The UN (System) Hall of Shame

            Since its inception, the United Nations has always recognized the need to recruit and retain high quality staff from all over the world, in order to establish and maintain the credibility and legitimacy of the Organization.  Article 101.3 of the U.N. Charter states forcefully that

“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.”

The need for high quality of the UN leadership has also been stressed as a basic requirement in order to use the resources provided by Member States properly and effectively, and with accountability (although the last-mentioned remains elusive.)

“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.
                                                                            

            However, these clear standards and responsibilities have been overshadowed for decades by sharp criticisms of the actual performance and management accountability of the Secretary-General and his top officials, from outside expert groups, senior officials, and UN staff.

“Article 97 of the Charter [confers on the Secretary-General] … the responsibility for managing the organization. …

… Efficient management of the staff should rest upon clear, coherent and transparent rules and regulations … [which allow the UN] to secure and retain the services of staff meeting the highest standards. ….

The officials responsible for the management of the staff [at all levels] must implement these rules and regulations and create a challenging environment … to further the goals of the Organization.  … Special responsibility for creating a healthy climate rests with the senior managers."

"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, (A/41/49), United Nations, New York, 1986, paras. 45-48.             [emphasis added]
                                                                               

“Support for improved financing will be dependent upon a perception that funds are economically managed and effectively spent.'  Major donors, and indeed all Member States, deserve the reassurance that … their assessed and voluntary contributions are being wisely and prudently utilized … [to convey] to their taxpayers, the ultimate supporters of all United Nations activity."

Financing an effective United Nations: A report of the Independent Advisory Group on UN Financing, (the “Volcker-Ogata report”), Ford Foundation, New York, February 1993, p. 3, as commented on by Richard Thornburgh, in his “Thornburgh report” to the Secretary-General of March 1993.   [emphasis added]                                                                                  

"Challenges to implementation

“Unless the United Nations takes steps to become a true meritocracy, it will not be able to reverse the alarming trend of qualified personnel, the young among them in particular, leaving the Organization.  Moreover, qualified people will have no incentive to join it.

Unless managers at all levels, beginning with the Secretary-General and his senior staff, seriously address this problem on a priority basis, reward excellence and remove incompetence, additional resources will be wasted and lasting reform will become impossible."

Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations [the "Brahimi report"], UN document A/55/305 -- S/2000/809 ofAugust 21 2000, p. xiv.   [emphasis added]

"A new … [UN staff survey found that] … 'The UN has a 'phone book' of rules and regulations which are totally useless as they are never practiced', … [one staff member says. Another says]  'Senior leaders caught in serious breaches of ethics should be punished, not promoted as usual.'

The new [study's] … most negative findings have to do with ingrown leadership and the lack of response to reports of corruption.

'Get rid of the old boy network,' one staff member … [says.]  'That network is wide, tenacious and powerful.  … So long as you can wind your way into that network, you are OK. … Opposing the network is certainly the end of a UN career.'"

Warren Hoge, "Report criticizes the way UN fights corruption", International Herald Tribune, June 16, 2004. The actual survey is "United Nations organizational integrity survey", Final Report, prepared by Deloitte Consulting LLP, June 2004.]     [emphasis added]
                                                     

"[The UN Staff Union President], said that … in the last six years, [UN] … management had been reforming itself and increasing managerial authority, while reducing accountability. The Staff Union … could not support, however, the erosion of staff rights and dissolution of oversight mechanisms …

The [integrity survey] … revealed that staff … feared reprisals for exposing breaches of ethics, and they perceived that the disciplinary process was applied unevenly. …

The Organization had yet to establish concrete measures for individual accountability, she continued.  It was essential that areas with expanded delegation of authority for personnel decisions should be carefully examined and, if abuses were found, such delegation should be revoked. … The [OHRM] had informed staff representatives of its inability to enforce accountability because they lacked central authority. "

"UN staff committee representatives tell budget committee concerns ignored in management reform report", Fifth Committee, Press Release GA/AB/3641 of 29 October 2004, pp. 2-3.          [emphasis added]

            In the past several years this urgency has only taken on more blunt formulations, as in the Volcker report of 2005 and a recent, excellent, historical overview of UN operations in 2006.

"The main conclusions are unambiguous.

The [United Nations] requires stronger executive leadership, thoroughgoing administrative reform, and more reliable controls and auditing. …

There was corruption within the United Nations at a critical management point.  There was exposure of important administrative and control weaknesses …

The Committee believes: first, 'professional disciplines' at the United Nations are weak and eroded …; second, there appears to be a pervasive culture of responsibility avoidance and resistance to accountability.”

Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme (the "Volcker panel"), "The Management of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme", September 7, 2005, Volume I, pages 1, 9, 13.   
[emphasis added] 
                                                                                                                      

"[There is] … a lot that can be done to improve today's rather sorry state of affairs [at the UN]: … [including] insistence on [quality] … of UN officials … and greater consistency regarding standards when applying … UN policies.

The same recommendations also apply to the Secretary General's office itself; like Caesar's wife, it has to be above suspicion, a house of rectitude, efficiency, and fairness.  Much has been done in this respect, but … because of unfriendly and disdainful feelings toward the world organization in some quarters, the Secretariat needs to have a record that is spotless and unchallengeable."

Paul Kennedy, The parliament of man: The past, present, and future of the United Nations, Random House, New York, 2006, pp. 271-272.   
[emphasis added]  


                                                                             

            Despite all this steady attention, the UN has still not reformed, and has therefore encountered very ”hard times” during the past half-decade, particularly as its resources and operations have expanded greatly into major new peacekeeping,humanitarian, and human rights missions and activities, as well as attempts to deal with very challenging new global issues.

            A UN Hall of Shame must be prefaced by recognizing its heroes, sung or unsung, who have performed with distinction in a chaotic and bumbling organization,  This is particularly important since, as noted in the seminal “Brahimi report” above, the UN Secretariat has never even come close to recognizing and rewarding its excellent performers or removing its incompetents. The following names are just a few of those who might well be considered to have truly distinguished themselves in working toward an accountable and effective UN,

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n       Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden, the second UN Secretary-General, who served from 1953-1961 and won the 1961 Nobel Peace Prize, is generally considered the only outstanding one.  His term, and life, was cut short in an airplane crash during the Congo crisis. (See “Dag Hammarskjold” at Google, “Search.”)

n       Ralph Bunche, of the United States, was the key member of a group that performed well in the UN’s formative stages, a mediator and senior UN official from 1947-1969, and  a scholar and the winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize.    (See “Ralph Bunche” at Google, “Search.”)

n      Shirley Hazzard, originally Australian, a UN-New York staff member from 1952-1962, later became a prize-winning author of novels and short fiction.  She inspired subsequent UN analysts by producing the first in-depth, critical assessment of the UN Secretariat’s weak culture and performance in 1973, and an excellent update in 1989.  Both are still valid.  She also wrote a “brilliant comedy” about the bizarre daily life in a UN-like organization.  (See “Shirley Hazzard UN” at Google search and examples of her excellent insights in the IO Watch section on Staff Rights.  Her book and articles are in the “top ten” IO Watch bibliographic sources, and the satire is People in Glass Houses, 1967/1988.)

n       Sir Robert Jackson, from Australia, was the author of a key report on UN mismanagement and structural problems in 1969, and served the UN as a “master of logistics” in major relief and development programs from 1962 to 1984, and in other special assignments as well.  (See “Sir Robert Jackson” at Google, “Search.”)

n       One of the UN’s first field operations heroes, Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria, provided  dynamic, “hands-on” field leadership in the enormously difficult and ultimately unsuccessful Somalia peacekeeping mission of the early 1990s.  Butros Butros-Ghali fired him for openly criticizing UN mistakes there.  He has subsequently worked on various UN special missions. (See the opening quote of the IO Watch Archive’s Humanitarian subsection, and the full article cited there, as well as “Mohamed Sahnoun” at Google, “Search.”)

n       Maurice Bertrand of France served for 17 years as a senior inspector, writing many reports on UN and UN system programmes, and specializing in personnel and reform issues.  He subsequently wrote extensively on UN reform and renewal.     (See “Maurice Bertrand” at Google, “Search.”)

n       Richard Thornburgh of the United States, the UN’s top manager in 1992-1993, provided a succinct and tough report in March 1993 to Secretary-General Butros Butros-Ghali on UN mismanagement issues.  It led directly to the repeated attempts of the General Assembly ever since (with little Secretariat support) to establish management accountability and robust oversight in the United Nations.  (See the IO Watch Archive subsection on The 1993 management accountability resolution and “Richard Thornburgh” at Google, “Search.”)

n       General Roméo Dallaire of Canada has been consistently recognized as the only (outside) hero of the terrible Rwanda genocide of 2004. As the UN force commander in Rwanda, he tried with great determination to stop it, but was overruled by Kofi Annan and his New York aides.  General Dallaire later suffered severe depression, but has recovered to write an excellent book, become a Canadian senator, and receive many well-deserved humanitarian awards. (See “Romeo Dallaire” at Google search and in Wikipedia: his book, later also a film, is Shake hands with the devil, 2003.)
 

