Chapter in: A. M. Banerjee and M. R. Sharma (Eds.

), Reinventing the United

Nations. Prentice Hall of India, New Delhi-110001. 2007, (pp. 259-280).

CHAPTER 19
Corruption and Indiscipline in the United Nations
Michel Girodo *
Official inquiries, external investigations, and scrutiny by
international media into corruption in the United Nations indicate that there
are systemic deficiencies in the rule of law and in the management of human
resources in the Secretariat. They also confirm what anti-corruption experts
in general accept as three fundamental truths about the very nature of
corruption and its control. Firstly, even the noblest of institutions can
succumb to widespread corruption. Secondly, good intentions anchored in
values are not enough. At every level of the organization, subscribing to the
ideals and pledging loyalty to the principles of the United Nations Charter
are insufficient to guarantee the behavioural integrity and probity of staff.
Thirdly, rule of law, the principle intended to be a safeguard against
arbitrary governance, can fail to minimize corruption if the legal instruments
and institutions designed to regulate behaviour in a complex organization are
weak or insufficient.
Recent proposals for reforming the Secretariat, strengthening rule-oflaw mechanisms, and establishing an Ethics office bode well for the future
only if they follow through with a comprehensive and mutually reinforcing
institutional strategy of corruption control. Of particular concern, and one
that is addressed in this chapter, is that organizational reforms may fail to
surmount a certain entrenched bias in United Nations thinking and
functioning. While people are usually the intended beneficiaries of United
Nations treaties and accords, the organization has traditionally left the matter
of implementation of international legal instruments to the states themselves.
This political and diplomatic orientation to human affairs relegates human
beings to the role of distant objects in frameworks of legal mechanisms. This
attitude seems to have filtered down to the Secretariat where the person in
the form of a staff member has been equally dispossessed of adequate
structures, warrant and voice for governing its own affairs.
* Michel Girodo, Ph.D is Professor of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Girodo@uottawa.ca

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One of the challenges of reform in this area is finding the right

balance between a compliance-based approach and a values-based approach
to controlling corruption. Combining compliance- and values- based
approaches in a comprehensive set of anti-corruption standards has been
achieved by other international organizations,1 and implementing these on
the ground has shown some success.2 A successful reform must begin with
administrative corrections that support and strengthen rule-of- law
institutions, but these will be insufficient unless staff engage in an important
new discourse. This discourse, involving officials at every level of the
organization, must focus on the individual decision-making that follows
challenges to personal integrity after each member pledges allegiance to the
United Nations Charter and to organizational values.
Staff Regulation 1.2 (e) reads:
By accepting appointment, staff members pledge themselves to discharge
their functions and regulate their conduct with the interests of the
Organization only in view. Loyalty to the aims, principles and purposes of
United Nations as set forth in its Charter, is a fundamental obligation of all
staff members by virtue of their status as international civil servants.
Few staff know what this means, or understand the ethical, moral and
behavioural implications of endorsing this statement. There has been very
little effort by the Secretariat to incorporate core values into everyday
decision-making where value conflicts are present. We have seen the fallout
of having weak compliance-based mechanisms and neglecting the need to
strengthen the values-based anchors of integrity within all ranks. We have
seen how the virtues that keep staff loyal and respectful of the United
Nations Organizational Core Values3 have been undermined by an
ineffectual bureaucratic administration that long ago chose to sidestep its
responsibility for standing up for values and crafting a defined culture for its
staff. The basic argument in this Chapter is that the erosion of standards and
disregard of rules, which are recognized as precursors to misconduct and
corruption, can be traced in many respects to managers and senior leaders
who have been derelict in their responsibility for seeing to it that they, as
much as others, adhere to the pledge in Rule 1.2 (e).
This argument is supported by evidence from four levels of analysis
of corruption in the United Nations. The first level is a political one and is

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represented by a failure of staff at the highest level of the organization in the

Oil-for-Food scandal.
The second is at the operational level of the Secretariat and is best
illustrated by the fraud, waste and serious indiscipline problems of staff in
field operations in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). In
recent times similar problems of corruption have surfaced in the
procurement division of the Secretariat. These facts here are seen through
the eyes of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the office
responsible for safeguarding integrity.
A third level of analysis comes from the perspective of United
Nations staff in general. More than 6,000 staff around the world were asked
about corruption and organizational integrity within the United Nations, and
their answers speak of a system-wide failure in the rule of law.
The fourth analysis that links common elements of a political,
administrative and sociological perspective is a psychological one. A report
on an internal ethics audit conducted on OIOS auditors and investigators
themselves showed that they too have not been immune from corrosive
influences. The report describes staff mental struggles with integrity issues
in terms of subjective contests between pursuing their self-interests vs.
adhering to their sense of duty. The evidence produced suggests that the
same institutional, administrative and cultural factors that undermine
integrity elsewhere in the United Nations have seeped through to the
cognitive environment of OIOS staff, and this has impacted on the perceived
and actual integrity of that institution too.
A case for reform is presented, highlighting: (a) formal systems of
control represented by institutions that support the rule of law, in particular
investigation, prosecution and enforcement, and (b) informal systems of
control such as strengthening the learning of ethics codes, building decisionmaking competencies around values and loyalty to the organization, and the
broader use of non-judicial mechanisms for preventing and resolving
personal conflicts of ethics and loyalty The latter will require self-analysis
and reflexivity more typical of the social sciences, and may pose the greatest
challenge to a United Nations leadership more accustomed to seeing much
of its work as predominantly legal and/or political.

OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAMME
The United Nations Oil-for-Food programme, launched in 1996,
aimed to provide food, medicines, and humanitarian relief from the

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devastating effect of United Nations sanctions against the people of Iraq. By

2003, the year the programme ended, it had successfully reduced diseases
such as cholera, malaria, measles, mumps, meningitis, tuberculosis and
polio. It destroyed tens of thousands of unexploded ordnance and cleared
large areas of landmine-infested land. Its improved health services led to
reduced child mortality rates, and chronic malnutrition among young
children dropped by 50 per cent.
This measure of success, it has been said, came at an intolerable cost.
The Oil-for-Food programme came to be known as one of the worlds most
disgraceful frauds, and a scandalous example of corruption and
mismanagement, shocking global and local confidence in the integrity of the
United Nations. In theory, this could have been prevented, but in reality the
United Nations administration was far from willing to act with adequate
accountability and transparency.
It started in 1995 with Security Council Resolution 986, wherein
Saddam Hussein was to be allowed to sell a limited amount of Iraqi oil at
fair market value. The stipulation was that the proceeds of these sales were
to pay for humanitarian relief. The United Nations was to be the keeper of
the contract records and books, the controller of the bank accounts, and the
sole authority for the release of Saddam Husseins earnings to pay for
humanitarian imports to Iraq. To compensate itself for administering this
programme, the United Nations was to collect a 3 percent commission on
every barrel of Iraqi oil sold. This clear conflict of interest continued to go
unheeded even after the Security Council delegated the responsibility for the
humanitarian portion of the programme to the Secretariat and made it the
direct recipient of the commissions.
Saddam was to handpick his customers and offer them contracts for
Iraqi oil. But, in reality, he would bribe these companies by offering to sell
them his oil below market price on the condition that they gave kickbacks to
him as part of the profit they made when they sold their contracts on the
open world market. The companies were allowed to keep a transaction fee
($0.15 to $0.50 per barrel) as profit before refunding a percentage of this
commission to Saddam Hussein.
More than 2,000 companies that did business with the United Nations
Oil-for-Food programme were involved in bribes and kickbacks of one sort
or another over oil, food, medicines and services contracts. The Secretariat
pocketed commissions of about $1.9 billion, much of which had been
earmarked for administrative overheads for the humanitarian programme. In
addition to bribes and illegal commissions for goods and services to staff
inside the Secretariat, it is believed that altogether up to $20 billion went

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unaccounted for and was paid into bank accounts outside the United Nations
programme. As the Secretariat saw itself inadvertently complicit in a series
of scams, it protectively imposed secrecy on the programme activities and
shut the door on all transparency. OIOS conducted 58 audits. None but one
were revealed. Senior officials were alleged to have had a hand in bribery
and fraud.
The Oil-for-Food scandal was not just a bad one-off consequence of a
well-intentioned singular idea. It reflected more systemic and fundamental
problems within the United Nations ones that have to do with
insufficiencies in the institutions which support the rule of law, and ones that
invite ethical and moral conflicts at the highest levels of the administration.
Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oilfor-Food programme, made powerful recommendations for removing the
sources of some of these problems.3 Firstly, there was a need for
administrative reform that leads to a clear delegation of authority and
accountability and to the strengthening of the control environment. In this
regard, the lesson from many anti-corruption agencies around the world is
twofold. Firstly, unless the institution responsible for good governance and
probity is financially and politically independent, corruption of its leaders
seems inevitable no matter how noble the goals of the organization or the
pledge from the guardians of probity. Independence might have allowed
OIOS to make its reports public long before the Oil-for-Food programme got
out of hand. In the absence of independence, equally as when there is
complete independence, strong effective oversight mechanisms have to be
instituted to serve as a counterweight to and a check on OIOS powers.
Secondly, there is a need to ensure the personal integrity of staff in
sensitive positions through more effective recruitment, training and
monitoring. Beginning with the highest level of the organization, Volckers
report addressed the issue of personal integrity in terms of what is essentially
an internal contest between the business of realpolitik and the aspirations of
idealism in the United Nations, and he pointedly remarked on the
impracticality of having the secretary-general serve two masters.4 He argued
that the role of the secretary-general should clearly concentrate on making
the most of the diplomatic and political skills that were identified when
selecting the United Nations chief, and that this role should concentrate on
responsibilities in the domains of security and harmonization of international
relations. It should clearly exclude, however, any concern with matters of
internal administration. These, Volcker continued, should be left to a strong
chief operating officer, and in a telling remark, he added one that can have
the respect of general staff and be responsible for ensuring the integrity of

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people, systems and programmes within the United Nations. Policies based
on realpolitik are best confined to UNs work in dealing with the exercise of
power among nations, while a doctrine regarding persons and their interests
should follow from principles of social and organizational behaviour.

