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Archive Introduction


UN Performance Problems

UN Management Accountability Struggles


Where is the Rule of Law?

Inadequate UN Oversight

Recent Developments

 
  

 

 


Overview Quotes 1             

                                                                                                           

 

Overview of IO Watch Archive Quotes I

1943-1994

 

 

 

1.         "In 1943 … Mr. C. W. Jenks emphasized that quality of leadership would dominate the effectuality of a future United Nations Organization; and listed as the desirable attributes of an international civil servant  'integrity, conviction, courage, imagination, drive, and technical grasp -- in that order.'"

Shirley Hazzard, Defeat of an ideal: A study of the self-destruction of the United Nations, Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston-Toronto, 1973, p. 132.   

                                                                       

 

 

2.         "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 added0

                                                                                   

 

 

3.         "All but a tiny minority [of the new UN staff of about 3,000 people] had been appointed by the end of August [1946], and most were appointed between April and July.  Where did this swarm come from?  Some of them had, like most Assistant Secretaries-General, been delegates or on delegation staffs in the early days.  Some were friends of delegates, and got through [by] what is known in international secretariats as political pressure -- which can easily be repulsed if the authorities have the will.  Some -- and possibly the largest number -- found their way through the friendship of a senior officer."

Walter R. Crocker, "Some notes on the United Nations Secretariat", International Organization, Vol. IV, No. 4, November 1950, pp. 609-610.

 

 

4.         "In the Secretariat …. there is no unifying directive on the functions of management. …. The need to keep subordinates informed of what is going on; the need to convey just praise and blame; the need for the impartial award of privilege and promotion; the need for discipline; the need to avoid unnecessary impositions on the time and energy of subordinates; the need to set a personal example do not seem to be appreciated as well as they should be.  ….

These major shortcomings …. are accompanied by the less important but nevertheless tiresome defects in working conditions …. Add to this the insecurity implicit in staff reductions and in the adjustments required to achieve proper geographic distribution …

The staff feels the need for a lead from the top to combat these disrupting factors."

A confidential analysis in April 1947 of the UN Secretariat's morale, as quoted in Stephen Baldwin, "Good management in the United Nations", Secretariat News (New York), January 31, 1986, pp. 11-12.

                                                                                   

 

 

5.         "[In 1950] … the General Assembly stressed the need for careful programme reviews to effectively use available resources.  Subsequently in 1953, the Secretary-General made a comprehensive review of the work and structure of the Secretariat.  This 'evaluation process' and the subsequent reform actions sought to concentrate efforts and resources on the priority programmes which an international organization could 'perform efficiently and effectively,' avoid a 'dangerous' dispersion of these resources over a widespread 'miscellany' of projects, and launch 'a continuing self-criticism as to the way in which various tasks are carried out.'"

"Concentration of effort and resources," General Assembly resolution 413 (V) of 1 December 1950,

"Organization of the Secretariat," UN document A/2554 of 12 November 1953, para. 5,  

"Annual report of the Secretary-General on the work of the organization," UN document A/2663, 1954, pp. xiv-xv,

as discussed in Joint Inspection Unit, "Reporting on the performance and results of United Nations programmes", UN document  A/43/124, 1988, Annex I, para. 2.  [emphasis added]

                                                                                               

 

 

6.         "[Secret political screening of US staff at the UN by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1949, which ultimately led to the resignation of Secretary-General Trygve Lie was] … the ascertainable point at which the [the UN Secretariat] conclusively  delivered itself into the hands of national interest … in direct violation of the [UN Charter insistence on] a scrupulous independence from national pressures. …

Staff representatives who [spoke out] … were among the earliest and least ceremonious departures … accompanied by intimidating and abusive statements from the administration to those remaining. …

… Each department had its informers, and its victims.

