HABITAT-UNITED NATIONS: Headquarters Needs a New Lease On Life

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Philip Ngunjiri

NAIROBI, May 9 1997 (IPS) - The 16th session of the Commission on Human Settlements (Habitat) ended here this week with members recommending budgetary cuts to breathe a new lease on life into the United Nations body.

They also urged the head of Habitat, Dr Wally N’Dow, to harmonise the budget and spending with work programme priorities as stipulated by the Commission and to revise the future income estimates on a realistic basis to match expenditure with actual income.

These are ways of “streamlining the Centre’s financial and administration management,” the committee said.

The organisation’s expenditure and commitments for the year 1996-97 were reduced from the proposed 24 million U.S. Dollars to 23 million U.S. Dollars. The committee further reduced the expenditure for the year 1998-99 to 21 million U.S. Dollars.

The 16th session, which began Apr. 28 and ended on May 7, discussed Habitat’s role in the implementation of the ‘Habitat Agenda’ – The Global Plan of Action adopted at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements held in Instanbul Turkey last June.

It also reviewed a report on Habitat produced by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). The OIOS report was one of two tabled before the Commission’s meeting.

Following a one-week visit to Habitat’s headquarters here last September, the OIOS report noted that Habitat is at “a critical point of its life, suffering significant shortcomings in its management system, staffing and approach”.

It also said that the Centre was lacking in leadership and had a lop-sided organisational structure that had caused unnecessary duplications in responsibilities and blurred accountability.

The UN body also had a unilateral, personalised decision-making process, and there was a lack of commitment by the management, which resulted in a weak and dispersed internal control system of the Centre’s resources, the OIOS report said.

Dr N’Dow refuted the allegations in the report, which was prepared at the request of United Nations headquarters in New York. He said the findings were unsubtantiated and were factually erroneous.

“The report leads any careful reader to the conclusion that the allegations in the body of the report are not sufficiently substantiated and that the facts have not been established accurately enough to enable its authors to be similarly categorical in their recommendations,” said Dr N’Dow.

Dr N’Dow who took office two-and-half years ago, accused the Oversight Office of dismissing his efforts to make factual corrections before the report was published.

He said the financial management issues date back 20 years, and urged those reviewing the report to be careful “as people’s careers and records were at stake”.

Dr N’Dow, who holds the rank of Assistant Secretary-General within the United Nations, admitted that some administrative matters had been overshadowed by preparations for the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) and its pre-conference activities.

“The conference took its toll on our small staff and presented us with challenges we had not faced before, not least of which was limited resources,” he added.

Besides the OIOS document, another report sponsored by the governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, South Africa and Uganda was tabled before the 16th session.

“One of the biggest threats to the Centre is the deteriorating financial situation both in the short and the long term,” said the second report. It blamed the financial crisis on poor funding, a decline in the availability of funds that are not tied to specific programmes and weak administrative systems.

The report recommended that an external facilitator be brought in to manage the Centre through the transition period. The individual would report directly to the UN Secretary-General and would have powers to make important decisions in co-operation with the Centre’s Executive Director.

Several member governments agreed that efforts would have to be made to revitalise Habitat.

Speaking on behalf of the G-77 and China, the delegate from India said that while management and financial matters deserved the Commission’s attention, its main interest was to ensure that the work programme and budget are implemented by a Centre that is capable.

The Netherlands delegation noted that the last three years had been particularly difficult for Habitat as the Centre was burdened with organising a global conference.

They added that the main concern of the Commission at this session was the implementation of the Habitat Agenda, and the Netherlands urged Habitat to come up with its own proposals for restructuring.

A statement from the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attending the 16th Session noted that the assessments of Habitat presented at the Commission were flawed in that the analysis had been based on a limited number of opinions and responses.

“What is missing from these assessments is a detailed examination of the actual programmes of work of the Centre and their impact, and the incorporation and views of the various partners and beneficiaries themselves; these elements and perspectives must be reviewed, ” the NGO statement said.

Dr N’Dow offered Habitat’s full support in carrying out any recommendations made by the Commission. He said that the Centre, which serves as secretariat for the Commission, was fully prepared to engage in consultation with member states, as it was “morally bound to see that the Habitat Agenda sees the light of the day”.