CORRUPTION IN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS

In 2005, OIOS undertook a comprehensive audit of peacekeeping
operations. Based on auditing methods, it was estimated that up to $1 billion
in contracts in Peace Keeping Operations (PKOs) involved fraud, waste and
financial irregularities. OIOS found systematic abuses, corrupt practices, and
a culture of impunity in the area of procurement.4 In a point-blank
declaration of failure in accountability, OIOS concluded that the United
Nations had simply abandoned any serious attempt to either look into
widespread accusations of mismanagement and fraud, or hold individuals
accountable for their actions. The control environment was out of control.
In 2006, OIOS looked deeper into DPKO and reported on the state of
discipline in field missions. It found that in 2003-2004 it had investigated
1,182 cases of violations of United Nations rules and regulations, including
sexual exploitation and abuse, and detected deep-rooted and longstanding
indiscipline problems. The control environment, around discipline issues,
was found to be grossly deficient. Policies, procedures, guidelines and their
enforcement were inadequate, as were the resources to prevent misconduct
and to enforce standards of conduct. There was a lack of accountability
among senior mission managers, an absence of clear policies and procedures
regarding discipline, an abuse of authority by senior staff, an application of
double standards for staff at different levels, including an insufficient
monitoring of discipline matters by headquarters. A survey of United
Nations staff members and United Nations volunteers revealed a noteworthy
level of dissatisfaction with the state of discipline in missions, as well as a
lack of confidence in the ability of the missions to address these problems.
OIOS concluded that the problem went deeper than failure to have
rules and to obey them. Shoring up the control environment with compliance
mechanisms and monitoring devices would not by itself suffice. OIOS stated
bluntly, There is a need to establish a clear link between United Nations
standards of conduct, the Organizations core values and competencies, and
the Charter of United Nations, which requires that United Nations staff
commit themselves to the highest standards of efficiency, competence and
integrity.5 OIOS further explicitly recommended that a comprehensive code

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of ethics specific to staff and focusing on the major ethics and misconduct
fault lines in their work be developed. It stated that a risk assessment of
indiscipline should be a part of the pre-mandate assessment for all missions,
and conducting regular risk assessment exercises to identify specific highrisk areas of misconduct in each mission should be the norm. Predeployment behavioural risk assessment of uniformed personnel, and
monitoring of high-risk personnel over the life of the mission, should be
mandatory. These recommendations for managing the risks of indiscipline in
United Nations missions are clear, logical and practical, and have broader
application outside peacekeeping.

LOSS OF FAITH IN UN IDEALS AND CORE VALUES

In 2003, OIOS commissioned an integrity perception survey of the
Secretariats 18,000 staff members worldwide. With the concept of integrity
clearly defined as . . . strength and firmness of character or principle;
honesty that can be trusted . . ., more than 6000 staff answered questions
about leadership, management and ethical practices. Over 2,300 members
also expressed themselves in writing when asked, What suggestions or
comments would you like to offer to improve integrity within the United
Nations?
The major criticisms and source of failures in organizational integrity
in the United Nations as seen by its staff were that rules and regulations,
standards and ideals were not being respected by supervisors, managers and
senior executives. It was felt that many used their positions to cultivate their
interests rather than to act with probity United Nations employees
worldwide were sending a strong message. Researchers at Deloitte
Consulting analyzed the data and summarized the major verbatim staff
complaints.6
Staff everywhere was saying:
It is clear (to us) that senior leaders do not place their values and
ethics ahead of their personal interests, aspirations or prior relationships. We
strongly believe that leaders must lead by example and that they should be
held to an even higher standard regarding all things ethical. We want to see
mechanisms in place to accomplish this.
Leaders do not take prompt and decisive actions against those who
breach the professional guidelines. The old boys network is what gets you
ahead.

