Annan wants changes in UN

Countless committee meetings. Fat reports written in dense language. Reams of paperwork that tie up a complex web of officials.

That’s not a critic’s cynical view of the United Nations. It’s what the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself said about the world body today.

“We must be prepared to change with the times - constantly adjusting to new conditions and new needs,” Annan at UN headquarters in New York.

Calling on his officials and the 190-member nations to help redraw priorities, Annan’s report on UN reform prescribes streamlining various departments, simplifying labyrinthine procedures, firing or retraining staff and recruiting more skilled people.

“Activities which are no longer relevant must be dropped, while on new issues ... the UN must deepen its knowledge, sharpen its focus and act more effectively,” the 55-page report says.

The report says 15,484 meetings were held by various UN bodies and 5,879 reports were issued in 2000 and 2001. Most UN reports appear in the six official languages of the United Nations.

“But it must now be clear to everyone that the international agenda has become overloaded with such meetings,” the report says, warning that “summit fatigue” had set in both among the general public and governments.

“We are not saying conferences are obsolete or should be abandoned. But there could be other ways of organizing these conferences,” Annan said.

He advocated more planning ahead of conferences so that all the documents are ready before delegates meet. Otherwise, he warned, “you come up with a document which is an agreement on the lowest common denominator.”

The report said even larger countries find it difficult to participate in and keep track of all such meetings.

The report also said UN documents, which often run into hundreds of pages of dense, technical prose, should now have size limits and be written in “simple, crisp language.”

Annan began a major effort to overhaul UN operations when he took office five years ago, a key demand of the United States and other members.

He has continued his effort during his second five-year term that began in January.

Annan also said the fight against international terrorism will remain at the top of the UN agenda, along with the priorities spelled out in the Millennium Declaration adopted by more than 150 world leaders in September 2000.

The Millennium Summit targets include cutting in half the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day, ensuring that every child goes to primary school, and reversing the Aids epidemic by the year 2015.

To create a leaner organisation, the United Nations may for the first time start offering golden handshakes for staff whose jobs are redundant, the report said.

It said its Department of Public Information will be trimmed and many of the 71 UN Information Offices worldwide will be closed and subsumed into regional hubs.

As a first step, 13 such offices in Western Europe will be consolidated into one regional information centre.

More than 5,000 people are employed in the 35-storey UN headquarters in New York. Hundreds of thousands of others work full-time, part-time or as consultants worldwide.

Money saved in the restructuring would be used to retrain staff and improving the organisation’s information systems, the official said.