n       Sir Brian Urquhart of the United Kingdom and Erskine Childers of Ireland not only served with distinction in senior UN posts but wrote several excellent and foresighted (if still unimplemented) reports on UN system renewal, UN leadership, and a more effective UN, which are cited in key areas throughout the IO Watch Archive.      (See, for instance, the IO Watch Archive subsections on Human rights ombudsman, the 1994 quotes, Expert personnel reviews, page 3, and Annual results reporting to the General Assembly, page 6.  See also “Sir Brian Urquhart” and “Erskine Childers UN” at Search, “Google.”)

n       Rosemary Righter, from England, a long-time observer of the UN, wrote the “best ever” book on the organization’s performance in an all-encompassing study in 1995. It covered in detail UN goals, complexities, politics, culture, and especially organizational shortcomings in awkward contrast to increasingly complex and rapidly-changing international realities. Her thoughtful analysis remains very pertinent more than a dozen years later.  (See “Rosemary Righter UN” at Google search.  Her book, Utopia lost,  is also the very first entry in the IO Watch top bibliographic sources list.) 

n       Sergio Vieira de Mello, of Brazil, tapped by many as a future Secretary-General, served in high-level UN humanitarian, human rights, and tough field assignments, until he died along with 21 other UN staff in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.  (See the August 2004 article in the IO Watch subsection on  Baghdad headquarters bombing, and “Sergio Vieira de Mello” at Google, “Search.”)

n       Dame Margaret Anstee, of the United Kingdom, served the UN for more than four decades.  She was the first woman to achieve many high-level positions in the UN, including leading several disaster relief efforts, heading the Vienna office and several key programmes there, and leading the UN peacekeeping mission in Angola in 1992-1993.     (See “Margaret Anstee” at Google, “Search.”)

n       Joseph Connor, of the United States, followed a distinguished career at the pinnacle of the international accounting profession with almost a decade of struggle (1994-2002) as the UN’s top manager, helping greatly to rescue the Organization from a seemingly perpetual financial crisis.   (See the IO Watch Archives subsection on Financial management, the article of December 1995, and “Joseph Connor UN” at Google, “Search.”)

            This small list of outstanding senior -- and certainly many other not-so-senior staff as well -- could go on for a very long time.  Many people familiar with the UN recognize its most unique human resource characteristic.  It has always contained, side by side, some of the most brilliant and dedicated people in the world along with some of the most hopelessly unqualified and lazy (with the former too often working for the latter.) The creativity and initiative of the best performers have kept the UN moving forward despite all its politicization and still-unreformed and non-accountable bureaucracy.

            A second group of truly heroic UN staff is the many people who have risked (and in too many cases lost) their lives in the dangerous and challenging UN peacekeeping, humanitarian, and special missions around the world since the 1990s, often with little if any recognition and enduring much hardship. They have become the central operational element of the contemporary UN.    (For an immediate sense of their experiences, see UNDP, corruption, 1998-2002, and UN, peacekeeping, 1993-1998 in the “Dark Side” section of this website, with many more such examples to be added in the future.)

            A third and final group of very admirable UN staff are those who joined the Organization with high ideals and a desire to serve.  Many of them received little recognition or notice, but they worked hard throughout their careers, or even in short-term assignments, at whatever tasks they were given in order to contribute -- insofar  as they could -- to furthering  realization of the UN’s ideals through more effective programmes and processes.

            Behind the thousands of meritorious people cited above, however, is a not-insignificant group of those who have contributed little, or failed in their responsibilities at critical moments.  Whether parachuted into senior positions through diplomatic connections or obtaining UN jobs as friends, relatives, mistresses, or associates of those more privileged, a considerable number of UN staff are too often unqualified, unmotivated, and uninterested – except in having a nice salary and perquisites.  Despite their limited contributions, they are usually more secure in their jobs, and can often advance their careers further, than other staff – either because of the connections that led to their jobs in the first place, or because they “go along to get along”, unlike the their more talented brethren who object to faulty UN operations and mismanagement, or leave the organization in disgust (as emphasized, again, by the “Brahimi report” of 2000.)

            The final important group is found particularly at more senior UN levels. They are probably “good people” and have formerly worked with some success inside or outside the organization.  But they often find themselves all-too-easily caught up in the UN routines of “talk, talk”, “noble intentions”, and worldwide travel plus New York glitz.  Above all, they enjoy the freedom granted them by their VIP status and senior titles and their diplomatic immunity, and therefore their impunity of action. 

            At some point (or from the very start), these people have either reached their own “level of incompetence” for their heavy operational responsibilities, are called on make fateful decisions that are beyond their capacities, or simply take such decisions carelessly or unprofessionally.  This failure to act with “due diligence” and full recognition of the ultimate accountability inherent in their high salaries and elevated VIP status, does serious damage to the organization, to other UN staff who strive to work effectively, and to those who rely on a life-and-death basis on UN field services around the world.

            IO Watch apologizes for this long introduction to the “UN (System) Hall of Shame”, but its members cannot be presented without first recognizing the majority of high-quality, talented, dynamic, dedicated, and disciplined UN people among whom (or above, or behind, or on whose shoulders)  they are found. 

