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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 1986 report which launched the current era of UN management reform, the "Group of 18" experts highlighted two critical areas regarding personnel. The first was sharp criticism of politicized staff selection. The second was the importance of the rules. The report stated, at some length but with tremendous clarity: "The efficiency of the United Nations depends to a
large extent on the performance of its Secretariat and other organs; the
quality and usefulness of the Secretariat are, in turn, dependent upon the
quality and dedication of its staff.
The Group is
convinced that efficient
management of the staff should rest on clear, coherent and transparent
rules and regulations. This will enable the Organization to
secure and retain the services of staff meeting the highest standards.
Recommendation
42 The personnel management of the Organization must be
based upon clear, coherent and transparent rules. Present inconsistencies and ambiguities
should be eliminated. The current staff rules and regulations
should be revised to take into account the resolutions and
decisions on personnel policy already adopted by the General
Assembly
measures to implement [them] should be clearly set out in a personnel
manual which should be widely available and kept up to
date.
" Report of the Group of High-Level Intergovernmental
Experts to Review the Efficiency of the Administrative and Financial
Functioning of the United Nations, A/41/49, 1986, paras. 45, 47, 48 and Recommendation
42. [emphasis
added.]
For decades the UN Secretariat at least had a fairly
clear and well-written set of conduct standards, prepared by the ICSAB in
1954. As
late as 1982, Secretary-General Javier Pιrιz de Cuellar commended them to
all UN staff "as a guide in their daily life," and the ACC had them
reissued throughout the UN system in 1986. As summarized in 1970, they
provided: "
four positive
duties defined as basic considerations: 1.
Integrity to be
judged on the basis of the individual's total behavior, taking into
account personal qualities such as honesty, truthfulness, fidelity,
probity, and freedom from corruption influences, bearing in mind that the
international civil servant is a public as well as an international
official. 2.
Loyalty to the international organization, combined with an
international outlook flowing from understanding [and tolerance]
. 3.
Independence of any authority outside the international
organization. 4.
Impartiality in the form of objectivity, lack of bias, tolerance,
and restraint. These fundamental
standards were supplemented with emphasis upon the need for deliberative
effort to overcome, within the secretariat, biased attitudes
. [and,
externally,]
. the international official's
. fundamental principle of
independence which has been, and continues to be, challenged by national
spokesmen." John W. Macy, Jr., "Towards an international civil service", Public Administration Review (US), May/June 1970, pp. 258-263 [259]. [emphasis added], and "Report on the
standards of conduct in the international civil service 1954",
International Civil Service Advisory Board, COORD/CIVIL SERVICE/5, October 1954, [and included as Annex V of the
following document], In the 1990s, however, as the Secretariat dragged its
feet in revising and streamlining the UN rules and administrative
issuances as required by the Group of 18, it became clear that an updated
code of conduct was needed to meet changing circumstances, such as
workplace discrimination and financial disclosure requirements. As discussed under this archive's subsection
on Major ongoing
flaws , the Secretariat prepared a
new draft UN "Code of Conduct" which caused considerable controversy. Staff and
experts argued that it was just a cumbersome collection of revised staff
rules; that it placed heavy emphasis on staff obligations but gave little
attention to staff rights; and that there was very little consultation
with staff in preparing it. In 1998 the General Assembly did
approve it, but only after adding various provisions on management
responsibilities and conduct. "Revisions to
article I of the Staff Regulations and chapter I of the 100 series of the
Staff Rules of the United Nations", General Assembly resolution A/52/252
of 29 September 1998 , and "Status, basic rights and
duties of United Nations staff members", ST/SGB/1998/19 of 10 December
1998.
During this same period, however, Secretary-General
Annan had launched his "quiet revolution" to "transform" the organization,
partly motivated by a strong distaste for "the rules", as stated in a 1998
OHRM document: "'We are too
complicated and
too slow. We are over-administered
and have too
many rules and too many regulations' [Mr. Annan] told
staff on 29 October. [He called] for
simpler procedures and more
authority for managers
The Secretary-General and his senior managers are
addressing shortcomings that impede the effective use of staff resources.
