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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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Previous subsections of this concluding section of the IO Watch archive, on Recent Developments , have discussed major problems of the UN's attempt to be "the world organization" and map a future course for the international community: -- The discussion of An awesome
bottleneck surveyed the tremendous
roster of world problems clamoring for attention, and the inability of the
UN and its Member States, with their very cumbersome decision-making
machinery and "business as usual", to make sense of it all as the world
spins ever faster and faster; -- the Lack of a strategy
noted that the UN seeks a central role in almost everything, setting grand
goals but then struggling to come anywhere near fulfilling them,
particularly as new factors and concerns which the UN did not foresee
knock the existing agenda off the rails; -- Resource
ambiguities , as the UN focuses intensely on its regular
programme budget process, while spending about six times as much on its
tremendous range of high-pressure extra budgetary field programmes, with
very little control, oversight, and performance reporting;
and -- most of all, a Grand lack of focus
, as the UN is not content with all its peacekeeping, humanitarian,
negotiations, human rights, development, and other basic priorities and
life-and-death challenges.
Instead, it dives eagerly into a UN Global Compact with
multinational corporations, a grand Millenium Project for development
issues and more, a new global Convention Against Corruption. It has also attempted to enter
into, and/or direct, quite new fields such as global commerce, an
international tax organization, human cloning, control of the Internet,
and partnerships with "civil society". Meanwhile, it tries to somehow
find some time to deliberate on other "matters", such as biological
weapons, terrorism, and genocide. IO Watch believes that
this muddle does damage to the UN and to global governance. The more thinly the UN spreads
itself, the more shallow and confusing its decision-making becomes, and
the more it spreads its limited financial and human resources over all the
multiple issues outlined above. In fact, there have
been some useful attempts and suggestions to get the UN to better focus
its work, concentrate on what it does well, and also participate much more
meaningfully in attempting to foresee emerging global issues and
priorities. Almost two decades ago
Maurice Bertrand compared two efforts to prepare forward-looking
assessments of UN operations. He found that the "Group of 18"
deliberations of 1986 largely followed a fairly traditional UN "eminent
experts" pattern. A method of work was not clearly defined. The members were experts but in
other fields, and they were ambassadors more familiar with politics than
with budget and financial problems and UN programmes and machinery. The
"around the table" approach led to some 150 "ideas," often contradictory,
but nevertheless chosen as the basis for the report. The only area of
consensus was criticism of the Secretariat. With better organization of
work and more courage, new directions could have been identified, but this
was not possible.
In contrast, the work
of a Ford Foundation group in 1986-1987 relied on relevant in-depth
studies, several lengthy plenary meetings, and the work of
sub-panels. It went further
in the difficult tasks of reflecting on changes in the international
system, without supplying answers, but at least leading to three
fundamental conclusions: "
first
the solutions
being proposed for [global problems] were inadequate and had not
been elaborated by all those concerned
several matters of an
unquestionably global character -- such as
forecasting of future
problems -- were not being
dealt with by any world organization. Second, the work required
should be done on a permanent basis and [combine]
the research capacities
of all the world organizations. In an increasingly fast-changing
world the task of [assessing] risks should be the fundamental task of a
restructured and better-equipped system of organizations. This led to [the idea of] a
reflection and analysis group, consisting of independent and qualified
individuals, with an adequate interdisciplinary staff
third
"weighted voting" was not
the right solution
what was needed was not simply
a majority capable
of taking decisions but
a representative system of partners interested
in discussing matters together in order to arrive at a consensus
[the report recommended] a Ministerial Board,
in which the most
important states would have one seat each, while others would be grouped,
preferably on a regional basis, so as to have collective representation
"
Maurice
Bertrand, The third generation world
organization, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, the Netherlands,
1989, pp. 108-123. [Note:
the two reports referred to are the "Report of the group of high-level
intergovernmental experts to review the efficiency of the administrative
and financial functioning of the United Nations", General Assembly,
Official Records, forty-first session, Supplement No. 49 (A/41/49), United
Nations, New York, 1986,
and
United
Nations Management & Decision-Making Project UNA-USA, A successor
vision: The United Nations of tomorrow, United Nations Association of
the United States of America, Final Panel Report, New York, September
1987, and related reports.]