The total of United Nations employees affected … undoubtedly runs into the hundreds … [but is difficult to determine] … since employees were permitted to resign with extra indemnities, … [or in] terminations disguised as 'economies,' or … deportations to the field, or careers shunted [permanently] into sidings … [or] a secret blacklisting …

Above all, there is no accounting for the deterrent effect of Trygve Lie's policies on those who might have wished to serve a differently administered United Nations secretariat."

Shirley Hazzard on the situation in the UN Secretariat in the early 1950s, in Chapter Two, "The purgatory of the investigations," in her Defeat of an ideal: A study of the self-destruction of the United Nations, Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston-Toronto, 1973, pp. 15, 23, 34-35.

                                                                                               

 

 

7.         "An end must be put to everything that seems to make the Secretary-General's post an autocratic one, to everything that tends to make the staff subject to the whims and caprices of their superiors and makes careers  --  and even employment  --  dependent on blind obedience to such absolute power."

chief French Delegate Henri Hoppenot, during a debate in the U.N. General Assembly in March 1953, as quoted in Shirley Hazzard, "Breaking faith: II", The New Yorker, October 2, 1989, p 86.

                                                                                   

 

 

8.         "During his first year in office, [Secretary-General Dag] Hammarskjφld sought and largely obtained from the General Assembly administrative powers that, invested in the Secretary-General, were at variance with the intentions of the [United Nations] Charter toward the international civil service. … [These] actions were condemned in a searching study, by Claude Julien, of erosion of rights at the United Nations [in 1953] --  a study that may be read with much interest today, when history has exposed the inadequacies of successive Secretaries-General. .

… The renewed insistence on unconditional loyalty to a personality, whose requirements are equated with those of the United Nations, again illustrates the remoteness of the U.N. service from democratic procedures. …."

Shirley Hazzard, "Breaking Faith, Part I", The New Yorker, September 25, 1989,  pp. 63-99, [ 86].

                                                                                               

 

 

9.         "The uncontested establishment of [US government screening and approval of US personnel for UN service in the 1950s inflicted] … untold damage on the potential of the United Nations.  Other governments would thenceforth [and aggressively] also install their nominees in virtually all significant, and in many insignificant, U. N. posts.  Hundreds of meaningless and costly positions would be created throughout the leadership of the U. N. system for the sole purpose of accommodating national candidates  -- some of whom [were] devoid of qualifications …. unwanted in their homelands …. [or] trailing rumors of incompetence or scandal. …

By the nineteen-eighties, the [New York] Times would report the view of 'one Western ambassador' that 'You try to get as many posts as possible for your own nationals.  This is wrong, but everybody does it.'" 

Shirley Hazzard on the UN in the 1950s, in "Breaking Faith, Part I", The New Yorker, September 25, 1989, pp. 63-99, p. 74.                                               

                                                                                               

 

 

10.        "Based on its studies … the committee reiterates the vital importance above all others of selecting well qualified personnel and not letting standards deteriorate because of the difficulties and complexities of recruitment.  The ability of the United Nations to carry out its essential and urgent work depends in the final analysis on the quality of its personnel."

Committee on the Reorganization of the Secretariat, document A/7359 of November 27, 1968, p. 37, as quoted in Housang Ameri, Politics of staffing the United Nations Secretariat, Peter Lang, New York, 1996, p. 549.

                                                                                               

 

 

11.        "The Capacity Study is finished

We have diagnosed the [sickness of the UN development system of technical co-operation] and written a prescription. ….

…. Governments created this machine - which [has become] probably the most complex organization in the world.  …. At the headquarters level, there is …. no central co-ordinating organization [to exercise effective control] …. [and] an extraordinary complex of regional and sub-regional offices, and …. field offices in over ninety developing countries.  …. Who controls this 'machine'?  So far the evidence suggests that governments do not, and also that the machine is incapable of intelligently controlling itself.  This is not because it lacks intelligent and capable officials, but because it it is so organized that managerial direction is impossible.  In other words, the machine as a whole has become unmanageable in the strictest sense of the word.  As a result, it is becoming slower and more unwieldy, like some prehistoric monster."