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It is essential that senior leaders reinforce everyones faith in the

system by ensuring that others adhere to ethical standards of conduct. This
includes communicating to us that a proper review or investigation of
breaches of conduct has occurred, and that there has been swift disciplining
of those who violated guidelines on professional conduct.
If you want us to believe in the United Nations organizational core
values, then you have to get supervisors to be seen to place the United
Nations values and ethics ahead of his or her personal interests.
We want ethics to guide our work, but talk about ethics and integrity
issues in day-to-day interactions and decision making with our supervisors is
not happening. How can United Nations expect us to uphold standards when
management and staff blatantly violate them?
What we would like to see from senior leaders is a clear personal
commitment to integrity and ethical conduct. They should stand up and
make this commitment publicly and they should be monitored for adherence
to this commitment.
These are strong indictments and recommendations. These allegations
of self-indulgence by managers in the Integrity Survey concur with other
reports of a general deterioration of staff-management relations. For
example, in 2005 the Federation of International Civil Services Associations
(FICSA) reported staff complaints that . . . unenlightened managers rule
unfettered in certain duty stations, particularly in the field, as if in their own
private domain. Staff is intentionally intimidated; those who are involved in
staff representation activities even more so. Staff is not made aware of their
rights and freedoms, and is kept in the dark about their own conditions of
service. Instead of moving towards the Framework of communication,
participation, transparency and teamwork agreed to by the General
Assembly in 2000, FICSA concluded that management style has in places
become callous, defensive, secretive, unilateral and authoritarian.7
How hard is it to uphold ones pledge and allegiance to the United
Nations Charter values when representatives of the very organization
charged with protecting these values blatantly disregard them? Nobel
laureate Daniel Kahneman observed that when people have to make
decisions under conditions of risk and uncertainty, they cannot rely on
rationality for optimizing their judgments and choices. There are cognitive
forces at play, influencing how a decisional contest in ethics will turn out.8
The element that impacts on the behaviour of staff, as is the case for
most people, concerns the lack of certainty about what to do in the face of
competing impulses. When opportunities are unexpectedly thrust upon

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people, they find themselves having to make decisions under conditions of

risk (what is the worst that can happen) and uncertainty (what are the
chances that Ill get away with it). An internal contest between solutions that
accord with preferences, tastes, and impulses, and solutions that are
conventional, normative and low-risk, is typical. Most of us have at times
felt strongly pulled in the direction of doing our duty on the one hand, and at
the same time pushed to act in self-preservation or in our own personal
interests on the other. This internal dance for cognitive dominance can be
audited by examining the mental domain of people as they respond to
decision-making challenges where self-interest is pitted against
organizational values.
These conflicts were examined within a sample consisting of OIOS
staffs, each of whom were made to struggle with real ethical dilemmas on
the job. Where are staff strengths when it comes to integrity? Among 65
OIOS staffs who willingly submitted to a self-assessment, 8 (12%) were
ready and capable of acting corruptly or unethically when circumstances
provoked them. Do OIOS staffs therefore show major ethical fault lines
which parallel the source of corruption elsewhere? If so, the United Nations
has a deep-seated systemic problem in ensuring integrity and controlling
corruption that goes beyond simply learning the rules behind right and
wrong.

ETHICAL CONTESTS WITHIN OIOS STAFF

The then under-secretary-general for the Office of Internal Oversight
Services (OIOS) sought to know in 2003 if his staff would allow their
reasoning and decision-making styles to be tested and augmented with
training. Sixty-five staff in small groups of the Audit Division and the
Investigations Division in New York, Geneva and Vienna volunteered to
take part in 2-day exercises The behaviour risk assessment followed by
integrity strengthening was carried out over the period between December
2003 and October 2004.9

OIOS Staff Strengths

The virtues of OIOS staff were found to be dominated by two
mutually reinforcing tendencies: (a) a strong respect for human rights and
(b) personality traits of conscientiousness and of openness to values.

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Respect for Human Rights. When people are given practical

problems involving the control of human life, we usually find a
characteristic distribution around eight solutions. A human rights solution is
generally advanced about 5 10% of the time among public service and law
enforcement employees in general. Among OIOS staff, 82% of the staff
opted for asserting human rights. They demonstrated a well-developed sense
in this regard as they challenged assumptions, questioned authority, and
finally defended human rights by breaking rules and defying social norms
themselves. One administrative assistant turned to his/her supervisor and
openly admonished him for not pursuing human rights options. Another staff
member interrupted the exercise and announced to the others, I refuse to
participate in this exercise. . . if you had any sense you would do the same.
Another waited until the exercise was completed and then delivered a strong
lesson to the facilitators. Be careful, he warned, this is serious; dont do
this exercise unless you are sure you can leave the right message. This
intensity of conviction and readiness to act in support of fundamental
principles was generalized across groups and had never been seen before in
non-international civil servants. It shows that staff can have a very
personalized view of human rights and that these can trump administrative
rules and regulations in some circumstances - - at least in the
psychologically safe environment of a training exercise.
Strength of Character. What comes closest to the thing called
character is measured by conscientiousness the capacity for disciplined,
organized, dependable, competent and ethical behaviour.10 The dominant
elements found were a predisposition for duty and for following through
with obligations. Staff showed a fundamental predisposition to honesty as
seen in people who are governed by conscience. More than 95% of OIOS
men and women were naturally inclined to adhere strictly to their ethical
principles and to scrupulously fulfill their moral obligations. Indeed, two
thirds of the staff demonstrated this quality to an exceptionally higher degree
compared with public service personnel in governmental organizations.
Openness to Values. Generally, OIOS staffs are predisposed to
reexamine social, political and religious values, and are willing to question
established practice or authority. They are tolerant of other points of view
and are capable of seeing problems from different value perspectives.
Indeed, respect for diversity as a United Nations core value cannot be better
served than by the staffs natural willingness to be open and to consider
other peoples values.

