RESTORING ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE UNITED NATIONS

By Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu and - - Reprint | | Print |

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GENEVA, Nov 2 2007 (IPS) - For the first time in its six decades of existence, the United Nations\’ internal system of administrative justice has been significantly reformed, writes Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, a member of the Redesign Panel on the United Nations System of Administration of Justice. The author writes that in the new system, independent judges with legal training and real judicial powers will review and issue decisions that are binding even on the Secretary-General, who was previously considered essentially above UN administrative law. Justice – including alternative methods of dispute resolution such as mediation — will be accessible not just for UN staff in New York, Geneva, and Vienna, but also personnel in far-flung field outposts. There is still some distance to travel before the new system formally comes into effect in early 2009. But perhaps the innovative reforms will ultimately help create the culture of accountability in the UN that is so necessary if the organisation is to attract stronger political support. In addition, without this kind of reform, it might be impossible to achieve others – including restructuring the Security Council in a manner that reflects the realities of the 21st century rather than those of 1945.

Then in 2006, the reform process moved to address an equally fundamental question, that of accountability inside the United Nations Secretariat, after the General Assembly asked then Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint an independent panel of senior experts to redesign the organisation’s internal accountability system. It was called the Redesign Panel on the System of Administration of Justice in the United Nations

In December 2005, the Secretary-General selected me to serve on this body. The other members were a retired Australian supreme court judge, a Canadian appeals court judge, an Egyptian professor of international law and former judge of the International Court of Justice (the World Court), and a former foreign minister of Peru.

The panel, the work of which was seen as a fundamental component of management reform in the UN, would work for six months in New York and submit its recommendations to the General Assembly. It was to address the question: what kind of organisation or workplace is the United Nations? Those who know the UN well know that this question is as central to the reform process as any other.

Beyond its high ideals, the United Nations is an organisation run by mortals. Most UN officials are well-motivated and act with the objectivity and sense of responsibility you would expect of diplomats and international civil servants. Some senior managers, however, suffer from delusions of unlimited power over their underlings, which sometimes leads to administrative decisions that violate due process. Attempts to seek redress internally can take years, by which time the manager in question is often long gone. There are episodes of discrimination. Conflicts and tensions frequently develop among UN officials even as they mediate the world’s wars and render humanitarian and development assistance around the world . A few staffers have committed acts for which, in some countries, jail time would be a real prospect. You will find analogous situations in every large organisation, public or private.

Safeguards and mechanisms to insure accountability are essential to prevent or address abuse and resolve conflicts. In an organisation of 55,000 staff members from nearly 200 countries and as many cultures, the need for an effective system of accountability and dispute resolution takes on a unique urgency. And when it comes to accountability, the real question the Redesign Panel had to address was: can United Nations staffers find justice in an international organisation that has immunity in international law and so cannot be sued in the courts of any country? And can both senior managers and staffers be held accountable for administrative and financial abuse or other misconduct?

Like most multilateral organisations, the United Nations has an internal system of administrative justice, put in place in the 1940s shortly after it was established, when the body had but a few hundred staff members. Today, for a vastly larger organisation, this system is deeply dysfunctional. The Panel found it slow, inefficient, and ineffective. The UN Secretariat is essentially unaccountable.

In addition to this deficit of justice and accountability, the UN suffers from another flaw: its failure, in the words of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, to “practice what it preaches”. If the United Nations promotes human rights around the world — as it should — why should the scales of justice be out of kilter inside the organisation?

The next question addressed by the panel was how far it could go in recommending reforms to the existing accountability framework. By the time we had completed interviews with staff members, diplomats of various regional groups at the UN, senior managers and staff unions, it became clear that the system was so broken, and the stakes so high, that the whole accountability framework and its mechanisms needed to be redesigned and re-engineered.

In mid-2006 the Redesign Panel recommended to the General Assembly a fundamental and comprehensive overhaul of the internal justice system. Surprising many observers and sceptics, the Assembly recently approved the recommendations for a new accountability framework – an outcome that Under-Secretary-General for Management Alicia Barcena described as “a landmark decision that will have a profound effect on the inner workings of the United Nations for many years to come”.

This is the first time in its six decades of existence that the UN’s recourse system has been significantly reformed. That this was accomplished in the charged atmosphere of competing national interests that has surrounded the reform question is remarkable. Previous attempts to establish an effective and independent accountability system in the United Nations administration failed.

Moreover, the “balance of power” that an independent internal accountability framework in the UN creates should be of more than a passing interest to the governments of developing countries, some of which see UN reform as yet another round in the power struggle over who will control the world body – the rich countries that provide most of the UN’s budget and want to shape the UN in their own image (and frequently in their national interests), or the multitudes of poorer countries that make up two-thirds of the organisation and want to retain influence in how it is managed.

In this new system, independent judges with legal training and real judicial powers will review and issue decisions that are binding even on the Secretary-General, who was previously considered essentially above UN administrative law and could only be served with non-binding recommendations. Justice – including alternative methods of dispute resolution such as mediation — will be accessible not just for UN staff in New York, Geneva, and Vienna, but also personnel in far-flung field outposts from Afghanistan to Sudan who are the real face of the United Nations in the 21st century.

There is still some distance to travel before the new system formally comes into effect in early 2009. But perhaps the innovative reforms recommended by the Redesign Panel will ultimately help create the culture of accountability in the United Nations that is so necessary if the organisation is to attract stronger political support. In addition, without this kind of reform, it might be impossible to achieve others – including restructuring the Security Council in a manner that reflects the realities of the 21st century rather than those of 1945. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)