16 February 2025
By Katja Hemmerich
As the Trump administration continues its review of UN funding and programmes, a new opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal is now pushing for ‘defunding’ the UN because:
“Executive orders cutting taxpayer funding for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and trans ideology won’t fully ensure the U.S. taxpayer isn’t paying for such programs without taking on the global deep state. These priorities are baked in to the institutional structure of international organizations that the U.S. underwrites.” - Eugene Kontorovich, “Next, Defund the United Nations”, Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb. 2025
The piece goes on to misrepresent various UN programmes in manner akin to the ‘indignation mobilization’ that scholars have identified in right-wing medial outlets reporting on the Global Compact for Migration. In doing so, it fundamentally misrepresents UN governance mechanisms and how policy and programme decisions are made, creating the false impression the Secretary-General (SG) and his staff are unilaterally deciding what the UN works on based on their own personal ‘ideologies’. UN programmes, policies and the amount of money it receives are all decided by member states through legislative and governing bodies - something that Mr. Kontorovich, as a professor of international law, knows very well.
Given the upcoming human resources debate in the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee, this month’s spotlight is focused on clarifying the UN’s policies and approaches on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and how these are actually ‘baked in to the institutional structure’ of the UN and its staffing policies. Specifically, we take a closer look at research on representative bureaucracy and how it makes the UN a more effective organization.
Power, Legitimacy and UN Staffing
Dr. Fanny Badache, whose work at the University of Lausanne is very much focused on the UN, summarizes the main arguments for a representative bureaucracy in international organizations:
“The potential role of representative bureaucracy in IOs [international organizations] has been summarized in three “representational bargains”. First, geographic representation can provide IOs with political support from member states’ elites by allowing them to have a share of administrative power. Second, bureaucratic representativeness can also be a source of legitimacy by presenting itself as offering equal employment opportunities to citizens from all member states. Third, by bringing more diversity in the bureaucratic staff, representative bureaucracy can positively impact performance.” - F. Badache, 'Unpacking the Bureaucratic Representation–Legitimacy Relationship in International Organizations: The Role of Elite Beliefs and Self-Legitimation Practices' (2022)
The aspects related to power and legitimacy were recognized by the founders and first Secretary-Generals of the UN as fundamental to the continued existence of the UN. As such the issue of representation is ‘baked in to’ the institutional structure of the UN in Article 101 of the UN Charter:
“The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.” - UN Charter, Article 101, para. 3
Since the inception of the UN, there has been an inherent tension between the legitimacy and power aspects of representation. Recognizing the importance of keeping the leaders of the emerging Cold War blocs on side, SGs were careful from the start to balance senior appointments between American and Soviet nationals. This was both to ensure that these countries felt they had sufficient access to, and administrative power within, the UN, and to enhance legitimacy by avoiding perceptions that the UN sided with one bloc over the other. And it's the reason that the most senior level appointments continue to be dominated by political decision-making and these positions are excluded from staffing policies.
But power and legitimacy very quickly also became concerns with the bulk of staff recruitments that were not political appointments. The initial primary recruitment drive in the 1940s brought in predominantly Western candidates, in large part because the manual recruitment approaches made them much more accessible to people close to UN headquarters in New York and Geneva, along with some legacy appointments carried over from the League Nations. Despite the immediate efforts to try and create a more equitable balance amongst the staff, it became an issue of particular contention in Fifth Committee debates in the early 1960s, after sixteen new African countries were admitted to the UN. The concerns debated then around whether geographic considerations should outweigh competence; who defines competence; and potential bias in the application of recruitment standards, are still salient today. So let’s explore what research tells us.
Does geography outweigh competence in UN recruitment?
People inside and outside the UN all have their own views on this question based on their individual experiences. Individual experiences are, however, often based on assumptions because applicants to UN positions do not receive a detailed explanation of why a particular candidate was selected or which elements of their own application were deemed insufficient. So it can be dangerous to assess this question just on the basis of testimonials.
As a first step, it’s important to understand exactly what Article 101 of the UN Charter means, and what the intent was in those two sentences, which are in a very intentional order as explained by scholars of international affairs.