[emphasis added.] A second, more recent,
observation considered the sudden flood in recent years of senior
officials at top levels in the UN (and more recently of special advisers
and envoys), a process which continues today: "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]. [emphasis
added.] An article by Iqbal
Quadir in 2002 helps question and challenge the idea of the UN taking
the UN leadership role for the world in the 21st century. He
focused on the way in which modern information and communication
technologies (ICTs) are generating profound changes in advanced countries,
and can facilitate them in poor countries as well. He felt that the real bottleneck
blocking processes -- such as ICTs -- that may transform societies in
developing countries is the quality of general governance. He observed
that: "Despite an increase in
professional institutions and multilateral organizations promoting
international norms of behavior
Transparency International
[cites] 'a
worldwide crisis involving pervasive misuse of power by public officials.'
top-down state-led efforts
have, by and large, failed
[because they] all involved strengthening the
state, centralizing it, and making it immune to pressures from citizens
recognition of governance
problems [by the World Bank and the UN] may do little good
[without]
genuine dispersion of power.
Most interestingly, governments
may
[have to accept] ideas and concepts that
compete with the concept
of territory on which they place their strongest claims.
ICT's empower from below while
devolving power from above, resulting in a two-pronged attack on abuse of
state power that has left so much of the world's population languishing in
poverty.
What can be done to sustain
this trend?
Promote tailwinds to these technologically driven
processes that are empowering citizens
Empower commercial and social
entrepreneurs
ICT's can help people [to help others] directly, without
the need to have state-to-state intermediaries.
ICTs can be the means to freedom
and development by blindsiding the obstacles to both."
Iqbal Z. Quadir, "The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle", Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 26:2, Summer/Fall 2002, pp. 69-89 [73. 75, 77,83, 87-88. [emphasis added.] [Note: Mr. Quadir is the founder of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh.]
But just as there are
many new crises, so too are there
new ways to foresee and deal with them more strategically. An
excellent 2003 article states that: "All companies
are vulnerable to
predictable surprises.
we have found that organizations' inability
to prepare for them can be traced to three kinds of barriers: Lapses in
recognition occur when leaders remain oblivious to an emerging threat or
problem
Failures of prioritization arise
when potential threats are recognized by leaders but not deemed
sufficiently serious to warrant immediate attention.
failures of mobilization
occur when leaders recognize and give adequate priority
but fail to
respond effectively.
we found that
[some] causes are
psychological -- cognitive
defects that leave individuals blind to approaching threats. Others are organizational --
barriers within companies that impede communication and
accountability. Still others
are political -- flaws in decision making that result from granting too
much influence from special interests. Alone or in combination, these
three kinds of vulnerabilities can sabotage any company at any time.
'Prediction is very
difficult", physicist Niels Bohr once said, 'especially about the
future.' Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. Even though many organizations are caught
unprepared for disasters they should have seen coming, many have
successfully recognized approaching crisis and taken evasive action.
There are practical steps
that managers can take.
" Michael D. Watkins and Max H. Bazerman, "Predictable surprises: The disasters you should have seen coming", Harvard Business Review, March 2003, pp. 72-80 [ 74-76, 79.] [emphasis added.] Another excellent
analysis highlights the hidden but emerging issues that the global
community must assess abd deal urgently with in addition to all the
others. "The illegal trade in drugs, arms, intellectual property, people,
and money is booming. Like
the war on terrorism, the fight to control these illicit markets pits
governments against agile, stateless, and resourceful networks empowered
by globalization. Governments
will continue to lose these wars until they adopt new strategies to deal
with a larger, unprecedented struggle that now shapes the world as much as
confrontations with nation-states once did. Why governments can't win [these wars} They are not bound by geography They defy traditional notions of
sovereignty They pit governments against market
forces They pit bureaucracies against
networks Rethinking the problem Develop more flexible notions of
sovereignty Strengthen existing multilateral institutions [particularly
INTERPOL] Devise new mechanisms and strategies Move from repression to regulation." Moisιs Naνm, "The
five wars of globalization," Foreign Policy, January/February
2003, pp. 29-37. [Note: the article identifies other areas traded illegally for huge profits, including human organs, endangered species, stolen art, and toxic waste. As with most other Foreign Policy articles, it also contains an excellent guide for further reading on these topics.] Most intriguing of
all, however, is a new process which emerged in 2004, and is located
outside the UN. The
"Copenhagen Consensus" is an ambitious project to set priorities among
ideas for improving the lives of people in developing countries. It was developed by the
Environmental Assessment Institute of Denmark in conjunction with The
Economist magazine.
The Consensus process
used a panel of challenge-papers and an expert group to assess
top-priority projects globally, recognizing that resources are scarce and
difficult choices have to be made, and relying in particular on
cost-benefit analysis to find the most worthwhile projects, if about $50
billion would be available to spend.
The group had narrowed a much larger list of development challenges
down to just ten. In alphabetical order, they now
are: ?
Climate change ? Communicable
Diseases ? Conflicts ?
Education ?
Financial
Instability ?
Governance and
Corruption ? Malnutrition and
Hunger ?
Population:
Migration ?
Sanitation and
Water ?
