UNITED NATIONS: U.N. Accused of Reverse Discrimination

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 1996 (IPS) - A U.N. watchdog body is accusing the United Nations of practising reverse discrimination by hiring women over men as it rushes towards gender parity in the organisation.

The Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) says that while it concedes the need to improve the status of women within the United Nations, it deplores the haste with which the policy is being implemented. The JIU even charges that current measures violate the U.N. charter.

“In his attempts to push ahead to gender parity by the year 2000, the Secretary-General (Boutros Boutros-Ghali) has introduced a number of measures, which give automatic preferences based on gender and therefore, discriminatory,” says Fatih Bouayad-Agha, a member of the JIU.

A new policy guidance issued by Boutros-Ghali singles out the need for the Secretariat to identify “women candidates who meet the minimum qualifications for any vacant post.”

Bouayad-Agha told U.N. delegates this week that the new guidelines leave too many loopholes and too many opportunities for abuse.

“If some discriminatory actions (against women) were taken in the past, they represented, at worst, only violations of the then- existent equitable gender policy. Presently, however, with the introduction of different criteria for recruitment, placement and promotion based on gender, discrimination has been institutionalised (in the U.N. system),”he said.

The U.N. Group on Equal Rights for Women dismisses the charges of the JIU.

Lorraine Rickard-Martin, the president of that body, says the charges made in the JIU report are dated and invalid because they have been superseded by new administrative rules.

She told IPS that the U.N. Administrative Tribunal had very recently “reaffirmed that women have the right to affirmative action as long as their qualifications are equal or superior to that of men.”

But the Joint Appeal Board and the U.N. Administrative Tribunal have received a number of protests by male staffers seeking redress against “gender discrimination”. Proponents of this argument point to the U.N. Charter.

Article 8 of the Charter says that “the United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.” Article 101.3 says that “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.”

Bouayad-Agha also points out that the fastest promotions in the U.N. system are not always linked with competence and efficiency.

“Furthermore, recent times have witnessed a drastic curtailment of the promotions of male staff as they increasingly come up against stiff female competition buttressed by comprehensive preferential measures,” he told delegates this week. Bouayad-Agha points out that the special measures giving automatic preferences to women are redundant, “if the aim of the system is to recruit, place and promote the best as required by the charter and if a woman’s qualifications are superior.”

Former Congresswoman Bella Abzug, president of the New York- based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), told IPS that 50-50 gender parity is an old commitment made by Boutros-Ghali.

“To suggest it is reverse discrimination is an old myth,” Abzug said, adding that whenever there have been attempts at affirmative action, the charges of reverse discrimination have cropped up.

“This is just an old canard,” she said, adding that gender balance does not mean “supporting incompetence.”. The charges made in the JIU report, she added, “are totally outrageous.”

The U.N. Secretariat worldwide has a staff of more than 14,000, of which about 4,830 are based in New York. Of this, only 2,514 are professional posts, including those at the management and decision-making levels. Of the 2,514, only 882 or about 35.1 percent of the Secretariat’s professional staff are women. In 1994, the percentage was 32.6 percent. In 1995, it was 33.5 percent, up from 23.1 percent in 1985.

Boutros-Ghali has said that by the year 2000 he wants the U.N. professional staff to be evenly divided between men and women. In a report released last month, the Secretary-General, however, admitted that his goal now appears “elusive.”

A U.N. committee expressed concern last month that the goal of 50-50 gender distribution — especially at policy and decision- making levels — might not be met. Three U.N. departments have so far met the goal.

A draft resolution adopted by the committee calls on the Secretary-General “to continue creating a gender-sensitive environment and to make sure that individual managers are held accountable for implementing his strategic plan.”

Dennis Halliday, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management, says the Secretariat has never given any “discriminatory directions that lesser qualified women candidates should be given preference over male colleagues of superior qualifications.”

Halliday says that in 1995, 56 percent of the promotions in the organisation went to male staff members, with 52 percent having gone to men so far this year.

“Therefore, the so-called reverse discrimination is neither the policy nor the reality of the U.N. Secretariat,” he added.