"No Confidence" vote for Ban Ki-moon and the only reason was: "he and his wife spend too much in air fares" ! While at UNDP: Samaras seem to be OK with moving Bratislava Centre to Turkey

In the looser world of UN's Staff Union, the only thing wrong with the current secretary general (Ban Ki-moon) is:

Aware that the travel costs of the Secretary-General and his entourage, including his spouse, constitute a significant expense to the Organization;

That's the only thing the leadership of Staff Union, who scratches their scrotum all day and get paid for doing nothing, (& never-ever defended any staff) could think as problematic with the dysfunctional United Nations system !

And here is their ridiculous, useless Staff Resolution :

Click here to read this @ InnerCityPress: http://www.innercitypress.com/ban1noconreso012413.pdf

Click here to read this @ InnerCityPress: http://www.innercitypress.com/ban1noconreso012413.pdf

Ah..and for the UNDP audience, this is what's coming your way:

"We estimate that a US$50 million dollar cut from previously planned spending will be needed this year to keep UNDP’s core liquidity balance at a minimum of three months at the end of the year.” Click here for this

Let's see what UNDP's own staff council will say about this...since it seems that they failed to protect the Bratislava staffers from loosing their jobs who are due to be transferred to Turkey.

Many say that Dimitri Samaras (a Greek) has agreed with the Turkish ASG of RBEC about the move.

In case you want to say smth about contact the Staff Council these are your representatives:

 Click here for a UNDP Staff Council link: http://www.staffcouncil.org/index.cfm?module=ActiveWeb&page=w&s=your_representatives

At Town Hall, Secretary-General reflects on his vision and the way ahead for UN reform

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Posted: Wednesday, 14 September 2011, New York | Author: iSeek/David Mimran

The Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, held a Town Hall meeting today in New York with staff from duty stations across the world attending by video conference, to share his reflections on his first term and his vision for strengthening the United Nations during his second term. Questions and comments focused particularly on security, budget cuts and mobility.

“I am honoured to be part of this incredible Secretariat of thousands of different people from different countries working for the same cause”, said Ban Ki-moon in his opening remarks. Mr Ban was accompanied on the podium by the Deputy Secretary-General, Ms. Asha-Rose Migiro and Under Secretary-General for Management, Ms. Angela Kane. Mrs. Ban attended in the audience.

At the beginning of the new General Assembly session, the Secretary-General had invited staff to a Global TownHall meeting to come together and talk about the “state of the world and our United Nations -- where we are, where we are going”.

Before sharing his vision for his second term, the Secretary-General recalled the tragic events of the bombing of the UN House in Abuja: “This attack demonstrates that we now face determined, immoral extremists, opposed to the basic principles of the United Nations, in even low-threat countries around the world”, he said. He pledged to call on Member States to do more to ensure adequate security for UN personnel everywhere.

Staff observed a minute of silence in honour of colleagues lost in the line of duty, including in Afghanistan, Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Nigeria and Sudan.

Reform Plan

The Secretary-General then shared what he called “the state of his thinking”, lessons learned from his first term and the vision for the road ahead.

“My plan is to move from talking about “what” we must do, to detailing “how” we will do it, through a plan of action to be unveiled in January. Over the next five years, I want us to focus on several areas”, added the Secretary-General.

• We need adequate and predictable resources. Austerity is a reality. But if we are doing our part to save, Member States must do theirs to fund.

• We need to make further organizational changes. The Change Management Team is looking at a number of key areas, including information technology, procurement, business processes, and work-life balance.

• We need to make the United Nations a hub of innovation.

• We need to strengthen staff security. You have my commitment on this. Here, too, Member States will have to recognize the need for resources.

• We need to ensure accountability and transparency. And we need to ensure that the Umoja project is a cornerstone of this effort.

• It is vital that professional staff and managers experience several duty stations to understand the full breadth of our organization and ensure that we can deliver our mandates effectively in the most difficult duty stations. This should always be an opportunity, never a burden. That is why we have been consulting with staff representatives on proposals for a comprehensive mobility policy to present to the General Assembly in 2012.

The Secretary-General fielded questions from staff in Nairobi, The Hague, New York, Geneva, Bangui, Beirut, Vienna, Juba, and Santiago, on three mains themes: mobility, staff security, and the 3% budget reduction proposed by the Secretary-General.

Staff security

The President of the Staff Union in New York, Ms. Barbara Tavora-Jainchill, speaking in the name of a very wide number of unions in the UN System and a variety of duty stations, raised the issue of security and the growing threat to staff, asking the Secretary-General to be more often present in person in tragic circumstances. The Staff Union also asked the SG to create a “staff-management working group on security measures to identify and correct the flaws in the system,” including the issue of housing several agencies and programmes in the same building.

The SG reiterated that staff security was a priority and indicated that he would follow up on meetings that already took place with the Deputy Secretary-General. He added that he was looking forward to improving the relationship between management and staff unions. “The fact that relations have not always been as harmonious as expected” had been a regret during his first term, he explained.

