NEW YORK -- The senior aide to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he does not expect additional firings of key personnel as the organization struggles to defend itself from multiple scandals. "We're not in the mood for more wholesale change," said Mark Malloch Brown, who became Mr. Annan's chief of staff and primary adviser three months ago. "Senior appointments will not stop, but there is no wholesale change," he told The Washington Times in an interview earlier this week.
As advisers scrambled to put the finishing touches on Mr. Annan's recommendations for U.N. reform, new protocols for hiring senior officials are already being tested. With more than a half-dozen key offices vacant or almost so, senior officials are casting a broad net to find the "bright, energetic agents of change," rather than the usual assortment of bureaucrats, diplomats and nephews that are formally put forward by governments, he said. "When we search proactively, we get, we build a more international team than when we get an ambassador coming in here with the CV of someone they insist we place," Mr. Malloch Brown said. "If you sit here and wait for governments, you don't get the world's best."
They know that from experience.
| I like that turn of phrase: "bureaucrats, diplomats and nephews." Kinda catches the flavor of the thing. |
To find a new person to head the refugee agency known as the High Commissioner for Refugees, a job that became available last month after accusations of sexual harassment and intimidation became public, the organization contacted governments, private aid groups and it circulated criteria for the job search on the Internet. There were ads in the back of the Economist, a weekly newsmagazine. At least a dozen persons have submitted resume packages, and the "short list" will be subjected to interviews by a search panel and unprecedented reference checks.
No wonder we haven't heard from Spike.
A similarly public search is under way to find people to run the U.N. Development Program, to direct Middle East peace efforts and to oversee economic programs in Asia and the Arab world. The chief U.N. administrator's job will soon be available, as will the comptroller's. All jobs are theoretically priorities, but as Mr. Malloch Brown said, "It's generally hard to find people who want a job for 18 months."
Not if the payoffs are right |