            The UN Secretariat has failed to implement the management accountability processes that the General Assembly specifically called for in 1993 (and has repeatedly deplored Secretariat non-progress on, most recently in 2006, see, in the IO Watch “Dark Side” section, UN General Assembly Accountability Efforts,1991-2006.)

            Indeed, Secretariat mismanagement, misconduct, abuse of authority, and corruption seem only to have worsened in the past decade.   Perhaps this is because the Internet has so greatly increased the worldwide flow of information and thereby helps force greater transparency of UN operations. But it also occurs because UN expenditures and major field operations have expanded to some $20 billion a year, far beyond the capacities of its outmoded “managerial” class, as decisively but belatedly recognized by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in March 2006 (see the next-to-last quote on the IO Watch home page. The number of senior UN managers with advanced public administration, finance, or business degrees can probably be counted on one hand.)

            This UN (system) hall-of-shame list is based on published material – articles, investigations, analyses, first-person observations, books, and reports on the misdeeds and performance failures of senior UN officials made by knowledgeable internal participants and external observers. It focuses particularly on the past 10-15 years, and on Director-level staff and above: that is, assistant-, under-, and deputy-secretaries general, and Mr. Annan, who have been found wanting in the execution of their duties.  (However, some lesser staff, who often do get punished, are included as well because of the ingenuity, or the scope, or the significance of their transgressions.)  

            The list also includes some distinctive senior “mismanagers” from other agencies of the UN system. The list is approximately hierarchical, starting with former Secretary-General Kofi Annan and working on down.  IO Watch has in mind some 20 “candidates” for entry into the Hall, which it will add as time permits, and the list will also be steadily updated as new developments emerge. 

            The officials concerned will continue to excuse, cover up, explain away, blame others, and shout “unfair!” about those who report their misbehavior, in accord with the management culture of impunity which they still cling to.  The fact is, for instance, that even the senior officials responsible for the failures to stop the three genocides of the past decade-plus – Rwanda, Bosnia (Srebrenica), and Darfur -- moved smoothly on up to the top floors of the UN Secretariat building in New York, along with Kofi Annan.  The only accountable action was the resignation of a single UN human rights investigator in Bosnia (for much more on the genocide topic, see “Complicity  with evil” by Adam LeBor, under UN, genocide, 2006 .)

            The new reality, as one astute observer of the UN’s accountability and credibility problems has noted, is that no matter how fervently UN officials have protested media reports and evaded responsibility -- especially since the Volcker inquiry report firmly established an “accountability spotlight” in its highly critical findings of 2005 about the Iraq Oil-for-Food Program --- the vast majority of the misdeeds uncovered have proven subsequently to be true.  It must be noted, however, that even the Volcker group, established by Mr. Annan himself, did not conduct a full legal investigation within the UN.  It lacked especially the crucial power of subpoena, and the ability to prosecute witnesses/investigation subjects for perjury or obstruction of justice.

            The following list is not a detailed legal brief of any kind.  How could it possibly be, when the people concerned live in a world of diplomatic immunity and operational impunity, protected by decades of obsessive UN secrecy and non-transparency, and far distant from the day-to-day realities of life for billions of people around the globe? 

            The people included here are, quite simply, outside the laws of the rest of mankind.  There are now some a few notable exceptions, through a grudging case-by-case release of lower-level UN staff by the Secretary-General and their resulting convictions and sentences in cases prosecuted by the US Attorney for the Southern District Court of New York, and in other cases now entering the US court system (see in the IO Watch “Dark Side” feature UNHCR, harassment, Geneva, 2003-2007, and WMO, racketeering, Geneva, 2003-2007. Some experts think that, sadly, the only serious check on UN corruption is to be found in this US court, which clearly has many other priorities as well.

            In general, however, the senior officials cited here, and many others, continue to be fully protected by their UN diplomatic immunity. They cannot be called to testify in a court case, to defend themselves, and to face cross-examination.  They do not risk perjury charges, have to appear before a grand jury, be obliged to provide relevant documentation, or even merely be held accountable and sanctioned within the UN, as the General Assembly has repeatedly called for.   They will continue on with their comfortable UN VIP jobs, or enjoying their generous, UN-funded retirements.

            Nevertheless, this IO Watch feature attempts at least to “name and shame”, so that the global public – the taxpayers and the “customers” of the UN, and the loyal supporters and the critics -- can better understand some of the consequences of casually maintaining an unaccountable “world organization,” spending more than $20 billion a year as its much-proclaimed credibility and legitimacy continue to slip away.

Most recent addition(s):

Dileep Nair, UN, OIOS, 2000-2005

The UN (System) Hall of Shame List