "The
United Nations continues to duck needed reforms", The Heritage Foundation,
Backgrounder, No. 593, Washington, D.C., July 9, l987, pp. 2,
8.
Pressured by the
General Assembly for better control of resources and particularly to deal
with "management irregularities," the Secretary-General solemnly informed
the General Assembly in 1992 that: The Secretary-General
attaches great importance to his fiduciary responsibility vis-à-vis Member
States for the prudent management of resources entrusted to the
Organization.
Care is taken to ensure that
these resources are utilized for the purposes for which they were
provided, that they are spent with all due regard for economy and that
there is accountability at all stages for their use." "Measures to facilitate reporting by staff
members of inappropriate uses of the resources of the organization: …. :
Report of the Secretary-General", UN document A/47/510 of October 8,
1992, paras. 9-14.
[emphasis added]
However, the 1993
Thornburgh report found quite a different, and much less reassuring
picture. He stressed that the
chaotic status of financial and programme decision-making and budgetary controls had expanded
and worsened under the pressure of new, major peacekeeping
missions:
"The current [UN] budgeting process [is] … almost surreal. It is overly complicated … A great
detail of effort, for example, is extended to ensure that the Secretariat
carries out … [General Assembly] priorities." [In fact,] these 'priorities' are
constantly skewed and distorted by activities and expenditures by United
Nations entities outside the Secretariat. … some 70 percent of the
Organization's … social and economic development expenditures, for
example, are made without …
the intricate [regular]
budgetary processes … Ironically, the … problems … in
the regular budgeting process are nearly reversed in the peacekeeping area
which now well exceeds the regular budget. … Peacekeeping funding is
still much like a financial 'bungee jump', often undertaken
strictly in blind faith that timely appropriations will be
forthcoming. The irony is
that far more vast and costly operations are undertaken and
appropriated for in the peacekeeping area on a more or less ad hoc
basis, than those pursued in such meticulous detail in the regular
budget process. The answer, it seems to me, is …
far less scrutiny of the minutae of the regular budget and for more
attention to the … process utilized in financing peacekeeping
budgets." Dick Thornburgh, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, "Report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations" ["The Thornburgh report"], 1 March 1993, pp. 15, 17-18. [emphasis added.] Erskine Childers and
Brian Urquhart had noted in a 1994 report on UN renewal
that: "The financing and management of
the United Nations have been under evaluation and reform of one kind or
another for most of its life.
Member-governments have initiated eight, and Secretaries-General
three of eleven major exercises at scarcely five-year intervals [1955,
1961, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1983, 1985-1987, 1992-
]. Most of these exercises took place
in the midst of financial crises … The effect of all this has been
seriously to debase the coinage of UN management reform rather than to
address the UN system's real problems in this area. The UN remains in deep financial
crisis. It certainly also
needs improved management." Erskine Childers with Brian
Urquhart, "Renewing the United Nations System", Development
Dialogue, 1994:1, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden,
1994, p. 142.
In 1995 the JIU
compiled one of the rare looks at the overall total funding of the UN and
the UN system. For the year
1993, the UN system resources totaled about $12.8 billion, of which $9.9
billion was spent by the "UN."
This in turn broke down to $4.7 billion for the UN Secretariat --
$1.0 billion for approved regular budgets, about $0.7 billion from
voluntary contributions, and $3.0 billion for peacekeeping. The UN semi-autonomous,
voluntary-funded programmes also had substantial expenditures totaling
some $5.2 billion, which included $1.5 billion for WFP, $1.3 billion for
UNHCR, $1 billion for UNICEF, and $0,9 billion for UNDP. The specialized agencies of the UN
system added about $2.9 billion more. These are not trivial
sums. Joint Inspection Unit,
"Accountability, management improvement, and oversight in the United
Nations System", Part II, UN
document A/50/503, 1995 , Table I. "Total financial and staff
resources of the organizations".
[Note: the above acronyms
are explained in the introductory section of UN Management
Accountability Struggles
. Also, information on UN
finances and financial management problems can be found in several
sections under UN management system reform
attempts in this archive, and somewhat-updated
total information is noted further in the later subsection on the "Poor little UN"
. A very technical and lengthy
report which does not add up the numbers for the UN system
has been published biennially since 1991. It is "Budgetary and financial
situation of organizations of the United Nations system: Note by the
Secretary-General …",
UN document A/57/265 of 25 July 2002.]
