Maybe The World Is Ending Tomorrow: U.N. Sec.-Gen. Tears Into Top Officials Over Bureaucratic Bog
By Joseph Abrams - (FOX)
At a closed-door meeting late last month in Turin, Italy, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon blasted his top officials, accusing them of crippling the world body through a combination of self-interest, petty squabbling and egoism.
“We all know the U.N. is a huge bureaucracy,” Ban told the assembled senior officials. “Coming here, 20 months ago, that prospect did not bother me. …
“Then I arrived in New York. There is bureaucracy, I discovered — and then there is the U.N.”
Ban’s Aug. 29 remarks, which were posted on a U.N. watchdog Web site and confirmed by FOX News to be accurate, came just weeks ahead of the Sept. 16 opening of the U.N. General Assembly, and less than a month before a high-level event convoked by Ban to promote the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. That program is intended to dramatically cut world poverty, promote the status of women and reduce illness, especially HIV/AIDS, by 2015.
With all those looming deadlines, Ban told his top officials that he was frustrated by the foot-dragging within the U.N. as it struggles toward the halfway point of its Millennium project, announced in 2000.
“We get too bogged down in internal or bureaucratic technicalities,” he told the heads of 27 U.N. organizations, funds and programs known as the U.N. System Chief Executives Board for Coordination.
“We waste incredible amounts of time on largely meaningless matters.”
Since taking office nearly two years ago, Ban has publicly taken stands against internal corruption and for greater efficiency within the U.N. bureaucracy.
Ban’s method was his own example. He took the unprecedented step in January 2007 of making his personal finances entirely public and urged other top officials to do the same, and of announcing his intention to run system-wide audits to look for violations of U.N. financial rules throughout the organization.
But he has evidently been frustrated and hamstrung by bureaucratic resistance to his initiatives, which have led to less than impressive results and, in some cases, to various parts of the U.N. declaring themselves exempt from central Secretariat control and oversight.
“I tried to lead by example,” Ban said, noting his embrace of mobility inside the U.N. and his nearly complete replacement of entrenched workers on his staff. “Nobody followed.”
Ban called on the officials to address stagnation, and announced the launch of a program to enforce mobility and regulate worker turnover, which he said was nearly nonexistent.
“We must acknowledge how resistant we are to change,” he said. “It cripples us in our most important job: to function as a team.”
Ban told his department heads that they “squabble among themselves over posts and budgets and bureaucratic prerogatives as though as they somehow owned them,” and he prescribed a series of simple measures to combat what he called self-interest and turf wars that hamper the U.N.’s effectiveness.
If that doesn’t lead to a more efficient organization, Ban warned, he may resort to a dramatic staff shakeup. He might “mobilize by fiat and simply direct [U.N. departments] to simply swap 20 percent of their staff.”
It remains to be seen whether Ban’s cajoling will have any effect — or whether he will go through with the “shock therapy” that he jokingly threatened to impose on his staff.
(h/t BK)
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Fire them all!!!!
September 9th, 2008 at 4:08 pmso this has nothing to do with the fact that the thias are saying the swedish are going to end the world the same day as this guy?
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/tops…ewsid=30082824
September 9th, 2008 at 4:21 pmEvery single member of the U.N. feels invincible. They all have diplomatic immunity and every nation in the world with enough power to challenge is already in the club.
One cannot lead people that do not want to be led. I feel a little sorry for this guy. He’s like that passionate english literature teacher in high school that’s desperately trying to make the students care about the material, but the “cool kids” have more control over the classroom than the teacher, and we all know how that turns out.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:25 pmThe US needs to get out of the UN, deport all reps from unfriendly countries, stop giving diplomatic immunity, give the building to the homeless. Then the US should form a new Democratic United Nations just for democratic countries and tell, Putin, Chavez, Ortega, Ths Saudis, Imadickwad, and any other world leader who bad mouths us to GTAFF.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:29 pmThe US needs to get out of the UN, deport all reps from unfriendly countries, stop giving diplomatic immunity, give the building to the homeless. Then the US should form a new Democratic United Nations just for democratic countries and tell, Putin, Chavez, Ortega, The Saudis, Imadickwad, and any other world leader who bad mouths us to GTAFF.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:30 pmSounds good. A UN secretary-general wanting to clean up the place. I wish him well.
An even better solution: shut it completely down and get rid of it. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that, though.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:46 am