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Between politics and efficiency: United Nations reform and conflict of interests

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 1995 by Joachim Muller

The Charter of the United Nations distinguishes between the maintenance of world peace and security and the promotion of international cooperation in solving economic, social and humanitarian problems. As far as the organization itself is concerned, a distinction should be drawn between the level of governments - bodies comprising member-state representatives such as the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) - and that of the Secretariat headed by the Secretary-General. The Secretariat reports to the aforementioned bodies, prepares negotiations and executes their decisions.

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In the first years after the founding of the UN, the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council were given substructures in the form of committees; the Secretariat evolved its own work structures. At the same time, there was decentralization from New York to regional centres in Geneva, Bangkok, Addis Ababa and Santiago de Chile. The first specialized agency, the children's charity UNICEF, was set up in 1946, and in the course of that year several other organizations and programmes came into being.

The first decisive reform in the realm of security was the development of peacekeeping measures. The UN Charter envisages only the peaceful settlement of disputes and the use of enforcement measures against the will of the states concerned. Peacekeeping troops - as a rule deployed to oversee a ceasefire - do however operate with the agreement of the parties to the conflict. The UN's first experiences with the new peacekeeping instrument came in 1949 in the Middle East and one year later in the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan.

With intensified East-West antagonism during the 1950s the majority which then prevailed was able to isolate the Soviet Union and other socialist states. The Soviet Union criticized both General Assembly decisions and their implementation by the Secretariat as Western-dominated. This conflict of interests came to a head over resolutions adopted in connection with the Korean crisis in the early 1950s. The Soviet Union refused to cooperate with Secretary-General Trygve Lie of Norway, which ultimately led to his resignation in 1953.

His successor, Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden, was also accused of a policy bias against Soviet interests. The socialist states charged the UN Operation in the Congo (ONUC, 1960-64) with staffing the Secretariat with persons from NATO countries while rejecting persons from socialist countries in technical cooperation with developing countries, which in any case served only to further the influence of Western industrialized nations over the countries of the third world. These reservations led to a major crisis when the socialist countries refused to join in sharing the costs of the Congo operation or to make any further payments for the Blue Berets stationed in the Middle East since 1956. As no political solution was found, the General Assembly appointed an eight-member group of experts in 1961 to work out suggestions.

This group was unable to agree on far-reaching recommendations. Their only suggestion for improving the efficiency of the Secretariat was to curb the growth of expenditures and cut the number of posts. The Soviet expert made a spectacular demand to curtail the Secretary-General's independence by replacing the post with a "troika" of one representative each from the socialist states, the Western military alliance and the non-aligned states. Both the expert group and the Western majority in the General Assembly rejected that suggestion. Two decisive changes were subsequently agreed upon: a greater share of Secretariat posts for persons from socialist countries and an informal agreement that the cost of the Blue Berets was henceforth to be borne by the countries providing them.

Decolonization created rapid growth in UN membership, and by 1965 membership stood at 118, twice as many as at its founding. In the eyes of the new states from Africa and Asia, rapid development was to be the economic continuation of the policy of decolonization. The UN was to help them to complete their independence processes. Development policy became increasingly important and led to the creation of new bodies and programmes, particularly the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), established in 1965, which was to provide the framework for technical cooperation with the third world.

A group headed by Sir Robert Jackson was appointed to look into the efficiency of the UN system and its capabilities in development questions. Among structural and organizational shortcomings singled out by its report were:

* lack of a single organization devoted to development cooperation;

* lack of global planning and priority-setting;

* delays in project execution;

* neglect of follow-up;

* absence of performance appraisal;

* inadequately qualified staff;

* outdated management methods.

The Jackson report suggested that ECOSOC should be strengthened to become the central forum for economic questions and UNDP should be given a coordinating role in the UN system. All funding for development projects should be channelled to the specialized agencies through UNDP. Most countries supported this recommendation, though the specialized agencies rejected it as a curtailment of their independence. The coordinating function of UNDP decreased even further in the ensuing years. While UNDP still coordinated as much as 65 percent of total UN development funds in 1975, that share has dwindled to some 30 percent today. Nor did the plan to develop ECOSOC into a policy centre come to fruition. Here, too, the specialized agencies were keen on safeguarding their independence and member states showed very little interest. A hoped-for doubling of funding also failed to materialize.

Between politics and efficiency: United Nations reform and conflict of interests

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 1995 by Joachim Muller

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