“Independent” UN oversight is not

Oversight is the key “action area” to overcome the problems of the other five Black Holes of UN non-accountability. It provides the ongoing stimuli, analyses, and processes to work toward a much better-managed and more effective UN.

In 1994 the General Assembly took the long overdue step of establishing the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) as an integrated office to improve UN management and accountability and, for the first time, systematically combat waste, fraud, mismanagement, and abuse of authority.  The OIOS started slowly and has had its ups and downs, but overall it has performed much better than many people think, despite insufficient resources and the clear lack of top leadership support from Secretary-General Annan and others.

However, the major operational scandals in the UN Secretariat since 2004 – in the Oil-for-food programme in Iraq, dysfunctional security in the UN headquarters bombing in Baghdad, ongoing peacekeeper and refugee sexual abuses in field operations, major peacekeeping procurement problems, and some new mismanagement problems now apparently emerging in UN headquarters operations – have severely damaged UN credibility and performance, and demonstrate that much more must be done.

In May 2005 these scandals forced the Secretariat to admit the need for “real action now … particularly in the critical areas of management, oversight and accountability”, and that control systems for monitoring management and preventing fraud and corruption must be  “significantly enhanced.”  Mr. Annan and the leadership then undertook new management reforms in the fall of 2005, and proposed further “radical changes” in 2006 following his “Investing in the UN” report.

IO Watch counts more than a dozen initiatives to improve Secretariat oversight.  They contain many worthwhile elements, but they also blur responsibility for oversight reform and create confusion among the various initiatives, actions, and proposals underway. IO Watch believes that this approach is a deliberate one, to create the impression of energetic and decisive Secretariat response while blurring the extent to which these actions are actually solving the major scandals noted above. Further, IO Watch counts at least half-a-dozen actions proposed or underway which are likely to seriously undermine Secretariat oversight processes.

Actually, the best opportunities for achieving truly independent and stronger oversight and management accountability at the UN are in the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (on administrative and budgetary matters.)  That Committee, and the existing external advisory bodies, have long provided weak oversight, forcing the Assembly to rely on the unsatisfactory performance reports made by the Secretariat. Especially given the recent multi-billion dollar and worldwide scope of UN field operations, and the credibility consequences of the recent mismanagement scandals, Member States should not allow this state of affairs to continue.

Fortunately, a new major study in 2006 on UN governance and oversight, proposed by the UN Board of Auditors and endorsed by the General Assembly, provides a new impetus for meaningful UN governance and oversight, which should have been established 50 years ago [available via “Encouraging Events” on the IO Watch Home page, item 2.] 

IO Watch hopes to provide a more complete analysis of the above, confusing, oversight reform proposals, progress, conflicts, and potentials soon, to thereby complete its initial analysis of all six Black Holes of UN non-accountability, and to then update them in future when significant developments and actions occur.