SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES NEED FOR ACCOUNTABILITY, INTEGRITY, MOBILITY AND REAL SENSE OF POSSIBILITY IN UN STAFF AND MANAGEMENT
Press Release
SG/SM/7138
SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES NEED FOR ACCOUNTABILITY, INTEGRITY, MOBILITY AND REAL SENSE OF POSSIBILITY IN UN STAFF AND MANAGEMENT
19990920Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address on the occasion of Staff Day 1999, which was delivered in New York on 17 September:
It is a real pleasure to celebrate Staff Day with you. To all of you here in New York; to those joining us by teleconference; and to all other United Nations staff around the world, I would like to offer my highest praise for the superb and difficult work you are doing on behalf of the international community. Your commitment to the ideals of the United Nations is as strong and inspiring as ever.
In East Timor, the world has seen a shining example of the United Nations spirit in the dozens of staff members -- and especially the young people among them -- who volunteered to stay on in Dili even with the mission under siege. Colleagues of ours have been murdered. Others have been shot at and harassed. Exhausted staff members found reserves of strength they did not know they had, to help scared and suffering East Timorese who sought refuge in the United Nations compound.
Of course, East Timor is one of many places where United Nations staff are in the line of fire, yet carry out their work with great courage and creativity.
Those who staffed the advance mission in Kosovo left their homes and families on short notice and worked nearly round the clock to ensure an early, effective presence for the United Nations. Those who are there now continue to struggle, against formidable odds, to rebuild Kosovo as a multiethnic society. I am pleased to note that staff continue to volunteer for service in the Balkans, even as winter approaches.
We should be proud to have colleagues like these. They are showing the world the United Nations at its best. Some of them are back at Headquarters, and I think we should honour them with a round of applause for the good work they have done for us all. Their success is our success.
East Timor and Kosovo come first to mind for obvious reasons: these are high-profile, high-stakes operations that mean a great deal for the Organization's future. But I want to stress that all of you, in all your work across the globe -- a diverse staff on a diverse mission of peace -- are making tremendous contributions.
I want to say, first and foremost on this last Staff Day of the millennium, how grateful I am for your dedication and your support. You are giving your utmost, despite a sharp increase in attacks on United Nations personnel. You are doing so, despite chronic financial constraints. You are doing so, in the face of persistent misconceptions about our Organization and setbacks in the effort to build a real international community.
The world public want to believe in the United Nations. People continue to look to us as a unique and universal agent of peace and progress. For the world public to sustain that faith, we, the staff, must do the same. There is an essential link between morale and performance, and also between the confidence we feel and that which the world public feels able to place in us.
That is why we must show our dedication not only when the spotlight of the world media is upon us, but also when no one is watching.
We need confidence whether we are talking about disarmament or development, whether we are drilling a well in Guatemala, editing a report on the African economy, or providing interpretation for a meeting in Bangkok. We must always look for ways to do things better and more efficiently, be open to change, and willing to learn from each other.
Success depends on many factors, including some that are beyond our control. But many are well within it. Confidence is a matter of relationships and trust. And one of the key relationships in this house is the one between management and staff. If staff and management are pulling together, the results we seek will be that much closer. There is no better way to undermine performance and drain morale than for staff and management to treat each other as anything but partners.
Until recently, the United Nations has not, as an Organization, paid sufficient attention to developing our managerial skills or a culture of managerial excellence.
We have many fine and sensitive managers. But in selecting people for supervisory roles, we have tended to value such things as analytical skills, negotiating prowess and expertise in a given field. These are all vital qualities, but they are not enough to manage and inspire people.
I am glad to say that this is now changing. We have acknowledged our shortcomings. The message is getting out that managers are expected to be accessible and ready to share responsibility, and to be receptive to new ideas. We have put in place an array of courses and workshops for managers and supervisors, and will be expanding these programmes. Perhaps most important, we are creating the necessary mechanisms to hold managers accountable.
Managers also have a special responsibility to support their staff's development and career progress. Staff are a resource for the Organization, as a whole. Our younger staff, especially, are the managers of tomorrow -- and tomorrow will be here very quickly, given the many retirements that are due in the next decade.
This brings me, inevitably, to the question of mobility. It is important that staff, and young staff, in particular, be able to move around: among functions, between duty stations, and within the United Nations system. At the moment, however, there are too many constraints. Managers have legitimate concerns about fulfilling their mandates; staff worry that, while in theory we encourage mission service, in practice we penalize it in many ways. We need to look at the entire system and find the right balance among competing needs.
Accountability, integrity, mobility, a sense of real possibility: these are among the crucial ingredients that will give staff and management alike the confidence they need for rewarding careers.
As Secretary-General, and as a former head of human resources, I will continue pressing the Member States to do their part -- on the very public issues of financing and political will, and on the vital but less visible staff concerns that must be met if this house is to function well. In terms of the latter, for example, I have asked the General Assembly to reconsider its recent decision to link the concept of geographical distribution with the "G-to-P" exam.
There is also a considerable distance yet to go in our struggle to improve the status of women in the Secretariat. The global Secretariat is almost evenly balanced between men and women, but this masks major deficiencies. Women are now just over 37 per cent of all professionals, but remain under-represented at the senior levels.
And we should not be satisfied with simple numerical equality, for there is also an imbalance in the types of responsibilities given to women. We can and must do better. For these reasons, the special measures are being reissued and the Steering Committee has been reconstituted and will have its first meeting on Monday.
I will also continue to fight for improved staff security. On Monday, the United Nations Postal Administration will issue a set of stamps paying tribute to staff, who have lost their lives while serving the cause of peace. This is a commendable initiative, and I hope it will help get the message out about our mission and our need for the best possible protection in pursuit of it.
And since funding is key part of our ability to improve security, I intend to recommend to the General Assembly that a significant portion of the proceeds from the sale of these stamps be set aside in the budget for this purpose.
The Association of Former International Civil Servants has recently published a rather charming booklet in which former staff members recall some of their more memorable experiences.
One man remembered reporting back to Headquarters from a war zone in the 1970s by holding his phone out the window so that officials in New York could hear the rockets, grenades and gunfire.
Another recalled being in Normandy in 1944, when a page from a newspaper blew into his foxhole carrying a report about discussions being held in Dumbarton Oaks to found an organization to replace the League of Nations. This man vowed then and there to work for the new Organization, and ended up doing so for thirty years.
You, too, are carrying out memorable, valuable work that will no doubt find its way into a subsequent edition of this publication. Let us, together, give thanks for the opportunity to be part of this great and noble enterprise. Let us keep building an Organization in which people can place their trust. Together -- and only together -- we can fight the good fight.
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