Global Policy Forum

by Michael Gurstein

Assoc. Professor, University College of Cape Breton, Canada
posted to the internet, 1 February 1997

Kofi Annan has now been confirmed as Secretary General of the UN. He must immediately begin to deal with a tangle of problems, most of which he has little direct power to resolve.

The first is money, the UN continues to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and many of its major suppliers have it on a cash only basis. It is not immediately evident that his selection will resolve the failure of the US to pay the dues which it owes to the Organization. Earlier attempts by the UN to placate the US--the appointment of the White House selected Joseph Connor as Under-Secretary for Administration, the creation of a GAO style Office of Internal Oversight, the move under UNDP Administrator Speth to consolidate the development agencies--have not had any evident effect in loosing the purse strings. The problem is of course, not that the US doesn't get what it wants, the problem is that there are multiple sources of demands (often conflicting or even in contradiction to one another) on the UN from the US, including the Whitehouse (and the Secretary of State), Congress (Jesse Helms) and even the US Mission representing the State Department who are acting in many cases almost independently of the Executive Branch.

At least one of the above don't believe that the UN should be reformed...they believe that it should be abolished and are prepared to use their control over the budget (and to a lesser degree US influence on appointments to the Organization) to promote this objective.

A second problem is personnel. The morale of the UN staff after roughly a decade of financial restriction (promotion and permanent contract restrictions, wage freezes and now limitations on the availablity of funds for travel and supplies) could hardly be lower. Besides this of course, there is the larger question of the quality and suitability of the existing staff in an environment where extraordinarily increasing demands are being placed and where recruitment is haphazard and designed for the UN of the 1950's rather than for the Second Millenium.

A third problem is the overall matter of the on-going structure of the Organization and what role it should/can play in the future. The relationship of the General Assembly (and thus the UN as an Organization) to the new global powerhouses--the World Trade Organization and the IMF/World Bank Bretton Woods group is a matter for discussion and resolution...democracy rules after a fashion in the GA, but decision making in the other bodies are much more shareholder/stakeholder processes with the OECD countries being very reluctant to share power in these fora.

Underlying this last issue of course, is the increasing chasm between rich and poor globally and particularly the on-going turbulence and economic catastrophe of sub-Saharan Africa. "Donor fatigue" and the changing aid/development zeitgeist/philosophy are forcing significant changes in the UN's approaches to these matters and will require some major restructuring in the very near future.

Associated with this is the role that non-governmental organizations can or should play in the deliberations and decision making of the a State dominated body such as the UN, but linked with this is the matter of making the NGO's themselves accountable, representative and responsible. Whether it is through current developments with NGO's (the evolution of the structures of "Civil Society") or through some other mechanism, there is the need in the very near future to re-think how in an age of mass and instant communication, wide-spread education and broad dispersal of economic power, the world governs itself and who is to be involved in this process.

And of course, over-arching all of these matters are the global problems for which the UN is the single most significant body for facilitating and co-ordinating collective responses--issues such as climate change, environmental degradation, the collapse of national structures, refugees and famine, intra-regional conflict, the globalization of trade (and economic competition) and so on--all of which require an effective and efficient and credible organizational/administrative framework for developing and implementing the means to respond.

Annan has a number of significant strengths as he undertakes the post. He knows the organization well and understands its weaknesses and its enduring strengths, not simply as an observer but as someone who has had to live with these for his working life.

He is acknowledged by those with direct experience, as being one of the half dozen (others say one or two) best managers in the UN Secretariat. My own experience was that his shop, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, was the best managed (in most areas the only effectively organized) unit in the entire Organization and he had the will, strength and tenacity to select good managers under him and then to protect them when the going got rough.

Whether he has the imagination and creativity to deal with the broader complexity of the UN's turbulent environment and to precipitate the kind of systemic evolution in UN structures of management and governance which the changing context requires remains to be seen.

The fact that he was able to facilitate the creation of the UN's modern peacekeeping management structures...(Under his watch for example the UN developed, almost invisibly, within the space of months between 1993 and 1994 the world's largest fleet of civilian aircraft and an army of almost 100,000 troops and more importantly the logistical support for this...) certainly bodes.well.

The Secretary General's job is perhaps the most difficult in the world, not because of its power but rather because the expectations are so great but the power is so little. Boutros Ghali failed in not because he wasn't up to the job, in the end no mere mortal would have been. He failed because he could not impose his own limitations and strengths on the job and on the expectations which his bosses placed on him. Annan will certainly be a better manager than was Boutros Ghali, whether in the end he can succeed where BBG failed however in the larger arena, is a question yet to be addressed.

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