3% Cut in Budget

Answering questions from Staff Unions in Geneva and Vienna concerning the cuts in the budget and their adverse impact on staff, in terms of contracts but also security and health services, Mr. Ban pointed out that we are living “in an era of austerity”.

He added that it was possible to cut “through the fat” without “cutting through the muscles or the bones” and that offices had already been able to come up with an average of 3.7% cut in the budget. “The 3% cut is not across the board, and doesn’t apply uniformly to all offices”, he explained, adding that some departments had been able to offer a voluntary cut of 7%.

Mobility

In response to a question from Bangui and a remark from the Staff Union in New York, the SG indicated that the Secretariat had been tasked by the General Assembly to present a plan on mobility at its 67th session. He added that he would be striving to strike a “balance between continuity and expertise”. “It may be the case that if someone works for 10-15 years in one place, he may become an expert, but we need our staff to be multi-functional”, he said.

At least 34 UN staff members killed in attacks worldwide in 2008

UN staff in the World Conference Centre in Bonn, Germany

13 January 2009 – A radio reporter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a schoolteacher in Gaza, seven food aid truck drivers in Sudan and Somalia and ten peacekeepers in Darfur are among the 34 United Nations staff members killed by malicious acts in 2008, the world body’s Staff Union said today.

Although the figure represents a slight decline from the previous year, “2008 was another harsh year for United Nations personnel around the world,” Staff Union President Stephen Kisambira said in a press release.

“The Staff Union is particularly concerned by the killing of many contracted workers who are increasingly being used as a substitute for United Nations staff in many dangerous areas in the world,” he added.

“The Staff Union once again appeals to Member States to guarantee the minimal security conditions necessary for the United Nations to carry out its life-saving work,” he stressed.

One of the most deadly incidents occurred when a joint police and military patrol was ambushed by at least 200 attackers on horseback and armed SUVs between Gusa Jamat and Wadah, North Darfur on 8 July, killing seven peacekeepers and wounding 22 from the African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

On 29 October a security advisor and a driver for the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) were killed in a suicide car bombing of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) compound in Hargeisa, northern Somalia. Six staff members were also injured, two of them seriously.

In addition to malicious actions, air crashes also took their toll, the Staff Union said, with seven staff members dying on 3 March in a crash in eastern Nepal and another seven losing their lives when a plane carrying humanitarian supplies went down in the eastern DRC.

At least 10 UN personnel were taken hostage during 2008, and one was still missing in Somalia at the end of the year.

In addition, on 14 December, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Niger, Robert Fowler, his assistant and their UN driver went missing while driving near the country’s capital, Niamey.

Staff Union condemn the Retention of imminent retirees and use of consultants and retirees at the United Nations

in a report presented today to the General Assembly the UN Staff Union strongly condemned the mismanagement and illegal modalities used by UN manager in retention of retirees and consultants.

Click here to see the Staff Union Report

39. The poor rating of a staff member’s performance can be used to justify the hiring of consultants. To some extent too, the use of consultants appears to be in lieu of providing staff training. Rather than train their staff within existing resources, supervisors tend to engage the same consultants either frequently or for extended periods. There is no procedure for vetting consultants. The process of engaging consultants is at the discretion of programme managers. Sometimes, political considerations appear to be embedded in the process of engaging consultants. Yet there have even been instances where consultants have been allowed to supervise regular staff members.

40. Programme managers routinely rehire retirees and or retain imminent retirees as a stopgap measure in lieu of succession planning. Indeed, this concern has informed the sentiment against re-hiring retirees or extending the contracts of imminent retirees beyond the retirement age. However, not every staff member retires at the mandatory ages. Staff representatives find the discretionary practice to retain some staff members in active service to be selectively discriminatory. Programme managers may not comply with the requirement to initiate the prescribed recruitment process, that is, at least six months before the anticipated vacancies occur (ST/AI/2006/3), to favour certain imminent retirees. Programme managers then request for the retention, sometimes beyond the prescribed six months, and the Superannuation Committee obliges.

41. Even when it does not oblige, the Assistant Secretary-General, Office of Human Resources Management (ASG/OHRM) can ignore its recommendations and there is no feedback to indicate the actioned recommendations. In some instances, the request for retention is not in the interest of the Organization as required by ST/AI/2003/8. It is in the interest of the staff member to accumulate more months of contributory service with the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF); an enduring legacy of General Assembly resolution 35/210 which exempted General Service staff with less than 20 years’ contributory service from mandatory retirement at the age of 60. In other instances, programme managers retain imminent retirees to enable them reach the 10-year requirement for after-service health insurance or the 15-year residency requirement to gain permanent residency in the host country. With regard to retirees, programme managers routinely rehire them as consultants or on regular contracts soon after the expiration of the required three-month separation.

42. These selective and unfair practices point to a need to have a fair policy that is applicable to all imminent retirees. It is the considered opinion of staff representatives that the current retention procedures should be replaced with a non-discriminatory policy that allows staff members to retire at a later age, subject to satisfactory performance.