The financial crises
referred to above were particularly severe in the mid-1990s. A 1995 article presented a chart
which summarized efforts of a new very experienced financial manager who
was trying to "impose fiscal sanity on an organization tottering on the
brink of insolvency", thanks to the refusal of member countries, and
especially the United States to pay their dues. A chart summarized the elements of
the UN's "Midlife
Crisis: ?
No
liquidity The organization suffers from a
chronic shortage of cash. A $250 million reserve fund was cleaned out long
ago. ?
Inability to raise capital
The U.N. lacks standing in the financial markets. The World Bank says it cannot lend
to the U.N. ?
Unpredictable cash flow A majority of the 185
member states have stopped paying their dues on
time. ?
No
write-off of bad debt The biggest member,
the United States, owes more than $1 billion and will not
pay. ?
Declining revenue Smaller
peace-keeping assessments cannot cover unpaid expenses or reimbursements
to countries that contribute troops. ?
Lack
of financial management expertise The U.N. does not have
an executive training program.
Hiring and promotions are sometimes guided by politics instead of
management skills." Christopher S. Wren, "The U.N.'s master juggler: An accountant copes with deadbeats and bad debt," New York Times, December 8, 1995.
During the 1990s the
Board of Auditors, the General Assembly, the JIU, the ACABQ and others
expressed much continuing concern at the lack of financial management
skills, weak internal controls, and problems with numerous trust funds
which many managers scarcely knew how to control. A JIU report in 1995
concluded that: "The area in which
the most work remains to be done is financial management. In two 1994 reports Member
States and an intergovernmental working group stressed the need to improve
and strengthen United Nations financial administration and disciplinary
rules, procedures, and measures." Joint Inspection Unit,
"Management in the United Nations: Work in progress", UN document A/50/507, 1995, para. 65 (d).
Since that time, the
financial crisis has abated, and financial management systems appear to
have been strengthened, but the lack of clear information on overall
resources and their use seems to continue, and reforms are still needed.
Secretary-General Annan admitted in 2002 that some of the major problems
cited above continue, stating that: "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 9 September 2002, "Summary, section V." [emphasis added.] A very unique UN
funding source must also be mentioned. In 1997 the US media executive, Ted
Turner, made a $1 billion pledge to the UN through his United Nations
Foundation, spread over 10 years.
(He also made a one-time $34
million gift in 2000 to facilitate a deal whereby other countries
would increase their required UN contributions while the United States
reduced its share.) The funding has slowed as Mr. Turner's fortune
encountered difficulties, but the UN Foundation still picks out projects
annually after UN consultations.
Mr. Turner later added $250 million to finance arms control work,
and other individuals have contributed lesser amounts to other
organizations (for instance, Elton John to WHO). But it is awkward that
there is no UN Member State called "Ted Turner", since it seems that he
pays more each year than about 170 UN Member States (and more than all the
less-developed countries combined).
Serious technical and legal questions have also been raised about
private funding of the UN programmes involved, including the choice of
projects financed, the Turner Foundation's policy influence, and
prohibitions on individuals paying national dues to the
UN. "First round of Turner's billion dollar gifts", Secretariat News (New York), April-May 1998, pp. 8-9, "More Turner grants imminent", Secretariat News (New York), June-July 1998, p. 9, Cliff Kincaid, "Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation: Making the UN a pawn for tax-exempt special interests", Foundation Watch, March 1999, Barbara Crossette and Christopher S. Wren, "UN members close to accord that would trim U.S. dues", International Herald Tribune, December 21, 2000, Jonathan Peterson, "WTO seeks cash to educate members", Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2000, "Turner to bankroll arms control body", WP, International Herald Tribune, January 8, 2001, and Julia
Preston, "Despite plunging fortunes, Ted Turner says he'll honor UN gift",
International Herald Tribune, December 13, 2002.