Subsidies and Trade
Barriers
The
Economist reported that after
analysis and discussion of the papers, the panel agreed on four "very
good" proposals: with estimated social benefits exceeding costs by a
factor of ten or more. The
Economist concluded: "That proposals this good should
fail to be adopted for lack of finance is a scandal, especially when you
reflect on some of the projects that governments are currently
financing.
[The four very good projects
were]:
1. Diseases
Control of
HIV/AIDS
2. Malnutrition
Providing micro
nutrients
3. Subsidies and trade Trade
liberalisation
4. Diseases
Control of
malaria"
"Putting the world to rights", The
Economist, June 5th, 2004, pp. 59-61. The project is
obviously complex and full of pitfalls, but the effort to attempt to
carefully determine where scarce aid resources and efforts could best be
used is a very important contrast to the usual global policy of "throwing
money at problems" without much sense of whether it will make a real
difference or not. The process will be an ongoing one, to be followed up
on in several years, and it has generated much more positive than cynical
comment. See www.copenhagenconsensus.com . www.economist.com "Global consensus", with the set of articles that The Economist published in 2004 on the topic, and a book, Bjψrn Lonborg, ed., Global crises, global solutions, Cambridge University, (UK), 2004. And such articles as Bjorn Lomborg, Prioritizing the world's to-do list", Fortune Europe, May 17, 2004, pp. 38-39, and "World
Affairs: The biggest impact,"
Newsweek Europe, June 7/June 14, 2004, p.
4. The
Economist subsequently
expressed some very pertinent further reservations about the Millenium
Development Goals effort. This week the United Nations
published its annual assessment of progress toward its Millennium
Development Goals - targets established in 2000 for advancing welfare in
the developing countries. The
record, as you might expect, is mixed.
It remains questionable, in fact,
whether the MDG exercise, with its unimpeachably good intentions and its
proliferating bureaucratic overhead, has done any good at all on balance.
The weakness of the whole
MDG concept is that it wills the ends without willing the means
something which the UN, perforce, has come to specialize in. A plan to spend a specific
allocation of aid on specific interventions
could be judged for
cost-effectiveness and ranked alongside alternative ways of expending
resources
A statement of good intentions is unfortunately just
that. The UN seems especially proud of
the progress [toward the goal]
in which it has a vested interest
greater global co-operation on development.
Conferences, working groups,
declarations, strategies, and programmes
swearing allegiance to the MDG
idea, are multiplying fantastically.
In this sense, at least, the concept is a runaway success. However, what this is actually
doing for the putative poor country beneficiaries is harder to
say. Ends
without means: The United Nations has set benchmarks for progress in poor
countries. Are these any
use?, The Economist, September 11th, 2004, p.
78. The point to be made
is that all the quotes above suggest that the UN is not working to
facilitate effective and flexible global strategy priorities with its
business-as-usual efforts to do a lot of everything, with grand goals and
requests for lots of money, but a cumbersome and disorderly process once
it comes to implementation. IO Watch believes that the UN could
do much better by starting from the opportunities identified by Bertrand
two decades ago, undertaking its own serious, reasoned, and transparent
analysis of interrelated global problems, deriving suggested best priorities therefrom and
determining carefully how inevitably scarce resources could be most
effectively applied. After
such a publicized and reflective process, it could at least offer up to
its rather tempestuous and bickering Member States (and others) a
coherent, regularly updated, and pragmatic agenda. Above all, the UN
should seek finally to focus and organize its own efforts clearly on those
areas where its programmes can do the most good, instead as attempting to
be "the world body" doing a little bit of everything, with everybody,
everywhere. Meanwhile, it seems
that Mr. Annan's latest "eminent group" of 2003 has at least a few bold
ideas, although they may never come to fruition, or at best only in a few
years: When Kofi Annan
set up a
'high-level panel of eminent personalities'
to assess the UN's role in
dealing with new global threats, many yawned. Surely such a bunch of
worthies -- most of them retired -- would simply produce yet another
platitudinous report. 'Relics
trying to reform a relic,' said one UN ambassador. Yet the group has [already] come
up with some surprising
ideas
[In addition to an expanded
24-member Security Council]
the panel has divided
[its] work into six
'baskets': classic inter-state conflict; internal violence, including
genocide; social and economic threats, such as poverty and disease;
weapons of mass destruction; terrorism; and organized crime and
corruption. The panel decided
early [not to distinguish] between 'hard' threats, which worry the rich
world most, and 'soft' threats, of greater concern to the rest of
humanity. Both, it agreed,
were inextricably linked.
The panel is to [report to] Mr.
Annan by December 1st. He
will
[add to and] present it
in September next year to the General
Assembly, where it will need a two-thirds vote to pass." "The
United Nations: A winning recipe for reform? After Iraq, some ideas for
rescuing the UN," The Economist, July 24th,
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