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Are these virtues unique to OIOS or are they common among United
Nations staff? Might some of these character strengths sometimes also
embolden staff to act on the basis of their own values and against United
Nations core values? While virtues measured here may incline staff to act in
moral and ethical ways, whether they will or will not depends on the
strength of competition from other external forces. Virtue has no greater ally
than lack of opportunity, and in any true integrity test it is therefore
important to pit virtues against competing self-interests and enticements.
With the help of experienced OIOS staff working on this ethics audit,
the assessors drilled down into the working reality of auditors and
investigators, where genuine ethical conflicts are encountered. One integrity
test illustrates the ethical dilemmas of some OIOS staff.

Integrity Tests: Most Pass, Some Fail

Six detailed real-life written descriptions of hypothetical work
situations were presented, and staff was asked to record what they would do.
Three examples of fault lines follow:
1. United Nations funding arrangements have always
constrained OIOS ability to operate independently as mandated
by the General Assembly. However, OIOS funding sources
place them in a conflict of interest when they have to conduct a
performance audit on the very programme that funds their audit
activity. Would staff act professionally and with integrity, and
report mismanagement they uncovered if it might mean a loss
of funding or perhaps their job?
Two OIOS audit staff admitted confidentially that they
would deliberately ignore negative information unearthed by an
informant during an audit if it meant loss of funding. One said,
I would say to them (team members), Do what you want, I am
not getting involved with this. Ill go along with whatever the
rest of you decide. A second staff member was more deliberate
and said she would say to the rest of her team, Look, lets just
forget what we just found (obtained from an informant), and
present a report favorable to OIOS.
Although peoples actions are often correlated with what they say they
will do, we have no basis to predict how staff would indeed have acted if

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really confronted with the situation. We do know that the threat of losing
ones job is a strong motivator for lying. It is unfair to expect staff to act
with integrity and maintain their pledge to abide by Staff Regulation 1.2 (e)
when doing so can leave you and your family without bread of the table.
Volcker recognized this as much in recommending that OIOS become truly
independent of its funding source.
2. Staffs were asked: Imagine your boss sends you on
mission to obtain a signed statement and other official
documents from a cooperating witness in a suspected fraud
case. The witness is to meet you at a Four Star beach resort.
You do your work in one day, and at the airport on Friday while
awaiting your return flight, you accidentally spill a beverage on
the last page of the statement containing the signature, ruining
it. You can go back to town to get another signature but you
will miss the flight and there is no subsequent flight till
Monday. It will cost an additional three nights of hotel and
Daily Subsistence Allowance at the resort. What will you do in
such a situation?
OIOS staff that had good trusting relations with
management stated they would call their supervisor at home
right away and admit the mistake, apologize for the extra cost,
and take their lumps. Some OIOS staff working under a
dictatorial and threatening supervisor, however, said they would
choose to lie to their supervisor. One would claim the traffic to
the airport was jammed by an accident and that they missed the
flight, and that they would catch the first flight out Monday (In
the meantime they would rush back to town to get another
signature from the cooperating witness.) Another said they
would take the Friday flight home as planned, but forge the
signature and last page over the weekend. A third staff member
who believed their supervisor was too suspicious to believe it
was a mistake said they would go home on the Friday flight, but
then on Monday would create an accident in the office where
in full view of everyone he or she would spill a cup of coffee
over the last page.
3. Another question was: Imagine that you have been in
mission for three weeks with two other staff from your office,
working on a file that threatens to reveal serious fraud and

