Philippine Womens University

HZB School of International Relations and Diplomacy

1
st
Trimester SY 2014-2015


Office of the Secretary
General


Submitted by:
Pebbles Wren A. Barredo
Submitted to:
Ambassador Ophelia Gonzales

Secretary-General of the United Nations
The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UNSG) is the head of the United Nations
Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as
the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations.
The official residence of the Secretary-General is a five-story townhouse in Sutton Place,
Manhattan, in New York City, United States. The townhouse was built for Anne Morgan in
1921, and donated to the United Nations in 1972.
At the time the United Nations was established in 1945, the UN Charter described the secretary-
general broadly as the "chief administrative officer." Beyond that, the type of leader needed, how
to select the candidate, and the person's length of tenure were left open to interpretation, writes
Brian Urquhart, former undersecretary-general, in an article for Foreign Affairs. The UN website
stipulates that the secretary-general be "equal parts diplomat and advocate, civil servant and
CEO." These guidelines also require that the secretary-general uphold the values of the UN, even
at the risk of challenging member states.
Despite the broad and vague requirements of the job, some informal norms are observed in
appointments for the post. Secretary-generals usually come from countries considered small- to
medium-sized neutral powers, are career diplomats, and serve no more than two five-year terms.
Regional rotation is observed, with nationals of the five permanent members of the Security
Council--the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom--ineligible.


A map showing what nations had a national serving as Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Roles of the Secretary General
The Secretary-General was envisioned by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "world
moderator", but the vague definition provided by the UN Charter left much room for
interpretation by those who would later inhabit the position. According to the UN website, his
roles are further defined as "diplomat and advocate, civil servant, and CEO". Nevertheless, this
more abstract description has not prevented the office holders from speaking out and playing
important roles on global issues to various degrees. Article 97 under Chapter XV of the UN
Charter states that the Secretary-General shall be the "chief administrative officer" of the
Organization, but does not dictate his specific obligations.
Responsibilities of the Secretary-General are further outlined in Articles 98 through 100, which
states that he shall act as the officer "in all meetings of the General Assembly, of the Security
Council, of the Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council, and shall perform
other functions as are entrusted to him by these organs". He is responsible, according to Article
99, for making an annual report to the General Assembly as well as notifying the Security
Council on matters which "in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace
and security". Other than these few guidelines, little else is dictated by the Charter. Interpretation
of the Charter has varied between Secretaries-General, with some being much more active than
others.
The Secretary-General is highly dependent upon the support of the member states of the UN.
"The Secretary-General would fail if he did not take careful account of the concerns of Member
States, but he must also uphold the values and moral authority of the United Nations, and speak
and act for peace, even at the risk, from time to time, of challenging or disagreeing with those
same Member States."
"The personal skills of the Secretary-General and his staff are crucial to their function. The
central position of the UN headquarters in the international diplomatic network is also an
important asset. The Secretary-General has the right to place any dispute on the provisional
agenda of the Security Council. However, he works mostly behind the scenes if the members of
the council are unwilling to discuss a dispute. Most of his time is spent on good offices missions
and mediation, sometimes at the request of deliberative organs of the UN, but also frequently on
his own initiative. His function may be frustrated, replaced or supplemented by mediation efforts
by the major powers. UN peacekeeping missions are often closely linked to mediation
(peacemaking). The recent improvement in relations between the permanent members of the
Security Council has strengthened the role of the Secretary-General as the world's most reputable
intermediary."
The Secretary-General is responsible for the overall management of the Union and acts as its
legal representative. He coordinates all administrative aspects of the Unions activities to ensure
the most effective and economic use of its resources. The Deputy-Secretary-General assists the
Secretary-General in the performance of his duties and performs other specific tasks entrusted to
him by the Secretary-General.

