POLITICS: U.N. Projects Must Produce or Perish

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 1998 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants all future projects funded by the United Nations either to produce – or perish.

“We are proposing time-limits – or sunset provisions – for initiatives involving new organisational structures or major commitments of funds,” Annan said during a debate this week.

Once a mandate expires, all funding will cease unless it is explicitly renewed, said the Secretary-General who believes there is an urgent need for ‘sunset provisions’ because the world body is saddled with longstanding mandates and projects that continue to be funded every year – whether or not they produce results.

The practice of placing time-limits “would help end the built- in bias towards institutional inertia that has afflicted this Organisation for too long,” Annan said.

“We strongly support the Secretary-General’s view that any new inter-governmental mandates would be subject to sunset provisions unless otherwise determined, and would like to see existing programs so reviewed, as well,” U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson declared.

The United states not only wants time-limits on new initiatives but also on existing General Assembly-mandated projects and operations, some of which are two to three decades old and continue to be funded with the approval of the Assembly. “This is consistent with establishing priorities and an effective managerial culture throughout the Organisation,” Richardson told delegates.

British Ambassador John Weston said any new initiative should be subjected to time-limits. Therefore, he supported the proposal for sunset provisions. “Evaluation studies of programmes in the past had not addressed the question of the continuing validity of those programmes. Action should be taken to correct that problem,” he said.

On Monday, Annan asked the 185-member General Assembly to approve his proposal for time-limits as part of an ongoing radical restructuring of the United Nations. “I propose to you that we begin a quiet revolution to transform the United Nations: its leadership, its structures, its performances,” he said.

“Procedures and rules are being simplified. Administrative costs are being reduced. Common services are being extended, and an electronic United Nations has become a reality.”

Above all else, Annan also pointed out, a fundamental review of human resource management is under way, with the objective of strengthening the staff of the United Nations. The net result is as it should be: a more productive and effective Organisation, he added.

The sunset provisions, however, were challenged by Pakistan which wants some longstanding U.N. peacekeeping operations to continue “since the issues they were called upon to address had not yet been resolved.”

Khalid Aziz Babar of Pakistan told the General Assembly Monday that his country could not accept time limits on U.N. peacekeeping missions already established and currently underway. He specifically referred to the U.N. Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) based in Jerusalem and the U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), two of the U.N.’s oldest peacekeeping operations.

UNTSO was created by the Security Council in June 1948 to observe the truce in Palestine and the cease-fire in the Suez Canal area and Golan Heights following the Six Day Arab-Israeli War of June 1967. The United Nations has spent more than 350 million so far on UNTSO.

UNMOGIP was established in April 1948 to supervise the cease- fire between India and Pakistan in the disputed State of Jammu and Kashmir. The United Nations has appropriated more than 75 million dollars so far on UNMOGIP.

In 1996, then U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright called for the elimination of two U.N. committees as part of an attempt to reduce overheads in the financially-ailing Organisation.

Albright said that U.N. bodies such as the Committee on Information, created in 1979, and the Adhoc Committee on the Indian Ocean, established even earlier in 1972, no longer serve any meaninginful purpose. The Indian Ocean Committee was set up to implement a General Assembly resolution calling for the establishment of a Zone of Peace in the Indian Ocean.

A proposed global conference was scheduled and re-scheduled no less than eight times, but it never got off the ground.

The three key members of the 44-member Committee withdrew in 1989 arguing that superpower rivalry in the Indian Ocean has been “substantially diminished” with the end of the Cold War and, therefore, there was no justification for a Zone of Peace.

The Committee, which has been holding two substantive sessions every year, is not scheduled to meet this year, for the first time in nearly 20 years. Each session cost the United Nations about 600,000 dollars.