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The United Nations system under stress: financial pressures and their consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Paul Taylor
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Extract

This essay is about the response by the United Nations system to financial pressures in the 1980s and early 1990s. These pressures resulted from two developments: the decision of the main contributing states to adopt a policy of zero growth in real terms in the budgets of the organizations; and the additional withholdings by the United States which resulted from the Kassebaum Amendment to the Senate Foreign Relations Act of August 1985. This required a 20 per cent underpayment by the United States of its assessed financial contributions until a range of reforms in budgetary procedures, judged acceptable by the US Administration, had been introduced. The impact of the resulting financial squeeze is considered with particular reference to three Specialized Agencies: the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 365 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991

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References

1 See Williams, Douglas, The Specialized Agencies and the United Nations: The System in Crisis (London, 1987Google Scholar); and Taylor, Paul, ‘Reforming the System: Getting the Money to Talk’Google Scholar, in Taylor, Paul and Groom, A. J. R. (eds.), International Institutions at Work (London, 1988).Google Scholar

2 See Kilgore, A., ‘Kassebaum and Gramm-Rudman’, in Williams, Specialized Agencies.Google Scholar

3 See the various reports on the United Nations produced by the Heritage Foundation under the title A United Nations Assessment Project Study. Something of th e flavour of the enterprise may be gleaned from the opening sentence of No. 487 issued under the heading The United Nations Library: Putting Soviet Disinformation into Circulation: ‘The Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations Headquarters has become a Soviet outpost’!

4 See Puchala, Donald J. and Coate, Roger A., The State of the United Nations, 1988 (Hanover, 1988).Google Scholar

5 Ibid. p. 24.

6 Quoted in full in World Health Organization, EB 81/42, Annex, 13 November 1987, at p. 3.Google Scholar

7 Interview, Geneva, April 1987.

8 Puchala and Coate, United Nations, p. 22.Google Scholar

9 Document marked: Statement of Richard S. Williamson, Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, Department of State, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations and Subcommittee on International Operations, February 23, 1988; figures found at p. 20.

10 Ibid. p. 24.

11 Ibid. Appendix, p. 2.

12 Executive Board, 79th Session, Summary Records: First Meeting, in PB/88–89, annex.

13 Statement, Williamson (see note 9), p. 10.Google Scholar

14 World Health Organization, Executive Board, EB79/1987/REC/1, 18th Meeting, 22 January 1987.Google Scholar

15 Ibid, paras 2(1) and 2(2).

16 Jacobson, Harold K., ‘WHO: Medicine, Regionalism, and Managed Polities’, in Cox, Robert W. and Jacobson, Harold K. (eds.), The Anatomy of Influence: Decision Making in International Organization (New Haven and London, 19XX), p. 189; and interview in Geneva, April 1988.Google Scholar

17 Jacobson, , ‘Managed Polities’, p. 189.Google Scholar

18 Interview, December 1988.

19 Reported in International Labour Conference, Provisional Record, 72nd Session, Geneva, 1986, Part 11,3/17.Google Scholar

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21 Ibid. para. 3.

22 Ibid. para. 5.

23 Ibid. para. 6.

24 International Labour Office, Governing Body, GB.236/9/22, 236th Session, First Report of the Programme, Financial and Administrative Committee, para. 112.

25 See Williamson, Statement, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

26 Interview with a senior ILO Budget official in April 1988.

27 Interview in April 1988 with officials at ILO, Geneva.

28 Information about the FAO here and later is based on interviews with officials in the FAO Secretariat and national representations in April 1991.

29 Summary Records, PB/88–89, para. 52.

30 Ibid.

31 World Health Organization, Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean, EM/RC34/3.1, September 1987, especially paras. 4 and 12.

32 EB81/42 Add. 7, January 1988, para. 2.

33 Interview, April 1988.

34 International Labour Organization, Medium-Term Plan 1990–95, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1988, p . 118.Google Scholar

35 Ibid. para. 6.24.

36 Interview with FAO official, 3 April 1991.

37 WHO Memorandum, available April 1988, no document identification.

38 Interview with a G77 FAO representative, Rome, 5 April 1991.

39 See Gorbachev, Mikhail, Realities and Guaranteesfor a Secure World (Moscow, 1987), especially section V, p. 14.Google Scholar

40 See Fromuth, Peter, The UN at 40: The Problems and Opportunities (UNA–USA, New York, June 1986), pp. 53–5.Google Scholar

41 See The very firm statement about the dangers of fragmentation arising from voluntary funding in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1984 Review, Development Cooperation (OECD, Paris, November 1984), p. 99.Google Scholar

42 See G.A. A/41/49, Supplement No. 49, Report of the Group of High-Level Intergovernmental Experts to Review the Efficiency of the Administrative and Financial Functioning of the United Nations (called the Report of the Committee of 18) (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

43 Testimony of Schultz, George P., Secretary of State, before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce-Justice-State (Congressman Neal Smith), 29 March 1988.Google Scholar

44 See Lodge, Juliet (ed.), The European Community and the Challenge of the Future (London, 1989).Google Scholar