Chief among them: Managers have
limited responsibility over their human and financial resources. This leads
directly to the erosion of accountability at all levels of the
Organization; Complicated rules
and procedures have served to discourage the recruitment, advancement, and
mobility of staff, affecting the UN's capacity to move the right person to
the right place at the right time. This is essential in a global
organization which is increasingly expected to act quickly to address
complex crises and changing priorities; "Staff become focus
of United Nations modernization: New management culture key to
revitalization," United Nations Focus Series, No. 4, November 1998, pp. 2-3. Not surprisingly, the resulting 47-page Code of
Conduct was not a proper code, but merely an amended compilation of rights
(with few mentioned) and duties (with many specified in detail). It was issued
to all staff, with the old 1954 standards appended as background
information.
Yet reflecting on the code in 2000, Secretary-General Annan stated
confidently that the Secretariat had updated the basic rights, duties, and status of UN staff
members in order: "
to ensure that those provisions would be clearly and
unambiguously stated, and would take into account current situations and
needs." "Accountability and
responsibility: Report of the Secretary-General", A/55/270 of 3 August 2000, para. 8, and
In 2000, however, Mr.
Annan admitted in another report that "task tools" still needed to be
developed to "assist" managers in applying the new rules, and in 2000 and
2002 he reported that work was still only beginning on simplifying
substantive aspects of the Staff Rules and Regulations. Meanwhile, Mr. Annan launched still another agenda
for management change in 2002, including reforms to simplify the types of
staff contracts, permit UN managers to make their own staffing decisions,
and launch a grand new mobility system to move staff among assignments
worldwide.
Staff and others have expressed many concerns about the impact of
these major policy changes on the staff and indeed on the international
civil service itself, as discussed in the subsection on OHR
(Mis-)management . In the midst of all this, the UN Code of Conduct
itself was reissued in 2002, primarily to include a new "Standards of
conduct for the international civil service" adopted by the ICSC in 2001
and "welcomed" by a General Assembly resolution in December 2001. The new
code therefore replaced all former references to the 1954 ICSAB code with
references to the 2001 ICSC standards of conduct. "Status, basic rights and
duties of United Nations staff members", ST/SGB/1998/19 of 10 December
1998.
pp. 2, para 1.2, and p. 5, para. 7. The eloquent language and quality of the 1954 ICSAB
standards has thus been tossed in the "dustbin of history", and in the
process some very important principles have disappeared. For instance, the
1954 standards gave staff the duty to question
an apparent irregular situation and the right to record their views in the
official files, and called on supervisors to exercise scrupulous care in allowing those views
to be heard, particularly where those views are opposed to their own. The
2001 ICSC standards, unfortunately, omit these essential points. "Status, basic rights and
duties of United Nations staff members", ST/SGB/1998/19 of 10 December
1998.
pp. 38-39, paras. 15-16, 12-13.
In a 21st century UN, where the managers have been
unleashed to do pretty much what they want to, any such questioning and
expression of "opposed" views to one's supervisor is career suicide. The views of
the staff in the 2004 integrity survey clearly indicate this current
mistrust: "
the UN has
[examined the]
Secretariat's perception of its own integrity.
[The Integrity
Survey politely explains there are concerns about accountability]
More directly ,,,,
[the report notes (p. 11)
that] 'Staff members feel unprotected from reprisals for reporting
violations of the code of conduct. This is not a perception confined to a
few staff in remote locales and/or dangerous circumstances. Forty-six
percent (46%) gave unfavourable response to this item,
whiles only 12% gave favourable responses"' Claudia Rosett,
"The problem with the Secretariat", The Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2004.
[emphasis added]
The new ICSC code-of-conduct language, while not as
heavy-handed as the current Staff Regulations and Rules, is still much
more colorless and vague than the 1954 ICSAB version, to the great
detriment of staff understanding, protection, and strong support for UN
staff appeals to the UNAT [to the extent that the UNAT listens to such
things at all.] The 1998/2002 "non-code" document has thus been
essentially ignored or regarded sceptically by staff. As one staff member
expressed it in comments cited in the June 2004 UN integrity survey: "The UN has a 'phone book' of rules and regulations
which are totally useless as they are never practiced." "Report criticizes
the way UN fights corruption", International
Herald Tribune, June 16, 2004.
The UN therefore has no real, understandable, and
usable code of conduct. Yet elsewhere in the world a "code of conduct" is
regarded as an important and essential document. As a recent
fraud examiner's article on a robust fraud prevention programme
emphasizes: "
the
cornerstone of an effective fraud prevention program is a culture with a
strong value system founded on integrity
often reflected in a code of
conduct. The code of conduct should reflect the
core values of the entity and guide employees in making appropriate
decisions during their workday. A
code must include written standards that are reasonably
designed to deter wrongdoing. It must promote honest and
ethical conduct by all employees no matter their positions
within the
[organization]. It should advise employees
what they can and cannot do
" Martin T.