“It would clearly appear from the wording of the paragraph [3 of Art. 101] that the intent of its authors was to make "efficiency, competence, and integrity" prerequisites of staff employment and administration and to treat wide geographical recruitment as an objective to be achieved insofar as consistent with these prerequisites. Thus the criterion of wide geographical recruitment would be applicable only if and to the extent that requirements of "efficiency, competence, and integrity" could be met.” - LM Goodrich, ‘Geographical Distribution of the Staff Across the UN Secretariat’, (1962)
The structure and wording of Article 101 is such that it does not permit geographic considerations or any other aspects of an applicant’s identity to be prioritized in a hiring decision over their competence and integrity. This approach has always been at the core of UN staffing policies, and a point that is regularly reviewed by the Fifth Committee in particular with each new update of the Secretariat’s policy on recruitment.
If competence is paramount in UN staffing, why consider DEI?
The answer to this question is because legitimacy is derived from representation. This is not just an assumption but has been tested through research. A 2022 study of whether this legitimacy effect could be demonstrated for the UN, which included 46 interviews with diplomats, government officials and UN leadership concluded that:
“Bureaucratic representativeness is perceived as being a democratic, purposive, and fair institutional feature.” - F. Badache, “Unpacking the Bureaucratic Representation–Legitimacy Relationship in International Organizations: The Role of Elite Beliefs and Self-Legitimation Practices”, (2022)
Because of the linkage between representation and legitimacy, it is important that both UN policies and actual practice are in accordance with Article 101 of the Charter. But as the ACABQ highlighted in the previous human resources debate in the Fifth Committee, there does appear to be a gap between policy and practice, when one takes a close look at application and selection data by regions of the applicants:
“The Advisory Committee notes... that the imbalances appeared to occur overwhelmingly at the selection stage of the recruitment process, as the [African] regional group with the highest percentages for both the number of applications (38.5 per cent) and recommended applications (34.1) only had a lower percentage of selections (22.9 per cent) compared with another regional group [WEOG] with a lower percentage of applications (26.5 per cent) attaining the highest percentage of selections (42.6 per cent).” - A/77/728, para. 23
One interpretation of this data is that, since the Charter and staffing policies prioritize competence and integrity, it reflects that WEOG simply has greater access to better education and a more qualified workforce. Or, as the newly admitted African countries asked in the early 1960s when they had virtually no staff representation, is it actually a reflection that Western standards of education and competence being used to determine who is qualified for a post?
A 2021 study of just this question by researchers in Germany found no evidence that UN recruitment was biased towards Western or any particular education system. They did find that UN recruitment is focused on competence which data demonstrates is interpreted largely as experience with UN programmes and knowledge of the regions where it works.
“Findings also unveil the nature of bureaucratic merit in the UN, which seems to emphasize local knowledge and working experience over formal (Western) education.” - S. Eckhard & Y. Steinebach, “Staff recruitment and geographical representation in international organizations”, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2021
These findings highlight that hosting a UN office or entity actually increases exposure of the local labor market to UN experience, thereby making them more competitive applicants in the hiring process. While there are many smaller field operations in regions outside of WEOG, WEOG also hosts significant UN presences in Switzerland, Italy, the United States, Austria and Germany. Wealthy countries are also leveraging options like the Junior Professional Officer (JPO) programme to fund approximately 180 entry level UN posts which are - bar a handful of exceptions - open only to their own nationals. By comparison, the Young Professionals Programme (YPP), which is open specifically to nationals of underrepresented countries (or those at risk of being underrepresented), only brings in about 50 entry level candidates each year.
But this alone does not seem to fully explain the wide gap in recruitment highlighted by the ACABQ. The concern from UN leadership is that it does seem to reflect a potential ‘unconscious bias’ on the part of hiring managers embedded into the organizational culture. This is what the diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in the UN aim to address - without changing staffing policies and procedures or violating the UN Charter.
Diversity and performance
All of this leads to the much more complex third aspect of bureaucratic representation outlined by Dr. Badache: the link between UN performance and a diverse workforce representative of all aspects of the people it serves, not just their nationality. There are two elements of this argument.