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shake up the administration. One member of the team, Ron,

invites everyone for dinner in anticipation of the end of a
successful project. You are met at the apartment by Sasha, an
attractive 20-year-old smooth-skinned recent companion of
Rons in mission. During the course of the dinner, Sasha makes
a sudden remark and lets out the confidential name in the case
you have all been working on. What will you do in this
situation?
Many staff with trusting relations with management were
of the view that the important thing to do first was to have an
informal discussion with the team about the event and find out
what explanation there might be for this. If it was innocent and
there would be no likelihood of something negative coming
from it, we would just give Ron a reminder about security and
drop it.
Staff, whose boss had cautioned them severely to avoid
anything short of absolute compliance with secrecy, or face the
risk of dismissal, reacted differently. In this unit, about half of
the staff said they would immediately, without question or
telling Ron, report the incident to the Division head: Id be the
first on the telephone to New York. Tough luck if this is an
innocent thing, Im not getting into shit because of him and his
girlfriend (sic). (But why not discuss it with Ron first?) Oh
no, that would tip his hand that we suspected something. It
could damage a future investigation into him if one were
ordered from New York.
A negative tone at the top is very real. It can be powerful enough to
override fundamental principles of fairness and trust among all employees.
It is noteworthy that in the Organizational Integrity Survey it was found that
the extent to which staff trusted management had a significant impact on
their perception of integrity in their unit. This conclusion was subsequently
confirmed by actual events within OIOS.11

Misconduct is not limited to general staff, supervisors and managers.

It can be far-reaching at the highest level. The case of the disgraced former
UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, illustrates this best.
He puts a hand on either side of my waist, grabs me, pulls me back, steps
up and holds me for about five seconds. . .with his groin pushed into the

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back of me, complained a female UN employee. OIOS investigated and

backed the complaint, saying, ... the allegations against the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees is substantiated . . . (and).. .new allegations . . .
were also examined and indicate a pattern of sexual harassment by (the
Commissioner).12 It further reported that the female employee stated: The
United Nations has nothing going for it but principles and honor. We go into
countries with our principles and our honor, and we say to governments,
You shouldnt do this, you should do that better, thats all weve got. And
he (the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) just ripped it all to shreds
publicly.
Given the weaknesses in the rule of law, failures in the control
environment, and management incompetence, it is surprising that corruption
and misconduct are not more widespread. We can speculate that it may well
be the character strengths, loyalty and integrity of staff, as described in the
OIOS ethics audit that stop many staff from compromising their sense of
duty and allow the United Nations to function with the probity it still has.
Reform within the Secretariat would do well to recognize and build on this
strength. But the very capacity of people to act as moral agents has never
had much standing in the United Nations, and is unlikely to be easily
embraced by politicians, diplomats and legal advisors more accustomed to
working with formal control and compliance based mechanisms. The Ethics
Office, in proposing informal control mechanisms and ethics programmes
which place the person at the centre of decisional processes and
accountability, may have to face resistance from this longstanding tradition.

REINVENTING THE PERSONWITHIN THE UNITED

NATIONS
Eleanor Roosevelt recalled that in January 1947, at the very first
meeting of the Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the members wanted
that persons in the Commission should be chosen as individuals and not
merely as representatives of governments. At its next meeting the Economic
and Social Council (ECOSOC) immediately struck down this
recommendation, and members of the Commission were stipulated to be
representatives chosen by their governments.13 Now sixty years later, we see
a determined movement to reintroduce the idea of persons. There is a call for
a Peoples World Assembly, one that is modeled on the European
Parliament. Many, in calling for fundamental reform, are pressing for the
United Nations to admit to the reality of seeing people as real persons, to

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grant this construct political standing in the General Assembly, and to allow
it to become a specific organ within the United Nations.14
Eleanor Roosevelt also presaged another recent development. She
reflected on the fact that the Human Rights Commission contained a large
number of women, and opined that in part this arose because some were of
the opinion that women might not do so well if they were put in the political
or legal committees.15 In 2000, Security Council Resolution 1325 called for
all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements,
to adopt a gender perspective, including measures that support local
womens peace initiatives and indigenous processes for conflict resolution,
and to involve women in all of the implementation mechanisms of peace
agreements. 16
Scholars in the fields of social and cognitive sciences accept that, in
the world of moral choices, principled decision-making based on standards
of justice is but one conceptual framework for managing human affairs.17
Solutions to conflicts can be wrought from another framework such as an
ethic of community, care and concern about the person, as well as the
relations of the person to others and their social environment. This
framework has its own universe of discourse, and can compete successfully
with a justice perspective when we seek to obtain practical solutions to
human problems. Adopting a gender perspective in moral reasoning may
move some to see more clearly the temporality of legal reasoning in
decision-making. A gender perspective, more importantly, in acknowledging
differences between equal persons, can move the United Nations closer to
the idea that several equally genuine moral judgments can be made by the
same person. This would be a major accomplishment and create the scope
for ethical decision-making to be seen as a genuine values-based exercise.
The United Nations Convention Against Corruption, 2003, provides
good illustrations of how the tradition of discounting the person perspective
in favor of a legal perspective still persists today.18 Firstly, although the
Preamble speaks of the virtues of integrity (five times), honesty, and honor
(three times), these are spoken of as abstract teleological end-states, not as
variable personal qualities and means capable of inspiring and directing lives
at the moment. Secondly, the terms prevention and education and training
are used a total of 17 times, but these refer only to the correct performance
of technical aspects of public functions, not to the socialization of persons to
strengthen honesty and integrity, or to any assistance in exercising moral
judgment.

