UN Reform without Amending the Charter: the Case of the “UN Development System”

Andrea Cofelice
Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies on Federalism, Torino, Italy

Since his election in 2017, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has published a series of detailed reports to present his proposals to strengthen the UN development system (Repositioning the United Nations development system to deliver on the 2030 Agenda: ensuring a better future for all, doc. A/72/124–E/2018/3); reform the peace and security pillar, by creating, within the UN Secretariat, a Department for Political and Peace-Building Affairs and a Department for Peace Operations (Restructuring of the United Nations peace and security pillar, doc A/72/525); and simplify the Organisation management (Shifting the management paradigm in the United Nations: ensuring a better future for all, doc. A/72/492).

According to a terminology normally used in the EU context, the approach adopted by Guterres could be defined as an attempt to reform the Organization “without treaty reforms”. Admitting, for the time being, the impracticability of launching a grand bargain on the reform of UN intergovernmental institutions – due to the lack of political consensus among member states, particularly in relation to the reform of the Security Council –,  the Secretary General has opted for a more pragmatic approach, aimed at reorganizing and making the UN bureaucracy more effective.

However, it would be a mistake to superficially dismiss this approach as a “makeup” operation. The three reform projects in the area of development, peace and security, and management of the Organization are all based, in a coherent manner, on a single strategic vision pursuing two complementary objectives. First of all: increasing the operational and “governance” capacity of the Secretariat, by promoting the rationalization and centralization of important executive and control functions, which are currently fragmented and dispersed among various UN departments and agencies. At the same time: increasing the effectiveness of the UN field presence, by restructuring and strengthening the network of UN national and regional missions, teams and offices.

In other words, the strategic aim of the reform consists in setting up a reinforced Secretariat, which should be endowed with additional executive and control powers, as well as with an increased ability to act on the ground in a more rapid, transparent and effective way through a new generation of UN national and regional offices.

The reform of the UN development system, which was unanimously adopted by the General Assembly in May 2018 (resolution A/72/279), represents the first example of how this vision can be translated into operational terms. The reform was introduced by two Secretary General’s reports, published respectively in June and December 2017, and is the result of a consultation process among member states carried out in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The urgency to reform the UN development system also stems from the need to accelerate the process towards the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. According to the latest report (June 2018), for the first time in over a decade the number of people in the world suffering from hunger has returned to increase, from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016. Climate changes, conflicts, increasing inequalities and rapid urbanization are among the main factors that determined this result.

Three main aspects can be highlighted among the six chapters of the reform.

A new generation of UN “national teams”.

The reform alters the institutional and operational model of the UN national teams, made up of representatives of the various UN entities operating at local level, with a view to enhancing a prompt response to the specific needs of each country in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The response of the UN system to national development priorities will be settled  by the “United Nations Development Assistance Framework”: unlike today, a variety of actors (local and national authorities, parliaments, civil society organizations, regional and international institutions, universities and business actors) will be involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of this strategic framework. Furthermore, the host government will work together with UN representatives to define the composition of national teams at the beginning of each programming cycle.

An independent and reinvigorated “resident coordinators” system.

The UN national teams will continue to be guided by resident coordinators, i.e. the highest-ranking UN development officials working at the country level, but their functions will be enhanced. First of all, there will be no more overlapping between resident coordinators’ and UNDP representatives’ functions. Furthermore, resident coordinators will have greater decision-making powers vis-à-vis national teams, especially in emergency situations or humanitarian crises. Lastly, they will respond directly to the Office of the Secretary General, and no longer to intermediate regional structures: this will considerably simplify the UN long bureaucratic chain, which often represents a source of delay and dysfunctionality.

The issue of how to finance this reform package has been vigorously debated by member states In order to secure adequate and regular funding, the Secretary General had initially proposed using the UN ordinary budget; member states, however, have opted for a hybrid solution, consisting of a voluntary trust fund, cost sharing agreements between UN development agencies, and a “coordination tax” on third-party donors’ non-strategic contributions dealing with UN development activities.

A “funding compact” for development.

The UN development system will be financed through a funding compact, involving mutual commitments for states and UN institutions. Member states will guarantee more regular, sustainable and responsible financial support, ideally through multi-year commitments. For their part, UN institutions undertake to: present annual reports on the obtained results; adhere to the International aid transparency initiative, in order to certify full compliance with international transparency standards; facilitate access to funding data and provide greater visibility to member states’ contributions; turn to independent evaluations to assess the quality of the results obtained; allocate at least 15% of non-strategic resources from each development agency to joint activities.

The analysis of these three dimensions reveals that the development system reform pursues win-win solutions. Indeed, the Office of the Secretary General is expected to acquire more executive and oversight functions; donor states (especially the US and EU) managed to impose a more result-oriented approach, as well as guarantees in terms of transparency and rationalization of resources; recipient and/or “sovereigntist” states (including China, Russia and some African states), gains broader ownership and responsibility for the definition of national development strategies and the composition of national teams.

Obviously, the overall success of the reform will be assessed against its capacity to stimulate the UN development system to achieve effective results on the ground, in terms of reducing inequality, combating poverty and promoting the Sustainable Development Goals. After all, as the Secretary General stated, “reform is about putting in place the mechanisms to make a real difference in the lives of people”.