Biegelman,
"Designing a robust fraud prevention programme: Ounce of prevention
does equal pound of cure", White Paper,
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), January-February 2004, pp. 30-33 [33],. and March-April 2004, pp. 23-24,
45-46. [emphasis added.]
Organizations which use codes also realize that they
must be living
documents, which are: developed and discussed in an inclusive,
open, and transparent process; drafted carefully in language that is as
clear as possible; seek to link organizational ethics with organizational
regulations; and are periodically reassessed and updated. Montgomery van
Wart, "Codes of ethics as living documents: The case of the American
Society for Public Administration", Public
Integrity (USA), Fall 2003, pp.
331-346.
The Group of 18's call in 1986 for clear, coherent,
and transparent rules is now expressed only in the quite unsatisfactory
2002 code. As noted above, and in the archive subsections on the UN's
continuing Hodgepodge of
rules and the UN code of Conduct
discussion under Major ongoing
flaws , IO Watch believes that
the present lack of clear and current substantive rules and the
irresponsible continuing reliance on the 1998 "non-code: -- undermine a robust fraud prevention strategy, as
mentioned above; -- frustrate staff worried about what the "staff
rules" really are in the face of a rapidly changing UN work environment
and an Administration that is steadily "streamlining", decentralizing,
delegating authority, and changing the substance of those rules "on the
fly" -- must also be considered in light of the UN Global
Compact emphasis, for
corporations, on adherence to fundamental UN (ILO) principles of
labor rights, and aligned with the eminently reasonable UN staff
association views that the UN should itself be bound by these rights: With the President
of FICSA [a system-wide staff group], we believe that the time has come to demand that our
employers comply with a 'Code of Labor Ethics' in all common-system
organizations, and particularly at the United Nations." Xavier Campos,
"Down with those walls", UN Special (Geneva),
February 1999, p. 17.
[emphasis added.]
-- occur in a Secretariat where staff rights have
always been weak, where newly-unleashed amateur managers can investigate
matters in their programmes at will, and where the Secretary-General (and
the many personnel and other officials who act in his name) can
autocratically declare exceptions to those UN rules as "he" sees fit, as
discussed in detail in this section's introduction and under Staff Rights?
and The most serious
loopholes ; -- and convey an atmosphere of many staff
obligations but
vague (or even unmentioned) rights, including in particular a
fundamental ambiguity on matters of due process, as cited not only by
staff groups but in a very expert assessment: "In the Staff Regulations and Rules dealing with
investigations, etc., the
requirements of due process -- such as
the right of defense -- which are fundamental, are not clearly
indicated." Professor C. F.
Amerasinghe, "The 'Code of Conduct'", UN Staff
Report (New York), December 1997, pp.
12-13 [13]. [Note: Professor Amerasinghe is the author of The law of the international civil service (as applied by International Administrative Tribunals), 2 vols., 2d ed., Clarendon, Oxford (UK), 1994., and Principles of the law of international
organizations, Cambridge, Cambridge (UK), 1996.]
A
conservative, autocratic UN Administration with a long=-standing belief in
secrecy will indeed resist any clear statement of UN staff rights and
duties and conduct, as the Group of 18 sought two decades ago. Yet a very
short and simple statement, from the US Department of State, illustrates
how concisely and clearly one can state general standards of conduct in law
that "help to ensure
that employees avoid any action that might result in, or create the
appearance of inappropriate, unethical, or illegal behaviour,
including: ?
Using public office
for private gain; ?
Giving preferential
treatment to any organization or person; except as required by law, regulation,
or policy; ?
Impeding
[government] efficiency or economy;
?
Losing independence
or impartiality of action; ?
Making a government
decision outside authorized channels; ?