On STAFFING, UN
processes and categories are almost as tortuous and complex as those for
finances. As noted
previously, the UN staff grew from 1,000 to 11,000 in the late 1980s, and
then to more than 35,000 now as field operations have grown so
tremendously. Most of them
are extrabudgetary. The JIU did an extensive report on problems and lack
of controls in this area in 1990, and the OIOS confirmed continuing
problems in 1998, when it found that: "extra budgetary posts have become
an institutionalized part of [the UN's] core resource base. … existing
guiding policies for [these] posts were ill-defined and [their]
implementation was inconsistent.
The audit also highlighted … frequent contract renewals, which were
… administratively costly … The report recommended [many
improvement measures for extra budgetary posts and policies.]
… OIOS also conducted an audit of
the use of consultants … During 1996, the Organization employed some 2,675
consultants at a cost of $19.4 million. The audit found
[deficiencies and inconsistencies in this field as
well.] "Report of the Secretary-General on
the activities of the OIOS", UN document A/53/428, 1998, paras.
79-81. [Note: current staff figures are in "Composition
of the Secretariat: Report by the Secretary-General", UN document
A/59/299 of 26 August 2004, and are discussed further in a
later section on "Poor little UN" .] These very large
staff, temporary assistance, and consultant numbers are complicated
further by UN contractual arrangements (which are now entering a major
phase of further change). A "100 series" of staff is appointed by the
Secretary-General, in two broad classes: "permanent" contracts and
fixed-term contracts. A "200
series" applies to project personnel, and a "300 series" of appointments
for limited duration for field missions and other assignments of up to 3-4
years was added in 1994.
"Appointments of limited duration", UN document ST/AI/395 of 2 June 1994.
Three special
categories with mysterious and vague elements of their own must be noted
(and rather conspicuous "double-dipper" employment of sometimes quite aged
retirees could be another), although they only occasionally bob to the
surface of public notice.
First, as noted in 1992 and probably not much different
now: "The most egregious example
of organizational bloat [in the United Nations system] is the one closest
to home for Mr. Butros-Ghali: the U.N. Secretariat. …. the top echelon of
the Secretariat originally consisted of eight assistant
secretaries. Now it has 20
assistant secretaries, a new super-layer of 27 under secretaries and a
director-general -- plus 21 more top-level officers
who are not on the regular budget, for a total of
69. Reformers urge clearing out the
deadwood and bringing in officials chosen on merit who can provide the
Secretary-General with background reports, analyses of complex situations,
options for decisions and ideas for future
missions." Bonnie
Angelo, "United Nations: Challenges for the new boss," Time,
February 3, 1992, pp. 40-41 [41].
Second, as the
UN's field programmes for humanitarian, peacekeeping, and other missions
expanded so rapidly, a better individual division of labour was essential.
In addition to the above staff complexities, the UN has therefore done a
quite considerable amount of "subcontracting" of tasks to NGOs and
others. This important
development was analysed in considerable detail in a 1998
book. Thomas G. Weiss, ed.,
Beyond UN subcontracting: Task-sharing with regional security
arrangements and service-providing NGOs, St. Martins, New York,
1998.
Third,
a 1999 article provided a rare look at a large, and certainly the most
hidden and mistreated, category of UN employees -- those who may work for
years for the Organization under a series of precarious temporary
contracts. Their number was
estimated at 30 percent of UN staff in Geneva, and similar or larger
percentages in other UN and UN system organizations. Such staff have no health insurance
nor pensions, and are stuck at the base of the UN salary scales. Worst of
all, they have a very precarious existence where the smallest mistake, or
misstep, or abusive manager, can end their UN "careers" from one day to
the next, without even the faulty and slow recourse and appeals that "regular" UN
staff have.
Andre Allemand, "Quatre
fonctionnaires sur dix seraient des travailleurs sans droits: Terrifiés à
l'idée de perdre leur travail, les temporaires courbent l'échine",
Tribune de Genève, 20 décembre 1999, p. 26.
As if all the above
was not complex enough, the biggest changes may be yet to come. In the
ambitious attempts to establish a grand global mobility programme for UN
staff, the Secretariat stumbled over all the mixed contractual types. As a result, and to become more
flexible, the Secretary-General proposed in 2000 to abolish permanent
staff contracts (which comprised less than 50 percent of total serving UN
staff). The staff and some
Member States objected, believing that this would undermine the
international civil service.
