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UN Changes Get Blocked By Rifts, A Congressional Report Finds- UN Finance - Global Policy Forum UN Changes Get Blocked By Rifts,
A Congressional Report FindsBy Jess Bravin
Wall Street Journal
February 17, 2004The United Nations, long criticized as hidebound and inefficient, has been streamlining operations under Secretary-General Kofi Annan, but disagreements among its 191 member countries have blocked some reforms, a report by the investigative arm of Congress found.
The report by the General Accounting Office, released Friday, also identifies problems in the U.N.'s human rights program, which has been without a permanent head since Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in August while on special assignment to Iraq. The human-rights program has been given mandates without funds to carry them out, the GAO found, and decision-making is sometimes difficult because its authority is split between the Secretariat, the General Assembly and the U.N.'s often political Human Rights Commission, as well as six separate committees responsible for monitoring compliance with different treaties.
Within those constraints, the human rights program has made significant progress improving internal oversight and reducing duplicative programs, the GAO found. But structural problems facing the program suggest a challenge for Mr. Annan's next high commissioner for human rights, expected to be Louise Arbour, a Canadian Supreme Court justice and former U.N. war crimes prosecutor.
The report also criticizes the trend toward voluntary contributions from member countries to fund human rights and other U.N. programs, instead of mandatory dues. Though often preferred by wealthier countries, including the U.S., the practice has left U.N. agencies lacking the stability for long-term planning and has harmed morale for staff, who fear their jobs could disappear with little warning, said Joseph Christoff, director of the GAO's international affairs and trade section and the report's principal author.
Mr. Annan, who took office in 1997 backed by a U.S. government critical of U.N. expenditures, has made reform of his sprawling bureaucracy a priority. The U.S. is the largest single contributor to the U.N., providing 22% of its $1.5 billion annual budget. The GAO conducted its eight-month review of personnel, budgeting, public information and human rights at the request of two Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and Michael Enzi of Wyoming. The GAO noted the long history of U.N. reform efforts, observing that as far back as 1947, a Senate committee found "serious problems of overlap, duplication of effort, weak coordination and proliferating mandates and programs" in the then two-year-old organization.
Of 88 reforms Mr. Annan proposed in 1997, 60% had been fully implemented, the report found. That included 70% of those that did not require approval from member governments. Only 44% of those requiring such approval had taken full effect, the GAO found. Of another 66 reform measures Mr. Annan proposed in 2002, 38%, had been fully implemented, the report said.
The GAO praised efforts to streamline personnel recruiting and cut back on paperwork, something the Secretariat has accomplished by moving away from paper forms to computerized and Web-based systems. It also cited consolidation of the U.N.'s public information centers, which had been criticized for producing duplicative materials and staffing eight offices in Europe, where residents can easily get information over the Internet, rather than in developing countries where people remain more dependent on publications and broadcasts. A single office in Brussels now serves Europe.
Some of the reforms have created problems of their own, the GAO found. Under the previous paper-based recruitment system, the U.N. had about 100 applicants for each vacancy. Now that recruitment has gone online, wider access to job postings has brought about 1,000 applications for each vacancy, raising costs for screening candidates. "When the secretary-general has the authority to make these reforms, he's very successful," Mr. Christoff said. But it's a different story, he said, when approval of the General Assembly, where each of the 191 member countries has an equal vote, is required. The report notes that the body failed to adopt reforms such as shortening its annual meeting, focusing debates on a few priority areas and instituting time limits for all new programs.
The GAO noted that the assembly has taken some steps, such as its decision in December to discontinue 192 publications Mr. Annan said were unnecessary. And it did not let the Secretariat entirely off the hook, finding that follow-through on several reform goals remained spotty. "Given that the secretary-general does not provide regular, comprehensive reports on the overall status and impact of reform, it is difficult to hold staff accountable for implementing these reforms and their impact is unclear," the report found.
The U.N. largely agreed with the GAO's findings. In written comments, Catherine Bertini, undersecretary-general for management at the U.N., said that while "the U.N. has shown itself quite capable of adaptation and modernization...development of a results-based culture is a longer-term challenge, requiring a behavioral shift on the part of U.N. staff as well as...the General Assembly."
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