The John W. Holmes Lecture: Can the UN Be Reformed?(Essay)

UN secretaries-general are infamous for their reform initiatives. Each new secretary-general has paraded plans to change the organization, and follow-on initiatives have continuously cascaded down from his thirty-eighth-floor office, so that by the end of a term it seems a secretary-general must be reforming his own reforms. Kofi Annan was no exception. As a career UN manager, he profoundly believed in the need for reform. He introduced three major waves of measures: at the beginning of his term; when he was reelected for a second term; and then again in his last two years. I was particularly involved in that last round. In between, there was a steady trickle of lesser proposals. Across the road in the UN funds and programs, such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP) (where I was administrator for six years), or at the agencies in Geneva, Rome, and elsewhere, we, the different chiefs, also had reform-prolix. We were all at it. Probably, the UN is the rare organization where the internal talk seemed to be more about reform than sex. And staff and delegates were largely fed up with it (reform, that is). Each new initiative led to greater levels of cynicism and reform fatigue. It was often dismissed as being about politics, not real change.