The Secretary-General disagreed, but did agree to seek further
views on this issue. Mr. Annan made new
proposals in 2000 to meet fluctuating field workloads in the future. They would provide only three
types of contracts for UN staff worldwide: short-term, up to six months;
fixed-term, with extensions of up to a maximum five years; and continuing
open-ended contracts for those providing competent and satisfactory
service, and providing separation benefits at the end of
service. "Human resources management reform: Report of the Secretary-General", UN document A/55/253 of 1 August 2000, paras. 45-50, and Annex IV.
IO Watch will continue
to try to explore and decipher more of the shuffling, and especially the
abuses and problems of UN staff in lesser employment categories and
status. The General Assembly
seems to be on the same track of discovery. In May 2003, it called on the
Secretary-General to explain at least part of the long-standing and
important (and often abused, as noted above, because of their precarious
status) category of temporary staff: "[The General Assembly] requests
the Secretary-General to report on the function, relevant operational
factors and incidence of temporary staff appointed at the Professional
level or above for less than one year under the 100 series of the Staff
Rules of the United Nations, and the implications for substantive
appointments to the Secretariat." "Human
resources management", General Assembly resolution 57/305 of 1 May
2003.
On FUND
RAISING, the third and final piece of the UN resources puzzle, the
voluntary-funded and extra-budgetary programmes of the UN Secretariat and
its various semi-autonomous programmes now dominate UN financing. The sums
again are huge: for 2003, for instance, the consolidated UN annual fund
appeal sought $3 or perhaps $4 billion to aid areas ravaged by war and
other crises. That target was also set in 2004, although Mr. Annan noted
that only 66 percent of the 2003 amount had been received, and was very
unevenly distributed among the amounts requested for various target
areas. Irwin Arieff, "UN seeks $3 billion to aid 50 million in crisis", Reuters, November 19, 2002, and "Annan
launches UN's 2004 humanitarian appeal for $3 billion", UN News Center,
19 November 2003.
Yet this annual
consolidated appeal is only the biggest of many spigots, as seemingly
continuous fund donations are sought from many UN sources for many worthy
causes on many occasions.
The
UN is thus, in many ways, a gigantic money-seeking machine, always
pleading for more multi-billion dollar inputs. Crudely but accurately, insiders
have long observed that most UN debates are in fact about money, with
developing countries saying "More!" and developed countries saying "only a
little!"
Unfortunately,
there is a severe lack of information on outputs -- how all this
money is actually spent (and indeed even on how much money is raised in
total from all the spigots.) The UN is engaged in a never-ending search to
generate funds to "administer",
competing with the far greater flows of billions of dollars
transferred worldwide each year through other channels -- trade and investment, bilateral
aid programmes, or billions more in people-to-people transfers
through NGOs, foundations, or
even family remittances sent home by expatriates. The above summary on
UN resource ambiguities is a jumble, but that is because historical and
factual material on UN finances, staffing, and fund raising over the
decades is itself a jumble,
and because the UN seldom if ever lets the totals, and the uses, be
known. An organization that
spends between $6 to $10 billion a year should never operate in this
way. For that reason, IO
Watch will return in subsequent subsections to the very misleading plaints
at its impoverishment in a subsection on "Poor little UN"
under Other Major Problems
, and on Annual status reporting to the General
Assembly under Answers: A Starting
point , a reform which could put
an end to this resources "shell game" through clear and transparent annual
reporting.
As Anne Applebaum
observed in 1994, ending with a very legitimate question that is still
unanswered: "Not
long ago, an editor at the New York Times told me that he was uninterested
in stories critical of the UN, because the UN is a 'necessary failure' and
always would be. But why does
it have to be so? Why do we
need to continue supporting the UN's more wasteful projects? There is nothing inherently good
or moral about an institution, merely because it is multilateral, merely
because most countries in the world belong to it, or because it claims to
be interested in Children or Health.
Why is there never any examination of how the agencies
spend their
money?" |
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