A study of the capacity of the United Nations development system, 2 vols., DP/5, United Nations, Geneva, 1969, Vol. 1, pp. i-iii.      [emphasis added]

                                                           

 

 

12.            "Recruitment for the international civil service must [consider specific factors without] parallel in any national administration: first, the need to ensure balance at every stage between the nationalities representing the growing number of member states; second, the importance of maintaining balance between permanent and fixed-term appointments; and third, the need to bring about better balance in the use of the working languages. ….

[Equitable geographical distribution efforts] deal neither with the shortage of competent personnel in [member] countries …. nor with [general personnel recruitment problems]. In the current system, …. each vacancy is advertised as and when it occurs …. no provision is made for periodic examination of all posts ….,  nor for a systematic review of all the staff members in a service  --  measures which would permit concerted plans for recruitment."                 

Tien-Cheng Young, "The international civil service reexamined", Public Administration Review (US), May/June 1970, pp. 217-224 [220, 224].

                                                                                   

 

 

13.        " … the question remains: how in practice to revitalize a flagging organization which is somehow out of tune with the needs and moods of the times?  … I believe that a shock treatment is called for and the present moment provides an unique opportunity to apply that treatment … I have come to the conclusion that the only practical way to revitalize the organization is through a major consolidation and regrouping.  This must be no mere cosmetic surgery.  It would require some drastic staff reduction -- up to 50 percent in some areas -- and a major redeployment of UN resources in those tasks in which it can be most useful to its members and the world community."

Maurice Strong, then head of the UN environment conference, in UN document A/C.5/SR 1433, 9 November 1971, as quoted in Shirley Hazard, Defeat of an ideal: A study of the self-destruction of the United Nations, Macmillan, London, 1973, pp. 112-113.  

 

 

 

14.        "Few would dispute the fact that conditions of service in the Secretariat are no longer adequate to secure a reasonable supply of staff of the quality described in the UN Charter.  In addition there have been weaknesses in the recruitment process itself: inattention to candidates' levels of training, responsibility and experience, artificially restricted choice of candidates, failure to use properly the probation period … submission to pressure from delegations, personal bias, delay and uncertainty in offers to candidates, absence of a coherent career policy and of effective in-service training.  All these factors are prejudicial to high quality recruitment.  Internal selection committees have tended to fall into disrepute and have permitted practices to flourish which encourage the view of the staff that the International Civil Service is in a process of decline."

Recommendations for the reform of UN staff conditions made by the Council of the Federation of International Civil Servants Associations in December 1971, as quoted in Shirley Hazzard, Defeat of an ideal: A study of the self-destruction of the United Nations, Macmillan, London, 1973, p. 113.

                                                                       

 

 

15.        "The siting of the United Nations headquarters in a city that sometimes perceives luxury and prominence as an index of achievement had encouraged the organization's excesses.  [A town house at No. 3 Sutton Place] … became a permanent official New York residence for the U.N.'s chief officer and his family, and Waldheim was the first occupant [in July 1972].  This well-intended gift conclusively defined the Secretary-General's position as one of wealth and social prominence.  Waldheim's three predecessors had lived at private addresses of their own choosing that provided some association with normal life. ….  By contrast, in the Waldheim era the Secretary-General's house became the culminating point of the social and material aspirations now associated with the United Nations.  …. the organization's senior officials chose to assume that a show of wealth supported by public funds in no way impaired their claim to speak for the destitute and suffering throughout the world."

Shirley Hazzard, "Breaking Faith: I", The New Yorker, September 25, 1989, pp. 63-99, [89].