Affecting adversely
the confidence of the public in the integrity of the
government." "Standards of
conduct: A Guide to Ethical Conduct for Department of State Employees
",
Office of Inspector General, US Department of State, Washington D.C. A
similar succinct statement would at least be a start to allow UN staff,
and anyone else dealing with the UN, to readily recognize and assess
improper conduct. It would allow UN staff, and anyone else dealing with
the UN, to much more readily recognize and assess improper conduct. The
existing 1998 and 2002 guidance, however, is a tangled web of complexity,
with its extensive volume of rules (both central and trivial), extensive
but unofficial commentary, and overall opacity. All these
complicating factors make it very easy for the Administration's
experienced "rules interpreters" in the personnel and legal offices to
readily fend off and evade challenges of mismanagement and misconduct,
both informally and in the UN's internal justice system. IO Watch concludes that a very unaccountable UN urgently needs an updated set
of standards, rules, and a code, to clarify acceptable behaviour by
managers and staff. The 1998 "non-code" of conduct must be
updated, beginning with a focus on a single corrective step. While the 1998 and 2002 code include staff obligations to
cooperate fully with any and all UN internal investigations and
investigators, it totally omits the very important requirement for the
Secretary-General to ensure and protect the rights of staff whistle-blowers and those
involved in any way in UN investigations, and to include those procedures
in the staff rules. The General Assembly's resolution
establishing the OIOS in 1994 clearly specified that it: "6. Requests the
Secretary-General to ensure that the [OIOS] has procedures in place that
provide for direct confidential access of staff members to the
Office and for protection
against repercussions, for the purposes of suggesting improvements
for programme delivery and reporting perceived cases of misconduct; 7. Also requests the Secretary
General to ensure that procedures are in place that protect individual
rights, the anonymity of staff members, due process for all parties
concerned and fairness during any
investigations, that falsely accused staff members are
fully cleared and that disciplinary and/or jurisdictional proceedings are
initiated without undue delay in cases where the Secretary-General
considers
it justified: such procedures
shall
include any necessary amendments to the Staff
Regulations and Rules of the United Nations
;" "Review of the
administrative and financial functioning of the United Nations", General
Assembly resolution 48/218 B of 29 July 1994,
paras. 6-7. [emphasis added.] The guidance was
elaborated on in even more detail in "Establishment of the Office of Internal Oversight
Services", Secretary-General's Bulletin ST/SGB/273 of 7
September 1994. In his response to the staff criticisms expressed in
the integrity survey of June 2004, Secretary-General Annan stated to the
staff that he will "develop measures to reinforce formal protection for
whistle-blowers". The best way for Mr. Annan to do this,
of course, is to act urgently to reverse the shameful exclusion of
the General Assembly's express language on whistle-blower protection from
the code of conduct by his Office of Legal Affairs. This failure
has grievously handicapped and punished UN whistleblowers for years. Kofi A. Annan,
"Dear colleagues", letter [concerning the June 2004 UN "integrity survey"
of 4 June 2004 , p. 3. The omission of these staff rights has firmly
suppressed and punished UN whistleblowers who have acted since 1994 in
good faith, with the (naοve?) belief that the explicitly-stated UN
policies would in fact be implemented. The failure apparently continues
on, with all the attendant damage that it does to urgently-needed UN fraud
prevention efforts and to the proper day-to-day exercise of staff
integrity. The specific details of this 1994 Assembly
resolution, the Secretary-General's own guidance, the relevant staff
rules, and the consequences of this grievous whistle-blower omission from
the staff rules -- including its relevance to the current scandals
surrounding the UN-administered oil-for-food programme in Iraq -- are
presented in this archive's subsection on Suppressed
whistle-blowers . This archive section is entitled Where is the Rule of Law? in the UN, and the
current UN "non-code" of conduct shows its absence vividly. A classic legal work states that eight criteria need
to be met for the rule of law to exist, and the UN seems to presently fall
far short on applying them. In very simplified form, they are as
follows: 1.
there must be rules; 2.
created in a public forum and widely disseminated,
which are 3.
stable, 4.
consistent, 5.
clear, and 6.
impartially enforced, and 7.
will not punish people retroactively for actions
legal when they were committed or 8.
attach blame unless a person acts intentionally or
negligently.
Lon L. Fuller, The morality of law, 1974 (Harvard Law
School) as summarized in Mike France, "Impeachment: Does the rule of law
really rule?", in International Business Week,
February 8, 1999, page 62.