IN RESPONSE TO BRAHIMI REPORT, COMMITTEE ON STAFF SECURITY

Press Release
3 July 2008

Hopes Brahimi Panel recommendations will be implemented more effectively
than those issued after Baghdad bombing


The Independent Panel on Safety and Security of UN Personnel and Premises World-wide, headed by Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, has released a sobering report which while it indicts the Organization for failing “to develop a culture of accountability in security management,” appears to insulate “the higher echelons of the hierarchy, including the Secretary-General from the System’s passivity observed by the Panel.

The report shows that the UN and particular individuals failed to do their duty, and in ways somewhat similar to the circumstances leading up to the 19 August 2003 attack against the United Nations in Baghdad. While the Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security took the honorable course of action by resigning, the Staff Union’s Committee on the Security and Independence of the International Civil Service does not believe that fault solely lies with one person.

In the name of accountability, the Committee calls on the Secretary-General to take fully responsibility for the insufficient implementation of the security management system approved by the General Assembly. It further calls upon him to immediately take action to prevent future tragedies from occurring and staff from being endangered; to immediately remove any individuals that failed in their duties; and to swiftly implement the reforms and recommendations of the Brahimi Panel. The Committee urges – for the safety of all staff – that more effective reforms be instituted that will prevent loss of life on the scale experienced in Baghdad or Algiers.

The Committee is not enthused by the appointment of Mr. Ralph Zacklin—an insider who has served as a legal counsel of the United Nations peacekeeping operations—to head an “independent” accountability group that will review the responsibilities of the key individuals and offices connected with the attack on the UN premises in Algiers. The apparent conflict of interest of some members of the group, and their track record at the UN, does not portend a restoration of confidence and morale among the staff. Reliance on senior UN officials to conduct a peer review on accountability issues has proven to be a failure in the past, a situation which the long overdue reform of the internal justice is expected to rectify.

The Committee welcomes the bulk of the recommendations of Mr. Brahimi’s panel, especially with regard to ensuring adequate and sustainable funding for security and safety; establishing the principle of “no programme without security; the urgency of reorganizing the constituent security management structures into a single unified system; the importance of having a reliable, appropriate, and robust information technology (IT) support system to develop information and knowledge, critical to security analysis and threat assessment; and the Panel’s reiteration that safety is half the mandate of DSS and that a dedicated Safety Unit should be established within DSS with competent staff and resources to enhance the safety of UN personnel and to develop a system-wide guidance on air safety.

U.N. union seeks own probe of Algeria attack

U.N. union seeks own probe of Algeria attack

Washington Times

By Betsy Pisik - NEW YORK — The U.N. Staff Union leadership decided to authorize $150,000 to underwrite its own investigation of the al Qaeda attack on the organization's Algeria headquarters, saying that it has little confidence in the official survey group appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The Staff Union, which represents some but not all of the organization's New York employees, made the decision late last week, according to a member present, days before Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, declared the United Nations a legitimate target of violence.

"The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: It is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands," al-Zawahri said in an audio file released on sympathetic Web sites Tuesday.

Responding to a question about the innocent people killed by al Qaeda bombings in Algeria, Iraq and Morocco, al-Zawahri responded, "We haven't killed the innocents — not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else."

He later added, "If there is any innocent who was killed in the mujahedeen's operations, then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity."

An Algerian terrorist group aligned with al Qaeda slammed a car bomb into the U.N. compound in Algeria's capital city of Algiers on Dec. 11, killing 22 and wounding 40, one of two deadly attacks that morning.

Insurgents similarly destroyed the U.N. compound in Baghdad in August 2003, killing 17 staff members, among others, and triggering the organization's temporary withdrawal from Iraq.

Al-Zawahri, answering questions submitted online by the organization's friends and members, vowed that bin Laden is alive and well, and vowed to attack Jews both in and outside of Israel.

In Romania for the NATO Summit yesterday, the U.N.'s Mr. Ban told worried staff members that the allegations made by al-Zawahri are "baseless and false," according to officials traveling with the secretary-general.

In New York, spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Mr. Ban discussed the message with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and "dismissed" it.

"Both noted, contrary to that message, the contributions that the United Nations has made to the Muslim world," she told reporters.

Diplomats also were aghast that the United Nations, again, was singled out.

Al Qaeda figures have explicitly targeted the United Nations since at least 2002, when bin Laden called the international organization a tool of the Western powers.

The United Nations shuffled its security office in 2005, appointing the former head of Scotland Yard's counterterrorism office to oversee staff safety in the field, reinforce headquarters buildings, and adopt minimum security standards. That office's budget and size also were doubled.

Mr. Ban appointed a new team of seven law-enforcement experts and diplomats to survey staff security around the world. The panel was appointed in the wake of the Algiers bombing, but is not specifically assigned to determine why such a well-anticipated tragedy was not countered.

It was not immediately clear last night when the Staff Union's alternative investigation into the deadly bombing on the Algiers offices will commence, nor who will work on the project.

Staff Union President Stephen Kisambira refused to comment.