                                                                                   

 

 

16.            "[Secretary-General Kurt] Waldheim's tenure was to be dense with irreproachable statements on global peril, and punctuated by referrals of critical questions to governmental bodies whose inaction was assured …. In 1972, the first year of his incumbency, Waldheim called on the General Assembly to discuss the question of terrorism. (In December, 1985, having considered the matter for thirteen years, the Assembly agreed -- as the New York Times reported -- to the adoption of 'a landmark resolution … that condemns all acts of terrorism as 'criminal.'') In 1973, theTimes noted that a U.N. body 'has been trying to find a definition for the word 'aggression' for 23 years.' The Times article concluded, however, by endorsing a favored U.N. view: 'In the words of Charles Yost … a former representative here, 'just existing is perhaps the most important quality of the United Nations."

Shirley Hazzard, "Breaking faith -- Part II",The New Yorker, October 2,1989, p, 74.

                                                                                   

 

 

17.        " … Concern with capacity and performance [in the United Nations system] reaches its highest peak when draft programmes and budgets are discussed and seems to evaporate when reports on the execution of the approved programmes are reviewed.  …  This dichotomy [between budgetary concentration and performance neglect] is in itself one of the major causes of the shortfalls of the performance of the system." 

Mahdi Elmandjra, The United Nations System: An Analysis, Faber and Faber, London, 1973, pp. 228-229.      [emphasis added]

 

 

 

18.        "The myth that the annual United Nations budget runs around $200 million was circulated for so long that even UN leaders appeared to believe it.  … A recent schizophrenic UN press release [containing that figure] … [later remarks that] 'Member States are contributing about $870 million a year to the United Nations system …

References to waste … are cheerful -- 'I'd be satisfied,' one official declares, 'if what we're doing is fifty per cent effective.' Achievements are cited, and re-cited, with triumph and even with wonder -- as if an organization that has, over nearly three decades, employed tens of thousands of persons at a cost of tens of billions of dollars could scarcely have been expected to have much to show.  … An attempt at public discussion of United Nations financing will bring the Pavlovian and often belligerent reply 'Only a fraction of what nations spend on armaments' …"

Shirley Hazzard, Defeat of an ideal: A study of the self-destruction of the United Nations, Macmillan, London, 1973, pp. 118-120.   

                                                                       

 

 

19.        "Social justice [to which international agencies are committed] stops short for one segment of mankind -- the international civil servant, a member of a virtually unprotected minority.

The existing system of due process suffers from an absence of important elements … All too often, the appeals procedure, which is conceived of as an instrument to raise a staff member's hopes, buries it instead.

… The machinery of due process is slow and ponderous, and thus fails to provide a true safeguard against administrative absolutism and arbitrariness …"

"Appeals procedures for international civil servants," Federation of Civil Servants Associations (FICSA), FICSA Studies and Policies No. 2, of 1974.

                                                                                   

 

 

20.        " …  Recently there appears to have occurred a marked decline in the number of requests for legal opinions from the Secretary-General and various departments, including the Office of Personnel Services.  This may be another indication of the politicization of the Secretariat, of the diminishing role of law in the Organization, and of the increasing power of the various departments that want to be free to establish policy …"

Theodor Meron, The United Nations Secretariat: The Rules and the Practice, Chapter 4, "Selected legal questions", D.C. Heath, Lexington, Mass., 1977, p. 83.

 

 

21.        "Some members of the [UN] staff have great ability and commitment but they support a great many parasitic 'deadwood'  employees and employees serving primarily the political interests of their government.  …  The principle of merit can in the long run be protected only by fair and objective procedures and safeguards, which are subject to law and to effective grievance procedures.  But …  should the present trends continue … the staff would probably be suspected of lacking neutrality and might  lose the confidence of some Member States.  The result might be paralysis of the Secretariat , which would be unable to play an effective role in situations of crisis."

Theodor Meron, The United Nations Secretariat: The Rules and the Practice, Chapter  4, "Selected legal questions",  D.C. Heath, Lexington, Mass., 1977, pp. 83-84.        [emphasis added.]

                                                                       

 

 

22.        "… [in 1978].… a former justice of the [International Court of Justice reviewed a staff dispute with management]  …

[He found that] …. 'The [UN internal justice] problems … have accumulated over a long period  …[because the existing machinery fails] to find and implement solutions to staff grievances.'