IO Watch believes that Mr. Annan, after firmly
establishing the 1994 staff rights for whistle-blowers, should then give
priority attention to urgently preparing a proper,
up-to-date, clear, and transparent UN code of conduct and regulations and
rules. This time it should be done with full and proper consultation and
contributions by staff groups and the General Assembly) as the Group of 18
called for, without success, nearly two decades ago. The process would
address four critical elements: -- UN staff, who must apply and live with the code,
should have a proper voice in establishing it, not to manipulate it but to
make it workable and "co-owned"; -- the UN is currently engaged in a new, and somewhat
frenzied, effort to change the scope and staffing of its worldwide
operations (see the archive subsection on OHR (Mis)management), a
process in which the 1998/2002 code of conduct and related staff rules
will become even more inconsequential if they are not studiously kept up
to date and disseminated; -- staff representatives and the General Assembly, if
finally given the proper time and opportunity to scrutinize the
Administration's version of a revised set of rules and code before
finalization, might well find other major elements of General Assembly and
other directives -- such as the ignored protection of whistle-blowers --
which the Administration has unfortunately "misplaced". They could ensure
that, this time, they are included. In May 2005 the Secretariat released a new management
reform document for "real action now" and immediate reform, "particularly
in the critical areas of management, oversight and accountability." With regard
to "enhancement" of the code of conduct, it stated that: "While the UN has
in place a detailed Code of Conduct, it has not been disseminated to staff
in an effective manner. [OHRM] is reviewing the practices of
other organizations in disseminating such information in more accessible
and easy-to-read formats
Special additional rules are also being
developed for staff engaged in procurement activities. A UN Supplier
Code of Conduct is also being formulated. Status: Materials should be produced and ready for
dissemination in the field." "Frιchette unveils UN reforms responding to Volcker
panel's criticisms", UN News Service, 17 May 2005, and "UN management reforms 2005:
Management reform measures to strengthen accountability, ethical conduct
and management performance", May 17,
2005,
p. 5, available at www.un.org/reform/reform_update.html.
The fundamental
guidance of the "Group of 18" experts in 1986 on the importance of "the
rules" and their implementation, quoted at the beginning of this
subsection, needs to be finally carried out -- namely to ensure clear,
coherent, and transparent rules, kept up to date, eliminating
inconsistencies and ambiguities, and taking into full account General
Assembly resolutions and decisions on personnel policy (including, at
present, not just procurement procedures but whistle-blowing protections
as well), as the General Assembly emphasized once again in December
2004. "The General
Assembly
Recalls its request to the
Secretary-General of
[1997, 1999, and 2003] to enhance managerial
accountability with respect to human resources management
decisions, including
imposing sanctions in cases of demonstrated mismanagement of staff
and willful neglect of, or disregard for, established rules and
procedures, while safeguarding the right of due process of all staff
members, including managers, and requests the Secretary-General to report
comprehensively thereon at its sixty-first session." ."
all
administrative issuances of the Secretary-General related to the
implementation of its resolutions and decisions shall be in full
compliance with such resolutions and shall be reported to the General
Assembly in conformity with the established regulations, rules and
practices." "Human Resources Management",
General Assembly resolution 59/266 of 23 December
2004, Sections 1, especially paragraph 14, XVI and XVII.
Further, the OECD has provided excellent guidance on
a proper "ethics infrastructure" to firmly support public sector
transparency and accountability, not just "communicating" policies, but
taking firm actions to build public trust by emphasizing both prevention
and rewards, with careful monitoring to ensure compliance and deal with
wrongdoing. "Citizens trust
public institutions if they know that public offices are used for the
public good Lessons from the
OECD survey suggest the following steps for building trust in public
institutions: ?
Defining a clear
mission for the public service.
?
Safeguarding values
while adapting to change.
?
Empowering both public
servants and citizens to report misconduct.
?
Co-ordinating
integrity measures: a precondition for success.
?
Shifting emphasis
from enforcement to prevention.
?
Anticipating
problems.
?
Taking advantage of
new technology.
the following
steps are necessary to build a consistent system of supportive
mechanisms, namely the Ethics Infrastructure: ?
Communicate and
inculcate core values and ethical standards for public servants in order
to provide clear guidance and advice to help solve ethical dilemmas. ?
Promote ethical
standards by preventing situations prone to conflict of interest and
rewarding high standards of conduct through career development. ?
Monitor compliance and
report, detect and discipline wrongdoing." "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, pp.
193-194.
It is time for the UN
Secretariat to move past its current focus on "paper-pushing" and words,
and instead directly and seriously address these central elements of
applying and monitoring ethical standards. Only in this way can the
Secretariat clearly and properly honor the United Nations Charter
insistence on the all-important virtue, and "highest standards", of
integrity. "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]
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