The first is that the consideration of diverse perspectives and lead to better collective problem-solving and better design and delivery of programmes and services. As the UN Under-Secretary General of Safety and Security has repeatedly said, if UNDSS only considers potential security threats from the perspective of one type of person and their experience, UNDSS is going to miss out on key security information and potential threats, which puts UN staff and their ability to deliver at risk. This is in part because all of us as humans absorb and analyze information based on our own experiences. Many UN staff will likely be able to think of examples where they misunderstood a local situation because they weren’t familiar with it. I’ve watched it play out on a visit to the Liberia-Cote d’Ivoire border with UNMIL, when Western military colleagues noticed large groups of people moving across the border, which they perceived as a potential security concern given past border incursions by armed groups. Women who had worked on the ground in the area pointed out that since it was market day in the neighboring Ivorian village, it was likely Liberians taking advantage of better prices and selection to do their shopping. The women were right, but that’s not actually the key takeaway. Rather, the fact that this discussion happened, ensured that all options were considered and then verified, which provided better protection both for the UN mission as well as the civilians we were mandated to protect.
Diverse teams are not necessarily a silver bullet, and research on this performance question in public service demonstrates mixed results. There is evidence that representation from communities being served can improve what is delivered, but that’s not always the case. One of the few studies of international organizations explores whether male or female staff in the World Bank are better at mainstreaming gender in their programming, in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5. While both men and women did work towards ensuring their programmes did not discriminate against women, the study found that:
“Deeper implementation of gender mainstreaming is more likely when women staff supervise projects, hold positions of authority, and are more represented as coworkers.” - M. Heinzel et al., “Bureaucratic Representation and Gender Mainstreaming in International Organizations: Evidence from the World Bank”, (2024)
Research demonstrates more consistent findings in relation to how services and their institutions are perceived by the public, when they are delivered by a representative workforce. Findings systematically demonstrate that the public has greater trust in services and the institutions that deliver them when there is a representative workforce (see for instance, N.M Riccucci et al., 'Representative Bureaucracy: A Lever to Enhance Social Equity, Coproduction, and Democracy' 2017).
Given the complex environments where the UN is working, this trust is crucial for its ability to deliver on its mandates. Or put another way, the UN has never been able to deliver when it does not enjoy trust of the people it serves. Thus, a representative workforce can only help enhance its performance.
Building a trusted and competent workforce
The performance arguments are therefore also complementary to the intent behind Article 101, namely ensuring a competent workforce that is trusted by constituents. Moving this from a principle to a reality is the role of human resources policies and practices. Human resources, or talent management, is how the organization is able to attract and retain the best and the brightest who allow the UN to deliver on its mandates.
What does the UN need to offer to attract qualified applicants so that it can be sure that it is selecting the highest standards of competence and integrity? In our recent ReformWorks survey of 635 people from 117 countries who are pursuing an international career, 63% indicated that the opportunity to work with people of diverse backgrounds was one of the main reasons they were targeting jobs with a particular international organization. While a positive workplace culture is important generally for Millennials and GenZ when choosing an employer, our survey indicates it is even more significant for those pursuing international careers (19% of GenZ and 20% of Millennials participating in Deloitte’s 2024 global survey indicated that a positive workplace culture was a key reason they chose their employer).
The UN's ability to retain diverse talent also helps it to attract qualified talent. But engagement surveys and other feedback mechanisms from UN staff have highlighted that different groups don’t always feel valued or that they have the ability to engage as full members of a team. As the 2020 survey of UN staff on racial discrimination highlighted:
“1/3rd of UN staff respondents experienced discrimination, and 21% said they experienced it frequently. Most of those experiences were based on national origin but often involved more than one aspect of identity.” - Briefing on the Results from the 2020 United Nations Survey on Racism.
The negative implications this has for delivery of the mandates and resources entrusted to the UN by its member states is therefore why UN entities like UNFPA indicate that “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at the heart of UNFPA’s workforce”, a statement which Professor Kontorovich finds particularly offensive. The aim of DEI in the UN is to enhance the engagement and performance of all its staff. It is not, as portrayed in the OpEd, the result some idealogical whim of UN leadership. Because the reality is that the SG has no authority to change the fundamental premise of UN recruitment as set out in the UN Charter.
The SG is however directly responsible for ensuring that the UN delivers effectively and efficiently with the resources member states provide. Article 101 of the Charter indicates that efficiency is just as important criteria as competence and integrity in staff recruitment and conditions of service. A staffing system that spends time and money on attracting and recruiting competent candidates with integrity, who are prevented from performing at their best because they are unable to share their views and expertise, or are not able to develop their skills because of how work is assigned or how spots on training courses are allocated, and who leave prematurely and need to be replaced is simply not efficient. And that is a violation of Article 101 of the UN Charter.
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