' …complaints pile up, and staff members become increasingly bitter and resentful.  …. a formal grievance procedure … should be speedy, … encourage settlement .. , [have clear and publicized procedures] … be a process of negotiation … [with] any bargain … or agreement …. equally binding ….

 …. dealing on a basis of equality with staff representatives will … [be difficult for some management] officials  ….' 

How long are we going to pretend that the United Nations is so different from the rest of the world that we cannot learn and profit from others' experience?"

"Bill Bailey", [a UN senior official], in  "Appeals or redress of grievances?", Secretariat News [New York], November 1984, pp. 8-9.

                                                                                   

 

 

23.        "In the late 1970s, the U.N. staff union in New York engaged the American labor negotiator Theodore Kheel to represent it in its dealings with the U.N. administration.  His … experience with the U.N. hierarchy  -- which he likens to 'the court of Henry VIII' --- [focused in particular on] its propensity for abrogating formal agreements on basic matters of staff rights …. 

'The thing that utterly amazed me' Kheel said recently, 'was the position taken by the Secretary-General of the United Nations [then Kurt Waldheim] to disregard the elementary established rights of employees; that the agency created to maintain standards of human decency and to bring about peace by negotiated settlement would violate its own agreements and see no necessity for compliance with its own word.'"

Hazzard, Shirley, "Breaking faith: II", The New Yorker, October 2, 1989, p 86.

                                                                                   

 

 

24.        "I have been intrigued …. by the question of who is in charge at the UN; who sets the standards and values of the Organization?  Who says what the UN is, what it does, what it cannot do?  ….

Events …. indicate [that there is no] monolithic power structure at the UN.  ….  The Secretary-General …. is constrained by the political clout of his closest collaborators, particularly the Department Heads. ….  further complicated by [growing exercise by the] Fifth Committee and General Assembly of managerial responsibility because [they are unable to ensure] that managers in fact do [their jobs.]  ….

Policy derives from an accretion of small decisions and actions up and down the management line.  ….  There is no thread of coherence running through the whole.  At any given time, a special assistant … may be as important in establishing values and policies as is … the Secretary-General himself.  Such people define the Organization through [staff] … failure to do so, through our acquiescence."  

Lowell Flanders, "The future of the UN …. In whose hands?", address [by the President of the Staff Union] at a preparatory meeting of the United Nations Community Forum,  Secretariat News (NY), April 16, 1979, p. 10.               

                                                                       

 

 

25.      “The annual over-all budget of the U.N. [system], has, of recent years, been informally estimated at six billion dollars. However, I find it impossible to establish a reliable yearly total for the U.N.’s attestable over-all expenditures … The organization informs me that no comprehensive figure can be provided. … . It is my impression that no one knows even the approximate cost, to world citizenry, of the United Nations enterprise.

in June of 1979, [a Washington Post article] dealing with the U.N.’s finances brought denunciation from both the United Nations arid the U.S. State Department, [The latter] ,,,. conceded that the Post’s figures were accurate, but claimed, according to the Post, that the intricate nature of the United Nation’s system … [and its] cumbersome administrative structure, … jealously guarded in [many agencies,] … precluded assessment by outsiders.’

Shirley Hazzard, on a 1979 attempt to track UN finances, and her own inability to do so 12 years later, in “Breaking Faith I”, The New Yorker, September 25, 1989, p 89.

                                                                       

 

 

26.        "The United Nations staff union has called for an independent investigation into allegations of corruption and maladministration in UN internal affairs.

Longstanding discontent among the 2,700 professional staff at the New York headquarters burst into the open when a senior UN official was allowed to resign quietly although serious allegations had been made about his financial affairs and staff appointments.

 … Staff morale is low.  Most staff members indulge in place-seeking and status preferment rather than the original spirit of dedication to UN principles.  Finding jobs for one's own group, or for those sharing ideologies, is a major pre-occupation."

