U.N. - REPORT OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL ON
THE WORK OF THE ORGANIZATION - 1998

Introduction

1. Nearly a decade has passed since the end of the cold war, but the contours of the new era remain poorly understood. Nations large and small are grappling with new responsibilities and new constraints. Unpredictability and surprise have become almost commonplace. Uncertainty exists, in some cases even anxiety, about new roles that may be required of multilateral organizations, and more broadly about their place in the international community. Indeed, the peoples of the United Nations, in whose name the Charter is written, are searching for new ways to define how they are united in community though divided by custom and conviction, power and interests.

2. Notwithstanding the extraordinary achievements of multilateralism during the past half century, too many voices remain unheard, too much pain persists and too many additional opportunities for human betterment are forgone for us to rest satisfied with the way things work today. These still unmet challenges must remain uppermost on the United Nations agenda. The Millennium Assembly to be held in September 2000 affords a unique opportunity for the world's leaders to look beyond their pressing daily concerns and consider what kind of United Nations they can envision and will support in the new century.

3. To facilitate those deliberations, I propose to submit a report to the Millennium Assembly, suggesting to Member States a set of workable objectives and institutional means for the United Nations to meet the challenges of human solidarity in the years ahead. The report will draw on several reviews of recent United Nations conferences scheduled between now and then. It will also benefit from the diverse views and aspirations expressed at a series of global and regional hearings and seminars that I propose to convene - global town meetings, in effect - and which many individual Governments, civil society actors and other groups are also holding.

4. The "quiet revolution" of institutional reforms that I initiated last year was intended to revitalize an organizational machinery that in some respects had been made sluggish and creaky by the effects of the cold war and the North-South confrontation, and to better position it for the highly complex, increasingly interconnected and far more fluid context of the new era. I can say with some satisfaction that the United Nations family today acts with greater unity of purpose and coherence of effort than it did a year ago. The new teamwork is most pronounced within the Secretariat and in its relations with the programmes and funds.

5. The work programme has been organized in four core areas: peace and security, development cooperation, international economic and social affairs, and humanitarian affairs; a fifth, human rights, is designated a cross-cutting issue. In each cluster, an Executive Committee now manages common, cross-cutting and overlapping policy concerns.

6. To integrate the work of the Executive Committees and address matters affecting the Organization as a whole, a cabinet-style Senior Management Group, comprising the leadership from the various United Nations headquarters, has been established. It meets weekly, with members in Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi and Rome participating through teleconferencing. A Strategic Planning Unit has been established to enable the Group to consider individual questions on its agenda within broader and longer-term frames of reference. Member States approved my recommendation to create the post of Deputy Secretary-General; in the few short months that Louise Frechette of Canada has occupied this office, it has been demonstrated conclusively how critical it is in augmenting the leadership and management capacity of the Secretariat.

7. The Secretariat itself has been streamlined, through the merging and elimination of units; nearly a thousand posts have been cut, to fewer than 9,000; and the budget has been reduced to less than that of the previous biennium. A task force on human resources management that I convened earlier this year has just submitted its report to me; I will act expeditiously and decisively on its recommendations.

8. Productive working relations within the United Nations system as a whole, including the Bretton Woods institutions, have been expanded and deepened through the Administrative Committee on Coordination. Several concrete instances are documented in this report.

9. In my reform programme, I also recommended that Member States refine or revise a number of institutional practices under their jurisdiction. In the main, the General Assembly decided to defer its consideration of such questions or continue them at the fifty-third session. Still to be approved is the proposal that specific time limits be adopted for all new mandates, a relatively simple procedure that would significantly enhance the effectiveness of programme activities and the General Assembly's own oversight role. The proposal to adopt a results-based budget system also remains under review. This initiative is of the utmost importance, because no single measure would do more to increase accountability and efficiency in the work of the Organization. Member States are also still studying details of the proposed Development Account, an instrument by which savings from administrative efficiencies would be invested in innovative development projects.

10. Lastly, as part of the endeavour to reinvigorate the United Nations I have made a particular effort to establish a mutually beneficial dialogue with the international business community. Business has a stake in the soft infrastructure that the United Nations system produces - the norms, standards and best practices on which the smooth flow of international transactions depends. Moreover, business is increasingly coming to appreciate that the work of the United Nations on behalf of peace, human rights and development helps lay the stable foundations that the expansion of its own opportunities requires. In turn, the United Nations appreciates that business has the capital, technology and expertise necessary to fuel economic growth, and that its attitude and readiness to cooperate can critically affect the prospects of a wide variety of other objectives. The dialogue is accordingly premised on my conviction that expanding markets and human security can and should go hand in hand.

11. Engagement with the business community parallels the long-standing and increasingly close working relationships the United Nations has with non-governmental organizations. Whether in human rights or the environment, in development, humanitarian assistance or arms limitation, non-governmental organizations are indispensable partners for United Nations efforts at the country level and, in some cases, at policy levels as well. In short, the United Nations is both witness to and participant in the birth of a global civil society.

12. Not long after I proposed my reform agenda to the General Assembly in the summer of 1997, Mr. Ted Turner, Co-Chairman of Time Warner Inc., announced his extraordinary gift of $1 billion to support United Nations programmes. Never before in the history of philanthropy had a single gift of such magnitude been given for this or any other cause. The necessary institutional arrangements to administer the gift are now in place, and the first set of grants, totalling some $22 million, have been allocated. The majority of projects funded in this first round were in the areas of children's health, family planning and reproductive health, as well as environmental and climate change. The United Nations Fund for International Partnerships has been established within the Secretariat to manage the process of grant allocation and ensure that it remains fully consistent with the Organization's priorities.

13. This unprecedented act of generosity not only makes available new and additional resources for United Nations work on behalf of the world's most vulnerable people and its fragile planetary life support systems. It is also an expression of an entirely new phenomenon: an incipient sense of global citizenship and responsibility.

14. Another sign of change in the global arena this past year was the conclusion of negotiations on the Convention banning anti-personnel landmines and the Statute of the International Criminal Court. Governments conducted the actual negotiations in both cases, and groups of so-called like-minded States provided the core support that led to their adoption; but in both instances a new expression of global people power was manifest: individuals and groups animated by humanitarian and human rights concerns, united by the Internet and supported by world public opinion.

15. One of the most profound challenges that we face as a community of nations is to understand better the emerging socio-economic forces and forms of globalization, to shape them to serve our needs and to respond effectively to their deleterious consequences. There is a great deal of talk today about life in the global village. If that village is to be a truly desirable place for all of us on this planet, it must be embedded in and guided by broadly shared values and principles; its policing functions and the provision of other public goods must be strengthened and made more predictable; and a bridge must be constructed between, in effect, the Dow Jones index and the human development index.

16. No organization in the world is better suited to contribute to these ends than the United Nations, because no other enjoys its scope and legitimacy; but to move forward we need to shed baggage, create new visions and devise new ways to achieve them. We have taken the first vital steps towards transformation, but we have some way to go before we become a truly effective twenty-first-century organization. Over the next two years, leading up to the Millennium Assembly, I shall solicit the views of Member States, civil society actors and other interested groups and individuals on the best way to get from here to there.

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