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Archive Introduction

UN Performance Problems      

SECTION TABLE OF CONTENTS:

-- Six-Decade Overview

-- General Performance Assessments

-- General Performance Assessments II

-- Personnel

-- Structure and Operations

-- Leadership

-- Management Systems

-- Management Reform

-- Security Council

-- General Assembly and Related Bodies

-- Conferences and Negotiations

-- Peacekeeping

-- Peacekeeping II

-- Humanitarian

-- Nation-Building

-- Development Assistance

-- Human Rights

-- Women

-- Work with NGOs, Others

-- Anecdotes and Observations

-- Anecdotes and Observations II

-- The UN's Official Versions

This substantive section on  UN Performance problems, the first of the IO Watch website, provides an ongoing archive of hundreds of  quotes and sources from newspaper and newsmagazine articles, journals, books, and reports on UN performance shortcomings since 1945.

It begins with a Six-Decade Overview ,followed by specific assessments and commentary on sixteen major areas of UN operations follow, which will each gradually be expanded into quite detailed chronological explorations of their topics.

A subsection of general Anecdotes and Observations then inter alia presents the lighter side and some of the absurdities of the otherwise rather depressing litany of UN performance problems. 

     Finally, in the interests of "comparison shopping" and full disclosure, and since this archive concentrates entirely on critical analyses and assessments of  UN performance, the last subsection identifies websites where the reader can get The UN's Official Versions (the plural noun is not a typo) of its activities and performance record. 

In particular, the last six performance problem subsections -- Humanitarian, Nation-Building, Development Aid, Human Rights, Women, and Work with NGOs, Others -- are very much still in the "start-up" stage, due to the priority need to establish all the parts of this archive.  Material from the sources cited in the "useful sources" for each of them, and other material, will be added as soon as possible.

(For an explanation of the nature, rationale, and parameters of the quoted excerpts found throughout this archive, please see the explanatory information on IO Watch's  archives Overview and Structure  and on Rationale, Development, and Parameters .)

The following abbreviations of major UN organizations and entities appear throughout this archive: 

ACABQ                   Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions  

ACC                      Advisory Committee on Coordination (heads of UN system agencies,                                 recently retitled "Chief Executives Board for Coordination")

Board of Auditors      of the United Nations

CPC                        Committee for Programme & Coordination

DAM                        Department of Administration and Management (recently retitled the                                 Department of Management, DM)

DPI                          Department of Public Information

DPKO                      Department of Peace-keeping Operations

ECOSOC                 Economic and Social Council

Fifth Committee       (Administrative and Budgetary) of the General Assembly    

ICSC                        International Civil Service Commission  

JIU                           Joint Inspection Unit    

OIOS                       Office of Internal Oversight Services   

OHRM                     Office of Human Resources Management

UNCTAD                  United Nations Conference on Trade and Development   

            UNHCR                   Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

            UNEP                      United Nations Environment Programme

            UNFPA                    United Nations Population Fund

            UNICEF                   United Nations Children's Fund

             UNDP                      United Nations Development Programme

            UNRWA                 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in                                             the Near East
             WFP                        World Food Programme