Colin Legum, "UN staff call for corruption probe", The Observer (UK), November 2, 1980

                                                                                   

 

 

27.        " … [A 1981 expert consultant report on … continuing crises in Secretariat administration of justice and remedies stated that:]

'The delays in the Joint Appeals Board at Headquarters are now so serious that they cast doubt on the willingness and ability of the United Nations to provide effective means for settling disputes with the staff.  The situation has already had a bad effect on staff morale …

The United Nations enjoys immunity from the jurisdiction of States … [but has undertaken] to provide effective means of settling disputes to which it is a party … a failure to do so could have grave effects.  It is therefore vitally important and urgent to remedy the present situation.

It is evident that at present the JAB is quite unable to cope with the large backlog and the unprecedented influx of new cases ... All told, it would not be surprising to find that the man-hours consumed by even a simple case cost the Organization over $50,000.'"

As cited in Mark A. Roy, "Administration of justice in the United Nations Secretariat", Secretariat News (New York), 19 June 1984, pp. 5-6.    [emphasis added]

 

 

28.        "There was general agreement that the United Nations system is facing a major challenge …

The executive heads of organizations which are responsible for operational activities [believe] … their activities have a proved record of effectiveness and efficiency.  While many of the charges of waste, inefficiency, duplication, etc., are not accurate, it will be necessary to refute these charges by clear evidence to the contrary.

 … The ACC also recognizes its responsibility to improve the image of the United Nations so as to reassure Governments and the general public that it is an efficient and effective mechanism for dealing with the important issues of concern to the international community."

"International co-operation and co-ordination within the United Nations system: Annual overview report of the Administrative Committee on Coordination for 1981/82," UN document E/1982/4 of 18 May 1982, paras. 16, 18, and 72.

 

 

29.        " …. Guilty [managers] can get away with …. irresponsible performance more readily in the bureaucratic system of the UN than in any foreign office, however small.

When appointees to a post up the hierarchical ladder are voted politically into place by the concerned Member States group, they have a fiefdom bestowed upon them which they value for all its perquisites. …. independence spreads through all their activities as long as they hold office. Needless to say, in such political appointments, knowledge of the subject field, previous experience and quality of performance in the job are peripheral considerations.  The result is absence of continuity in the work of the unit, questioning of the ability of the incumbents and a continuing decline in the institutional image of the UN organization in international affairs."

Donald Dunham, "Management by personnel action", Secretariat News (New York), November 30, 1984, p. 11.

                                                                       

 

 

30.        "In the 13 years that I have been with DTCD, formerly OTC, formerly BTAO, formerly etc., we have been reassessed, redefined, reoriented, readjusted, rearranged, reordered, reduced and, of course, reorganized.  We've been aligned and realigned, maligned, streamlined and asinined.  All in the name of progress and increased efficiency.  It seems to be the curse of bureaucracy that every new situation is met by reorganization. …

Where's accountability in the United Nations?  Who takes responsibility?  Where does the buck stop?  … at the UN it does not seem to matter how severe the financial mismanagement or how erratic and bungling the reorganizations  --  no one in management either at the Departmental or central level is held accountable.

Perhaps the most cruel and bitter irony in this entire masquerade is that in October 1984 the Fifth Committee approved $86 million to build lavish new conference facilities in Addis Ababa.  This in the face of overwhelming human misery and starvation. …

Where's the accountability?"

Lowell Flanders, "A.D. 65", Secretariat News (New York), December 1984, pp. 10-11.

 

 

31.        "For all the champagne and fine words, it should be obvious to friends and foes alike that the United Nations is in trouble and has fallen far short of what its founders dreamed of 40 years ago. ….

For its friends, of which we are two, …. the problem is not so much that the United Nations fails to meet grandiose expectations of a 'world government',  but that it is not particularly effective in averting conflict or fighting poverty.