Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crosette

In a surprisingly positive report on changes at the United Nations, the United States General Accounting Office has told Congress that the administration of Secretary General Kofi Annan has made considerable strides in improving management of the organization.

The report was prepared this month for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where criticisms of the United Nations have been frequent and shrill. It lays out for Congress the complexities of the United Nations structure and, against that background, differentiates between reform goals that a secretary general and the United Nations secretariat can meet alone and those that are dependent on the decisions of 188 member nations.

United Nations officials say that they have been trying to make this case to impatient members of Congress for years as some demands for reform from Washington have moved into the territory of the impossible in New York.

The report, by an investigative arm of Congress, found that where there are serious failures or lags in putting changes into practice -- in devising programs and their budgets more concretely, or in monitoring results -- the shortcomings are often related to fuzzy instructions from the General Assembly. The body is a parliament of nations, where international politics often blocks decisiveness.

"In our examination of General Assembly resolutions for 1997 and 1998 that required secretariat action," the report says, "we judged 20 percent in each year to be too open-ended or vague to determine what objectives the secretary general was expected to accomplish."

And the report concludes: "According to U.N. and U.S. officials, some resolutions are vague and open-ended because members do not agree on what outcome is desired. A vague resolution is the compromise." The study includes as examples the creation of broad assignments, like ending human rights abuses or fostering sustainable development, without saying exactly what it was that the assembly wanted the secretariat to accomplish, or how.

The General Assembly, which often pits a majority of developing nations against the richer industrial countries, has also stymied the secretary general's attempts to build specific time limits -- "sunset" provisions -- into United Nations programs.

The report credits Mr. Annan's administration, which began in 1997, with improving coordination among the organization's departments and programs, at least at higher levels, with the creation of a cabinet-style management team. The study also notes that the appointment of a deputy secretary general, for the first time in the organization's history, has given the United Nations a chief operating officer.

Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette, a Canadian, made the establishment of an organization-wide code of conduct a priority, the report noted. She was able to get it approved by the General Assembly in 1998.

In assessing peace and security issues, now at the center of criticisms of the United Nations, the report again drew a distinction between what the secretary general can accomplish and what problems lie beyond his capacity to solve.

"Although the senior management group and executive committee on peace and security have helped unify policy and integrate planning for the U.N.'s peace operations," the report said, "these reform initiatives do not address the overall capacity of the United Nations to manage, logistically support and respond to rapid changes in the demand for and scope of peace operations required by member states."

The General Accounting Office surveyors say they were told by both United Nations officials and member nations that the organization, under severe financial handicaps and with demands on it multiplying, "does not have the capability to manage the scope and scale of activity."

The report praises the United Nations mission in East Timor as an example of a mission fielded relatively quickly and efficiently because of good planning. In other missions, in the Mideast and Central America, however, the study team found less satisfactory coordination at lower levels, particularly between the United Nations' peacekeeping and political departments.

The report, "United Nations: Reform Initiatives Have Strengthened Operations, but Overall Objectives Have Not Yet Been Achieved," May 2000, is published by the U.S. General Accounting Office, P.O. Box 37050, Washington, D.C. 20013. First copy free; $2 for each additional copy. Orders by telephone: (202) 512-6000; fax 512-6061. The agency's home page on the web is www.gao.gov.