Main Responsibilities of Secretary General
Administrative. The secretary-general oversees the UN Secretariat, which handles UN
operations, including research, translation, and media relations. The Secretariat--the UN's
executive office--has a staff of close to nine thousand people from about 170 different countries.
Each secretary-general has handled his administrative responsibilities differently. Hammerskjld
established a system of offices in charge of legal, political, personnel, and budgetary aspects of
the secretariat. Boutros Boutros-Ghali streamlined the system by adding under-secretaries-
general to oversee operations and report back. During Annan's administration, the deputy
secretary-general position was created to handle day-to-day operations. This book, published by
the International Peace Institute, chronicles the evolution of the secretariat.
Human Resources. The hiring of under-secretaries for approximately fifty UN posts, including
the heads of funds such as UNICEF and UNDP, falls under the purview of the secretary-general.
An important aspect of the hiring process involves lobbying from members to fill posts with their
nationals, highlighting the secretary-general's role of negotiating with the Security Council and
General Assembly to ensure broad regional representation.
Peacekeeping. The secretary-general's office shoulders responsibility for overseeing
peacekeeping missions and appoints the under-secretary in charge of that department, involving
some sixteen operations worldwide as of September 2008. Although the General Assembly or
Security Council may initiate a peacekeeping mission, operational control rests with the
Secretariat.
Mediation. This function involves the secretary-general's role as a mediator between parties in
conflict. As part of his "good offices" role the secretary-general makes use of his independence
and impartiality as the head of a global organization to prevent and stop the spread of conflict.
Examples of UN leaders taking on mediation roles in the past include Hammarskjld's promotion
of an armistice between Israel and Arab states and Javier Perez de Cuellar's negotiation of a
ceasefire to end the Iraq-Iran War.

Terms and Selection
Secretary General serves for five-year terms that can be renewed indefinitely, although none so
far has held office for more than two terms. The United Nations Charter provides for the
Secretary-General to be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the
Security Council. As a result, the selection is subject to the veto of any of the five permanent
Members of the Security Council. While the appointment and approval process of the Secretary-
General is outlined in the UN Charter, specific guidelines have emerged regarding the term
limits and selection process. These include a limit to two five-year terms, regional (continental)
rotation of the appointees national origin, and the appointee may not be a citizen of any of the
Security Councils five permanent members.
The United Nations Charter mentions the Secretary-General in Chapter XV, Articles 97 to 101.
Article 97 gives the General Assembly the task of appointing the Secretary General. However,
the candidate must be proposed by the Security Council. This implies that any Permanent
Member of the Security Council could wield its veto in opposition of the recommendation. Most
Secretaries-General are compromise candidates from middle powers and have little prior fame.
Despite the Charter giving the General Assembly provisions to influence the selection process,
the chosen Secretaries-General reflect that the selection process remains in the control of the P5.
The Secretary-General is also the chief administrative officer of the United Nations. Article 98
further states that the Secretary-General is further tasked with supervising the operations of the
Security Council, General Assembly (GA), and the Economic and Social Council and is to
perform other such functions as are entrusted to him by these organizations In short, this gives
him or her the further responsibility of presiding over the meetings of these organs of the UN.
Also contained in Article 98 is the responsibility of the Secretary-General to compile annual
reports concerning the UNs progress, to be presented to the General Assembly.
The Secretary-General has the power to alert the GA and the Security Council of any event he or
she sees as a security issue for the international system (according to Article 99). The Secretary-
General, along with the Secretariat, is given the prerogative to exhibit no allegiance to any state
but to only the United Nations organization: decisions must be made without regard to the state
of origin.
The Security Council recommends a candidate for the General Assembly's 193 members to
appoint. Although all UN members get a voice in the secretary-general's selection, the five
permanent members of the Security Council hold sway as any one of them can eliminate a
nominee with a veto. China vetoed a third term for the UN's fourth secretary-general, Austria's
Kurt Waldheim, while the United States vetoed a second term for the fifth, Egypt's Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. Although the ten elected members of the Security Council do not have veto
power, their votes can prove crucial as a candidate needs at least nine votes to be recommended
as secretary-general.
Critics of the appointment process say it historically lacks transparency and falls prey to
cronyism due to the permanent members' veto power and negotiations over secret candidates.
The selection of Ban Ki-moon was possibly the most open, with the Security Council
announcing formal candidates. Still, Ban was the favored choice of China, demonstrating the
importance of the permanent members in shaping UN policy through the secretary-general
selection process.

The secretary-general's relationship with the Security Council
In working with the Council, the secretary-general is tasked with standing for the interests of
underrepresented states and balancing the demands of the Security Council with those of General
Assembly members. The relationship between the Security Council's five permanent members
and the secretary-general is similar to one between constituents and their elected representative.
Critics say the structure of this relationship has made the secretary-general beholden to Security
Council members, particularly the United States.
With the United States serving as the UN's largest funder (Heritage), accounting for more than
20 percent of the organization's total budget as of 2010, "no secretary-general can afford to
alienate the United States if they want to have success in the job," says Schlesinger. The United
States' position as both founder and host to the United Nations has at times complicated
Washington's relationship with the secretary-general. During Annan's second term, which
coincided with the Bush administration coming to power, the relationship grew contentious.
Annan called the U.S. deployment of troops in Iraq "illegal," angering the White House, while
some UN members criticized him for failing to take an even stronger stand. The relations
between the United Nations and the United States have improved under Annan's successor.

