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POLITICS: Developing Nations Fault UN Reform Plan

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 10 2005 (IPS) - The 132-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing nations, is heading for a political showdown with the U.N. Secretariat over its proposed plans to revitalise the administrative infrastructure of the beleaguered world body.

As part of a mostly U.S.-pressured reform of the U.N. Secretariat – which has been accused of mismanaging the 68-billion-dollar, now-defunct oil-for-food programme in Iraq – Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed the creation of a new Ethics Office and an Independent Oversight Committee, primarily to prevent fraud and corruption in the U.N. system.

Additionally, Annan is planning to establish a Rule of Law Unit in the Secretariat, and also to review the relevance of several committees and U.N. bodies, which he thinks have outlasted their usefulness or their original mandates.

But the chairman of the Group of 77, speaking on behalf of 132 developing countries and China, has challenged the need for new layers of bureaucracy.

Ambassador Stafford Neil of Jamaica has also implicitly accused the Secretariat of trying to bypass the U.N.’s Fifth Committee, which deals with administrative and budgetary matters, and the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), in the proposed reform exercise.

These committees are the two most powerful in the world body because they sit in judgment over all budgetary matters, deciding which programmes should survive and which should die.

At a closed-door meeting of the G77 last week, Neil told delegates that Annan should be told in clear terms that his job is not that of a chief executive officer and that the United nations cannot be run like a U.S. or a multinational corporation.

“The United Nations is made up of 191 members – and all of us have a stake in how it is run,” he said.

In a letter to Jan Eliasson, president of the 191-member General Assembly, Neil says that member states have a crucial role to play in the establishment of any new U.N. bodies, which in turn are also dependent on “budgetary implications”.

“The Secretariat should exercise caution in dealing with such sensitive issues, which could be regarded as intervention in the intergovernmental process,” he adds.

He says Annan’s decision to go ahead with the creation of an Ethics Office “raises serious concerns” as it represents a departure from the agreement reached at a summit meeting of world leaders in mid-September.

“The expected procedure in this case is for all details, not just the budgetary implications, to be submitted to the General Assembly for its consideration in accordance with existing rules and procedures,” Neil said.

Since there are several oversight bodies in the U.N. system, including the Office of Internal Oversight Services and the Joint Investigating Unit, the creation of an independent oversight committee would not only cause “overlapping mandates” but also result in “more inefficiency and confusion in the functions of similar entities”, the letter said.

An Asian diplomat told IPS that the thrust of the G77 letter is that both Annan and the Secretariat are not only arrogating powers that do not belong to them, but also short-circuiting established procedures.

He pointed out that since the United Nations has recently come under fire, particularly at the hands of U.S. Congressmen and neoconservative groups in the United States, “the Secretariat is bending over backwards to do some house cleaning”.

And in the process, he said, it is trying to take on the powers assigned to member states – by accident or by design.

The letter says the Secretariat has also undertaken the task of reviewing U.N. mandates older than five years. But this should not be a Secretariat-led process.

“The role of the Secretariat is to facilitate the review by all organs and not to undertake the review itself, which is the purview of the General Assembly and other relevant organs,” it said.

In a passing shot at U.S.-inspired reforms, the letter said that “it is imperative to stress that this pertains only to those mandates older than five years, and should be conducted in an objective manner and not influenced by national political agendas”.

Asked for his comments, Assembly President Eliasson said the G77 letter mainly addresses the secretary-general’s report on “Implementation of decisions from the 2005 World Summit Outcome for action by the Secretary-General.”

The issues raised primarily fall within the purview of the Secretariat, Eliasson told IPS.

As part of the follow-up and implementation of the 2005 World Summit Outcome, informal consultations of the plenary of the General Assembly on management reform are planned to start soon.

Within the framework of these consultations, which will be headed by two co-chairs, member States will have the opportunity to discuss a range of management issues, including those raised in the letter submitted by G77 and China, Eliasson added.

“As I have stated in the informal plenary meeting on 7 November, the role of the Fifth Committee and ACABQ is crucial for the consideration of matters falling within their areas of competence,” he said.