UN: Senior Appointments

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of the United Nations, in particular the selection processes for the Secretary-General and other senior appointments.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have obtained this debate and I am enormously grateful to the United Nations Association for the help that it has given—to us all, I think—and to other organisations and individuals for providing useful briefings. I am grateful to the many Members of this House who put down their names to speak in this debate. I did try to get a sessional Select Committee on this topic and I failed, so this debate is really instead of having that. There have been relatively few debates in Parliament on the United Nations although my noble friend Lord Judd, who regrets that he cannot be here today, has asked one or two Questions in the recent past.

As one of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Britain has a key role in working for UN reform. I could go through all the important things that the UN does but I will touch on just one or two of them. There are 193 member states; the UN’s expenditure is £30 billion a year; it provides food for 90 million people in 80 countries; it assists 40 million refugees and people fleeing from war, famine and persecution; it is involved in tackling climate change; and there are 125,000 peacekeepers involved in 16 operations in four continents. The UN also mobilises humanitarian aid for emergencies and uses diplomacy to prevent and resolve conflict.

The United Nations is important to this country’s national security and prosperity and, as one of the permanent members of the Security Council, it is important that we show consistent leadership at the UN. There should be a clear strategy for British action to strengthen the organisation. This involves: improving the appointment processes for senior UN officials, about which I shall say more later; increasing the practical support to areas such as UN peace operations; setting a positive example in implementing international laws and norms; and ensuring that there are regular parliamentary debates in Britain on our engagement with the UN system. In a wider sense, we should of course raise awareness of the UN in this country.

I want to talk about the importance of the selection process for the Secretary- General. We know of the range of important responsibilities that Secretaries-General all have and the successes that they have had. Peacekeeping was developed by the first Secretary-General, Trygve Lie. Dag Hammarskjöld secured the release of 11 US airmen imprisoned in China, among many other things. U Thant de-escalated the Cuban missile crisis. More recently, Kofi Annan did pioneering work in widening access to HIV/AIDS treatment. Ban Ki-moon, the present postholder, has championed LGBT rights and action on climate change. Generally, Secretaries-General have been able to play a pivotal role in preventing conflict. The charter enables them to bring to the Security Council any matter that may threaten peace and security. Clearly, if the process of appointing the Secretary-General was more legitimate, this would enhance their authority.

There is no job description, timetable or public scrutiny for the appointments process, and there is a troubling history of backroom deals. No woman has ever been seriously considered for the post. The five permanent members of the Security Council dominate the process and present the rest of the UN’s membership with a single candidate to rubber-stamp. It would not be acceptable for any British public body to behave in this way; if it did, it would be before an employment tribunal pretty sharply.

To give more detail, the charter says:

“The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council”.

To be nominated, a candidate must receive at least nine affirmative votes in the Security Council—all subject to veto by any of the permanent five. The charter provisions are supplemented by a range of General Assembly resolutions. One, in 1946, says:

“It would be desirable for the Security Council to proffer one candidate only for the consideration of the General Assembly”,

and that the assembly would make its decision through a vote by a “simple majority”. It also set the term limit for the first postholder at five years, with the option of a further five. In addition, a number of informal practices developed, such as regional rotation among postholders, so that a Secretary-General would be selected successively from different world regions. At present, many eastern European states are claiming that they have had not had an appointment yet, but given current big-power tensions in the Security Council about eastern Europe and eastern states generally, that may be difficult to achieve. The General Assembly acknowledged the need to have regard to regional rotation and gender equality, but said that the,

“appointment of the best candidate”,

should come first. Postholders are normally from small or middle-ranking powers, and P5 nationals are not nominated.

I will indicate how I think the selection process should be improved. There should be formal selection criteria, with a clear focus on merit, and with gender and regional diversity listed as important but secondary factors. There should be deadlines and a public shortlist of highly qualified women and men. There should be a presentation of vision statements by the candidates. There should be chances for all states and civil society to engage with candidates. There should be a clear commitment from candidates and states not to seek or make promises in return for support, including on senior appointments. There should be a single, non-renewable term, to free candidates from the political and time constraints of re-election campaigning, if they had a second term. There should be a real choice for the UN membership, with more than one candidate presented by the Security Council to the General Assembly. None of these proposals would require amendment of the UN charter: they could happen just like that if it was decided by the member states.

Before moving on to other senior appointments, I will just say that the British Government do not have a clean sheet in all these things either. Just recently, there was a vacancy in the UN department of humanitarian affairs. The Government proposed one individual for that post, and when the Secretary-General resisted that, the Government put forward three Conservative MPs, one of whom got it. I make no comment on their qualities—they may have been the best, but there was no evidence that they were the best. Stephen O’Brien, who got the post, did it without any proper selection process and without any real competition. We surely need a commitment to merit-based senior appointments, irrespective of nationality.

What could the British Government do about these other appointments? We should ensure that we set a good example by nominating and supporting candidates of the highest quality for all senior appointments, with due consideration to gender equality and regional diversity. We should commit publicly to upholding this principle and encourage other states to do so, including by speaking out when standards are not upheld by the Secretary- General. We should encourage UN funds, programmes and agencies, particularly those of which we are members, to meet the highest standards for best practice in international organisations. As part of this process, we should consider the merits of a single term for a range of posts, if perhaps a slightly longer one. We should also reaffirm the General Assembly resolution, which states that,

“no post should be considered the exclusive preserve of any Member State or group of States”,

by calling for a general rule that no nationality should immediately succeed the same nationality in the same post. That would stop Brits reappointing Brits, the French reappointing French people and so on. I think those changes would make the UN a more effective world organisation.

I conclude by giving one example of something that happened a few years ago. I refer to Kurt Waldheim, who became Secretary-General. As I understand it, six names were put forward. The Soviet Union, as it then was, vetoed the other five, so Waldheim got it, although I do not think that his record as Secretary-General, nor his previous record, was particularly praiseworthy. That could be done by the great powers.

I appreciate that it will not be easy for Britain to win the day, even if the Government accept all those arguments—which I hope they will—but let us at least try. Let us see whether we can make the United Nations a better organisation than it is now.