Reforms:
UN Secretariat Transparency Reform
At another level, calls for reforming the UN demand to make the UN administration (usually
called the UN Secretariat or "the bureaucracy") more transparent, more accountable, and more
efficient, including direct election of the Secretary-General by the people (see presidentialism).
UN Secretariat/administration reforms seldom gets much attention in the media, though within
the Organization they are seen as widely contentious issues. They run the bureaucracy of the UN,
responding to the decisions by the Member States in the Security Council and the General
Assembly.
Mark Malloch Brown, the former secretary general of the United Nations Development Program
attributes the inefficiency of the UN administration to the "disconnect between the merit and
reward" and further advocates "reconnecting merit to make the UN again an international
meritocracy" to overcome the problem. He believes that the UN must stop promoting on the
basis of political correctness that encourages promoting staffs proportionately from certain
regions of the world, but instead make more use of Asia, Africa and other so-called less
developed regions that now offer a large pool of talented, skilled, and highly motivated
professionals. He argues that these individuals who are highly qualified will readily move up
through the UN system without need of the "cultural relativism which is used to promote
incompetents. A somewhat related point is often made by UN member states from the
developing world, who complain that some of the most desirable senior posts within the
Secretariat are filled under a "tradition" of regional representation that favors the United States
and other affluent nations. The point has been made forcefully by Ambassador MunirAkram of
Pakistan, who was recently head of the G-77. "The major countries, the major powers hold very
high positions in the Secretariat and support their national interests and refuse to allow the
Secretary General to cut departments," he claims. And when they do ask for budget cuts, they do
it "where it does not affect their national interests." He labels this "a double standard which is
applied or is thought to be applied in the Secretariat, and we as overseers of the G-77 do not
accept this double standard."
Among the notable efforts of Secretariat reform since 2005 is the Secretary-General's report
investing in the United Nations from March 2006 and the Comprehensive review of governance
and oversight within the UN, June the same year. From the Member States side there is the Four
Nations Initiative, a cooperation project by Chile, South Africa, Sweden and Thailand to promote
governance and management reforms, aiming at increased accountability and transparency.
Democracy Reform
Another frequent demand is that the UN become "more democratic", and a key institution of a
world democracy. This raises fundamental questions about the nature and role of the UN. The
UN is not a world government, rather a forum for the world's sovereign states to debate issues
and determine collective courses of action. A direct democracy would request the presidential
election of the UN Secretary-General by direct vote of the citizens of the democratic countries
(world presidentialism) as well as the General Assembly (just as cities, states and nations have
their own representatives in many systems, who attend specifically to issues relevant to the given
level of authority) and the International Court of Justice. Others have proposed a combination of
direct and indirect democracy, whereby national governments might ratify the expressed will of
the people for such important posts as an empowered World Court.
Calls for Diversity and democracy
Implementation of population-based UN voting also raises the problems of diversity of interests
and governments of the various nations. The nations in the UN contain representative
democracies as well as absolute dictatorships and many other types of government. Allowing
large powers to vote their population's interests en bloc raises the question of whether they would
really represent the interests and desires of their individual citizens and the world
community.[citation needed] Anything like direct election would be impossible as well in the
many nations where an accurate direct vote would be impossible or where the local government
has power to influence the local voters as well as security of the ballot box. Giving the UN any
kind of actual governance power raises the question of how these powers could be carried out.
What would happen when a vote of the UN General Assembly demands changes in the borders
or political status of a nation, or requires citizens in some nations to tax themselves in favour of
other nations, or demands the arrest of the leader of a nation, and is met by refusal?
The subsidiarity principle resolves some of these issues. The term originates from social thought
within the Roman Catholic church and states that no larger organ shall resolve an issue that can
be resolved at a more local level. It can be compared to federalist principles where entities of the
union retain some aspects of sovereignty. Only when two or more members of the federation are
affected by any given act does the federal government have the authority to intervene. Giving a
reformed UN more powers but enshrining the subsidiarity principle in its Charter would
guarantee that the UN does not evolve into a world autocracy that can arbitrarily dictate policy.
Financing reform
On the subject of financing, Paul Hawken made the following proposal in his book The Ecology
of Commerce:
"A tax on missiles, planes, tanks, and guns would provide the UN with its entire budget, as well
as pay for all peacekeeping efforts around the world, including the resettlement of refugees and
reparations to the victims of war."
The main problem with implementing such a radical tax would be finding acceptance. Although
such a system might find acceptance within some nations, particularly those with a history of
neutrality, without an active military (such as Costa Rica), or with lower levels of military
spending (such as Japan, which currently spends 1% of its GDP on Defence), it would be
unpopular among many consumers of arms. Nations in this latter category range from the United
States, which spends 4% of its GDP on defense, to dictatorships who depend on arms to keep
themselves in power. Other likely opponents would be nations engaged in ongoing military
conflicts, or others in a state of heightened military alert, such as Israel. Arms producers would
also oppose it, because it would increase their costs and possibly reduce their consumer base.
Another tax that the UN might promote would be some sort of Global Resource Dividend.
Human rights reform
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights came under fire during its existence for the
high-profile positions it gave to member states that did not guarantee the human rights of their
own citizens. Several nations known to have been guilty of gross violations of human rights
became members of the organization, such as Libya, Cuba, Sudan, Algeria, China, Azerbaijan
and Vietnam. Meanwhile, the United States was also angry when it was ejected from the
Commission in 2002. While it was re-elected, the election of human rights-abusing nations also
caused frictions. It was partly because of these problems that Kofi Annan in the In Larger
Freedom report suggested setting up a new Human Rights Council as a subsidiary UN body.
On Wednesday, 15 March 2006, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in
favour of establishing a new United Nations Human Rights Council, the successor to the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights, with the resolution receiving approval from 170
members of the 191-nation Assembly. Only the United States, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and
Israel voted against the Council's creation, claiming that it would have too little power and that
there were insufficient safeguards to prevent human rights-abusing nations from taking control.