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Thirdly, while it is generally accepted that some people are more

predisposed to misconduct and corruption than others, this is dismissed
entirely in Article 7.1 (b) of the Convention. Although this Article
acknowledges peoples vulnerability to corruption, it refuses to see this as a
propensity within the person. Instead, vulnerability is explicitly located
externally in the job or in the position itself. And to mitigate a public
servants risk of corruption, the Article continues, the recommended solution
is either to remove the individual to another position or to transfer him
periodically from one position to another.

ORGANIZATIONAL AND CULTURAL REFORM

Position of Secretary-General
It is easier to orchestrate a coexistence of politics and ethics within the
body of an organization than it is to forge a conflict-free alliance of reason
and conscience within a person. The separation of roles within the position
of secretary-general merits close scrutiny, whether as a stand alone
proposition or as one embedded in a larger reform framework that would see
the Secretariat managed more like a modern corporation. Volckers
pragmatic solution of straightening out politics from ethics by allocating the
roles to separate leaders may go a long way in restoring faith in the system.
Equally important is the fact that it will make available to staff an
administrative role model less at risk of ethical equivocation.
Selection of Secretary-General
In the long run a transparent, inclusive and open consultation process
should be at the heart of the selection process of the secretary-general. It
should provide the Security Council and the General Assembly with an
opportunity to assess the candidates experience, competence and leadership
ability on the basis of agreed-upon qualifications and criteria. Because it is
essential that the person chosen be someone with whom the members of the
Security Council feel that they can work effectively, approval at that level
should be the first step before moving the candidate list to the General
Assembly This essential change in the process, which will come in due time,
will enable the General Assembly to make a decision based on relevant and
reliable information.19
Independent Audit Advisory Committee

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This proposed oversight committee would conduct a review of

governance arrangements, including the proposed independent external
evaluation of the internal auditing and oversight system. Importantly, this
Independent Audit Advisory Committee (IAAC) would be separate and
distinct from the internal mechanism established by the secretary-general to
assist him in ensuring compliance within the Secretariat with
recommendations arising from audits and investigations. IAAC committee
members would be independent of the Secretariat and the member state
governments. The IAAC could exercise governance responsibilities better,
and ensure that the United Nations audit processes operate efficiently and
effectively.20
OIOS
Political and financial independence of OIOS, direct reporting to the
General Assembly and strengthening of its operational capacity with
increased resources have already been proposed and are being considered. In
addition, it has been strongly recommended that OIOS should have a free
hand to investigate sexual exploitation and abuse at the hands of
peacekeepers.
Immunity
The secretary-general should exercise his power to lift the immunity,
including diplomatic immunity, of persons accused of corruption, thereby
sending a strong message that the United Nations will not tolerate criminal
activity by its employees.
Internal Justice System
A fundamentally redesigned system of internal justice in the United
Nations has been proposed by a panel of external independent experts.21 It
would do away with the formal system embodied by the current Joint
Disciplinary Committee and the Joint Appeals Board, and replace it with a
more professional judicial body with authority to issue binding decisions.
The system would be one that is independent, effective, efficient and
professional. Importantly, it would comply with basic human rights
standards (to which staff members are entitled), and would ensure
accountability of managers and staff. It is a hopeful response to the staffs
call for effectiveness in implementing rule-of-law mechanisms and in
restoring faith in the system.

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SOULCRAFT
Staff cannot be governed by rules alone. It is time for the United
Nations to acknowledge that an elevation of consciousness about persons,
and their capacity to act as moral agents, is in the long-term interest of
strengthening personal accountability. But let us not be deceived. This is not
the solution to corruption that was proposed by the political scientist Colin
Leys forty years ago when he called for a nucleus of puritans applying
pressure for a code of ethics.21 Among other reasons, the problem with this
advice at the time was practical, for as Klitgaard observed, we knew little
then about how to engineer a renewal in mentality.22 But today there is the
knowledge and there are competent resources in OIOS, in the Ethics Office,
in the Office of Human Resource Management (OHRM) and in a new
Human Rights Council. These can form a critical mass for moving integrity
forward in a comprehensive and sustainable way. Considerable strides have
already been taken in this direction.
The expert panel on reform of the internal justice system has
understood the value of strengthening the informal justice system through a
strong mediation mechanism in the Office of the Ombudsman. An informal
mechanism of conflict resolution such as Alternative Dispute Resolution
operates independent of the formal methods of resolving disputes. People
who engage these informal processes find that these offer more choices and
options to resolving a conflict than formal systems of control. They also
learn life skills and develop a fresh capacity for strengthening
communication and relationships.
These informal mechanisms are, however, engaged after the fact, that
is, only once a conflict or problem has surfaced. Avoiding conflicts is a
strongly recommended course of action, but is not realistic with motivated,
innovative and proactive employees moving into novel and untried
environments where conflicts cannot be adequately forecasted. The highly
valued employees in the United Nations in the future will be those who can
anticipate the internal dialogue over ethics and organizational values when a
potential conflict of values is stumbled upon. The solution to aim for is one
that equips employees with decision-making tools and strategies for
exercising good judgment under these conditions of risk and uncertainty. It
is not conflict that is to be prevented, but errors in thinking.
Having the Ethics Office administer the whistleblower protection and
financial disclosure policies will help dissuade employees from capitalizing
on opportunities for corruption, but perhaps the more important reform
challenge for the Office will come from incorporating ethics into staff

