-----------------------







-----------------------

Archive Introduction

Black Holes                 

The six "black holes" of UN non-accountability

This IO Watch website first went fully online in May 2005.  Its objective is to present and analyze, as representative of international organizations overall, a detailed record of UN management accountability, transparency, and performance reform attempts and problems dating back more than half-a-century, but concentrated in particular on General Assembly reform efforts since 1986. 

The IO Watch archive contains some 160 integrated subsections, each based on quote excerpts proceeding chronologically.  IO Watch assumed that UN reform actions had always proceeded so slowly that this structure could be kept up to date fairly steadily.

Events almost immediately proved this optimism wrong. A clear "tipping point" was reached in May 2005 when the UN Secretariat was forced to publicly admit that "the most obvious shortcomings identified by the Volcker Inquiry and other crises are in the area of oversight and accountability", and that UN management control systems were inadequate and must be significantly enhanced. The pressures accelerated in May 2006 when the General Assembly bluntly called on Secretary-General Annan to present clear accountability mechanisms and to rigorously enforce accountability at all levels, without exception.

The elements of the UN accountability breakdown since a self-proclaimed "annus horribilis" in 2004 are many.  They include the very critical Iraq oil-for-food programme reports, refugee sexual abuse, staff mistrust of UN senior officials, a broken-down human rights commission, grave staff security mismanagement in the field, Security Council reform breakdown, scandals in the internal oversight (and anti-corruption) agency, a major and high-level sexual harassment case,  troubles with a massive tsunami relief effort, embarrassing actions (or inaction) by senior Secretariat officials, and -- most recently --  major scandals in UN multi-billion dollar procurement operations, much dissatisfaction with the management of UN peacekeeping operations, and pending efforts to drastically revise UN staff rules and staffing patterns. 

Keeping track of all this sudden UN operational turbulence and media attention is obviously difficult.  IO Watch, for its part, has annual expenditures which are almost exactly $9.252 billion less than the $9.252 billion UN budget for 2005, and it also has exactly 40,074 less full-time staff than the 40,074 full-time staff that the UN had as of June 2005, that is, none.

IO Watch is therefore shifting its priority from updating its 160-some archive subsections to tracking the many recent many new articles, books, and documents on UN management accountability and performance issues on a month-by-month basis (see "Overview … Quotes" at the bottom of this home page).  Updates for the rest of the website will be done if and when possible, with emphasis given to such pressing UN operational issues as management accountability, management reform, anti-corruption strategies, oversight, transparency, governance, further oil-for-food and  tsunami relief fallout, whistle-blowers, internal justice reform, senior managers' impunity, refugee sexual abuse, procurement, and peacekeeping operations.

This subsection presents one additional IO Watch feature.  The weak UN management culture has resisted General Assembly pressures for accountability and transparency mechanisms with great determination for 60 years.  The following "black holes" list distills the key findings of the extensive IO Watch archives and the new Overview quotes into a few summary narrative pages each for six key non-accountability elements that are firmly, and very destructively, embedded in UN operations. Each section ends with achievable corrective actions, and detailed references to the relevant IO Watch archive subsections and recent (mid-2005 ff.) Overview Quotes.  This "black holes" material will be updated occasionally in the future as events (tangible actions, not UN verbal promises, new untested policies, or posturing) dictate.

*        *       *       *       *       *       *       *      

The concept of "black holes" has many negative characteristics and connotations in various areas of life (as presented in a "disambiguation page" at wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia):

"--  A black hole, in physics, is an object with sufficient density that the force of gravity prevents anything from escaping from it except through quantum tunneling behavior.

--    A black hole, in programmer's jargon, is a pipe which feeds into Unix's dev/null, a place of permanent oblivion for data also known as the bit bucket.

--   A black hole, in computer networking, refers to a place where traffic is silently discarded.

--   In social or business conversation, a black hole is any effort which consumes time, energy, or other resources without yielding a useful result.

--    In defense contracting, a black hole is slang for a work area allegedly hosting a black project [top secret, unacknowledged].

--    In English contract law, a black hole refers to the injustice to non-parties to a contract caused by a strict interpretation of the rules of privity of contract, whereby parties have suffered no damage, but non-parties to the contract, despite reliance on the contract to their detriment, have no legal recourse."                   

The following six areas, IO Watch believes, represent six "black holes" with which the UN Secretariat, its senior officials, and its derelict management culture have successfully evaded the General Assembly's long-standing efforts to establish management accountability and transparency.  These black hole efforts include (as suggested by the definitions above):

--    burying or suppressing management problems,

--    ignoring or sabotaging General Assembly instructions,

--    using Secretariat resources and energy for mere "window-dressing" reform activities,          

--  undertaking instead senior officials' own unpublicized efforts to ensure self-preservation,     

--   and, above all, dealing with important legal, fiduciary, and moral obligations in ways that are quite detrimental to the interests of the world's taxpayers, and the many people worldwide who rely on timely and effective UN emergency programmes and services. 

If the UN is ever to overcome its recent public relations. performance, and oversight  disasters, the General Assembly, Member States, a growing number of concerned NGO's, and publics must persevere to make sure that the Secretariat finally takes firm action to counter and eliminate these enormously destructive black holes.

Corruption cover-up

Whistle-blowers?  What whistle-blowers? 

Opacity and dissembling, not transparency

"Free the [incompetent] UN managers"

"Free the [incompetent] UN managers" II

"Independent" UN oversight is not

UN senior officials remain comfortably outside the law

                            UN senior officials remain comfortably outside the law II