What is likely to be the future focus of the UN secretary-general?
The most pressing issues for the world community, whether human trafficking or civil wars, will
continue to play a role. Emphasizing the link between climate change and conflict has been Ban's
top priority since he took office. Ban has stressed that the Darfur conflict began as an ecological
crisis in an effort to encourage countries to combat global warming in the interest of security.
Like Annan, Ban has also made reform of the UN management structure a priority. "Just about
everything we do hinges on sound management of the limited resources entrusted to us," he said
in a speech to the General Assembly in April 2008. Nonproliferation, Annan's Millennium
Development Goals, and human rights are also included on the secretary-general's hefty agenda,
though he leaves the implementation of these programs up to agencies such as the UN
Development Program and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Each secretary-
general interprets the role differently, however. Discussing the organization's future, former CFR
Senior Fellow Lee Feinstein put it as follows: "A secretary-general is like a Supreme Court
justice--you never know what you're going to get."

The Importance of Secretary-General
The UN's administrative arm has developed largely in accordance with the demands made upon
it. In the process, it has evolved a distinctive character of its own, in keeping with its status as a
constitutionally defined organ of the world body.
The Secretary-General has played the main role in shaping the character of the Secretariat. As
chief administrative officer, the Secretary-General has wide discretionary powers to administer
as he thinks fit. As Eleanor Roosevelt, a former chairman of the UN Commission on Human
Rights, noted in 1953, the Secretary-General, "partly because of the relative permanence of his
position (unlike the president of the General Assembly who changes every year) and partly
because of his widely ramified authority over the whole UN organization, tends to become its
chief personality, its embodiment and its spokesman to the world."
Each Secretary-General tries to develop the positive functions of the Secretariat. Although each
has had his own views on the role of the office, all have shared the belief that the Secretariat is
the backbone of the UN system. The most eloquent statement of that belief was probably made
by Dag Hammarskjld in a 1955 address at the University of California: " the United Nations
is what member nations made it, but within the limits set by government action and government
cooperation, much depends on what the Secretariat makes it." In addition to the Secretariat's
function of providing services and facilities for governments in their capacity as members of the
UN, he said, the Secretariat also "has creative capacity. It can introduce new ideas. It can, in
proper forms, take initiatives. It can put before member governments findings which will
influence their actions." Stressing the fact that members of the Secretariat serve as international
officials rather than as government representatives, Hammarskjld concluded that "the
Secretariat in its independence represents an organ, not only necessary for the life and proper
functioning of the body, but of importance also for its growth."
















BIBLIOGRAPHY:
http://www.cfr.org/international-organizations-and-alliances/role-un-secretary-general/p12348
http://www.itu.int/en/general-secretariat/Pages/osg.aspx
http://www.cogic.org/generalsecretary/about-us/
http://www.gecf.org/aboutus/secretariatstructure/secretary-general
http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2011/10/un-secretary-general-releases-report-on-women-and-
peace-and-security/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_of_the_United_Nations
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/speeches/2006/the-peace-and-security-role-of-the-un-
secretary-general.aspx