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training programmes and in building a new generation of United Nations

senior leaders. The Ethics Office heralds new hope with the idea that staff
will be persuaded and encouraged to go beyond mere compliance and to
understand the true nature of public duty in the public interest, with all that it
implies.23 With a pedagogy capable of transforming persons, the Ethics
Office can help staff come to know in their hearts and minds the meaning of
pledging loyalty to the Charter.

Notes
1. Global Standards for Combating Corruption in Police Forces,
Interpol, Lyon, France, 2002.
2. Girodo, M., BRASS: Strategies for strengthening police integrity
in G. Bourdoux and G. Cumps (Eds.), Policing, Ethics and Corruption,
Standing Comite P Intercenter, Press Parlementaire, Brussels, Belgium,
2004, pp. 321-332.
3. Head of the Oil-for-food Inquiry calls for wide-ranging reform
within the United Nations, Press Release 11-1524 ORG/1449, United
Nations Department of Public Information, Media Division, New York.
4. Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on the
comprehensive management audit of the Department of Peacekeeping
Operations, A/GO/ 717, 13 March 2006.
5. Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on the global
review of discipline in field missions led by the Department of Peacekeeping
Operations, .A/60/713, 8 March 2006.
6. United Nations Organizational Integrity Survey, Office of Internal
Oversight Services, New York, 2004, p.9.
7. Geneva Group Issue Paper, FTCSA calls for strengthening staffmanagement relations, FICSA Geneva Group Meeting, September 2005.
8. Kahneman, D., Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for
Behavioral Economies, The American Economic Review, 93(5), 2003, pp.
1449-1475.
9. ONeill, J., BRASS: Competency Based Ethics Training for
United Nations Staff, OIOS News, 5 January 2005.
10. The NEO-PI-R measuring the Big Five personality traits and
their 30 underlying facets was used. This is available from Psychological
Assessment Resources, Inc. P.O Box 998, Odessa, Florida, 33556.
11. We reported these observations about totalitarian control over staff
in January 2004. Three months later, a similar incident involving disclosure
of information by a senior staff member of OIOS led the same boss to
suspend the staff member and to the laying of charges. Eight months later, a

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Joint Disciplinary Committee found that the boss went too far in suspending
the staff member and had showed poor judgment in management decisionmaking. Another investigation by Julian Ackerman into the matter
concluded that the alleged disclosure involved nothing more than an
innocuous exchange of information with someone outside the United
Nations, and should not have led to such an overreaction (see Ackerman, J.,
Report of investigation concerning allegations by the United Nations staff
council against the former Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight
Services, 2006).
12. A UN worker claiming sexual harassment talks to Fox News, 20
October 2005.
13. Eleanor Roosevelt, Phi Delta Kappa, 31 September 1949, 23-33.
14. United Nations Reform, EU Lawmakers call for
Democratization: Proposal to establish a United Nations Parliamentary
Assembly, June 9, 2005, http://www.uno-komitee.de/en.
15. Speech to the Second National Conference on UNESCO,
Cleveland, Ohio, April 1, 1949. Allida M. Black (Ed.), What I Hope to
Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt, Carlson
Publishing, Inc., 1995.
16. Women, Peace and Security, Security Council Resolution 1325,
United Nations, New York.
17. Gilligan, C. and Attanucci, 1, Two moral orientations: Gender
differences and similarities, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 34(3), pp. 223-237.
18. The United Nations Convention Against Corruption, United
Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, New York, 2003.
19. The Canadian non-paper on the process for the selection of the
next Secretary-General has led to calls for a more open and rigorous
selection process. Also see Selecting the Next UN Secretary-General, A
Report by the United Nations Association of the United States of America,
New York, May, 2006.
20. Secretary-General, SG/A1971, ORG/1458, Department of Public
Information, New York.
21. Leys, C., What is the problem about corruption? Journal of
Modern African Studies, 215, pp 215-217.
22. Klitgaard, R., Subverting corruption, Finance and Development,
37(2), June 2000.
23. Statement attributed to Tunku Abdul Aziz in 2005 when interim
head of the newly created Ethics Office.