UNITED NATIONS, October 10 (IPS) – Confronted with a extreme liquidity disaster and a hostile Trump administration, the UN continues to merge a few of its a number of businesses, and transfer them out of New York, relocating to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Center East. Maybe the primary two businesses to be merged can be UN Girls (created in 2010) and the UN Inhabitants Fund (created in 1967), with some staffers moved to Bonn and others to Nairobi.
And the UN Kids’s Fund (UNICEF) could also be subsequent in line certain to Nairobi.
The UN can also be contemplating a number of potential mergers primarily to scale back prices and enhance effectiveness, together with merging the UN AIDS company (UNAIDS) into the World Well being Group (WHO), consolidating the UN Workplace for Challenge Providers (UNOPS) with the UN Growth Programme (UNDP), and restructuring the Division of Peace Operations (DPO) and Division of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA).
“Externally, there was enthusiastic reception of members of the UN household like UN-Girls (but additionally UNFPA and UNICEF) relocating world features to Nairobi and Bonn,” in line with a UN report.
The brand new places can also embody Bangkok, Doha, Dubai and Istanbul.
Addressing the eightieth UN Basic Meeting classes final month, the President of Turkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan provided Istanbul as a brand new relocation web site describing the Turkish metropolis as “a superb UN hub”.
The UN’s money disaster, prompting mergers and relocations, has been triggered by $2.8 billion in unpaid U.S. dues, each for normal and peacekeeping budgets. And, as of final week, solely 139 out of 193 nations have paid their dues in full, with 54 nations in arrears.
Requested for an replace on the transfer to Nairobi, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric advised reporters October 3, the UN complicated in Nairobi is rising.
“The final time I used to be there, there was development. It’s been increasing for a while. I feel various businesses are already transferring. Numerous it is going to additionally rely on the finances, and choices by Member States”.
Requested concerning the provide of Istanbul, he mentioned, the relocation of posts from various extra conventional UN headquarter cities to others is one thing that’s being checked out, one thing that has already occurred.
“Istanbul is already dwelling to various regional hubs for numerous UN organizations. So, it’s one thing we’re repeatedly evaluating.”
Kul Gautam. a former Deputy Govt Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-Basic of the United Nations, advised IPS UNICEF has launched its personal “Future Focus Initiative” to extend the group’s agility, effectivity, and effectiveness in response to declining funding.
The initiative consists of vital finances cuts at headquarters and regional places of work, employees relocation to lower-cost places, and the consolidation of some regional places of work.
As a part of this train, he mentioned, UNICEF’s core finances at Headquarters and Regional Workplaces can be minimize by 25%, and about 70% of Headquarters employees can be relocated to lower-cost obligation stations like Bangkok, Nairobi, and maybe even Doha, Dubai, and Istanbul which can be nearer to most UNICEF subject places of work.
“Such redeployment of employees may also help streamline operations and cut back working prices”.
A significant unique mission of many specialised UN businesses, funds, and programmes, Gautam identified, was to supply specialised technical experience that was not available in creating nations.
“Contemplating that many creating nations now have extremely expert professionals (a lot of whom migrate to high-income nations looking for higher prospects), UN places of work ought to severely think about using extra nationwide professionals in creating nations at significantly decrease emoluments than very high-cost expatriates from the International North”.
A long time in the past, he recalled, UNICEF pioneered the follow of using a reasonably large variety of nationwide professionals in its nation places of work.
“All UN businesses ought to now think about emulating UNICEF’s instance, and UNICEF itself ought to increase this follow, whereas retaining the essential worldwide nature of the group”, mentioned Gautam, creator of ‘International Citizen from Gulmi: My Journey from the Hills of Nepal to the Halls of United Nations’.
Whereas bureaucracies and vested pursuits of employees within the Secretariat of varied organizations are partly liable for the proliferation of the mandates and overly complicated and convoluted studies, Member States have to restrain their calls for and urge for food for unduly detailed and unnecessarily frequent studies.
With the arrival of AI, there is a chance now to consolidate and shorten these studies drastically.
Gautam mentioned: “Even the frequency of Board conferences is extreme. Presently, UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UN Girls, and WFP Boards meet thrice annually. Reducing these Board conferences to twice a yr would save many assets with out compromising on the accountability of the businesses.”
Talking of mergers, Dr Purnima Mane, former Deputy Govt Director (Programme) and UN Assistant-Secretary-Basic (ASG) on the UN Inhabitants Fund (UNFPA), advised IPS it’s not stunning that below the UN 80 restructuring plan, the UN is contemplating some main measures like merging a few of its businesses like UNFPA and UN Girls and transferring a few of their employees out of New York to different nations.
Streamlining may briefly resolve the present liquidity disaster and the transfer away from New York would reveal transferring in direction of decentralization – each laudable targets. Nonetheless, within the present situation these seem like brief time period steps primarily to chop prices with out proof of how they match into an altered strategic imaginative and prescient for the UN, she mentioned.
“How these steps are a part of an even bigger strategic method to make the UN simpler in what it needs to realize is unclear. Cutbacks and mergers can present brief time period aid however in addition they can clearly create issues of their very own, reminiscent of shedding out on the positive aspects made over time within the areas of labor of those businesses and packages, all of that are important to improvement.”
This can jeopardize the impression of the work of the packages and endanger the achievement of many important world targets, mentioned Dr Mane, former President and CEO of Pathfinder Worldwide.
Within the case of merging UNFPA with UN Girls, she identified, the argument has been made that merging the mandates of advancing gender equality as an entire, with strengthening reproductive well being and rights of girls, might the truth is profit girls.
In idea this sounds nice however the actuality of the context and historical past of girls’s points calls that assumption into query.
In a political context during which Sexual and Reproductive Well being and Rights (SRHR) points are deeply contested and even opposed by some Member States, UNFPA’s work on these points could possibly be enormously diluted by way of the merger.
Prior commitments made by nations particularly to SRHR danger receiving decrease precedence, in favor of some extra politically acceptable although essential areas that UN Girls focuses on, reminiscent of girls’s financial empowerment.
Additionally, a merger doesn’t assure that the brand new merged group would get wherever near the equal of what UNFPA and UN Girls at present obtain in assets, she warned.
The merger might end in deep cuts to assets assigned to gender points general, thereby depriving nations of the wanted help on these points, at a price that ignores the laudable the explanation why these businesses and packages have been created as separate entities.
That is undoubtedly a wake-up name to the 2 businesses to develop extra strategic and efficient methods to streamline and coordinate their work in methods that don’t gradual the progress made on points which can be central to gender equality and ladies, whereas additionally engaged on decentralizing their packages however the deliberate resolution of merger is prone to be severely damaging for girls and their standing.
Talking in an unofficial and private capability, Shihana Mohamed, a founding member and Coordinator of the United Nations Asia Community for Variety and Inclusion (UN-ANDI), advised IPS: UN Girls was established to be a pressure multiplier—mainstreaming girls’s rights throughout peace constructing, improvement, and human rights.
But right now, she identified, it faces persistent underfunding, restricted political affect, and a shrinking mandate.
“As a gender equality advocate, I concern that the potential merger of UN Girls with UNFPA below the UN80 reform agenda might additional dilute the UN Girls’s distinct mandate”.
“If the merger is rushed or imposed from the highest, many years of institutional data, technical experience, and trusted partnerships— constructed individually by UN Girls and UNFPA—could possibly be misplaced.”
It additionally dangers sidelining UN Girls’s coverage management, weakening its accountability position, and shifting assets from structural change to service supply. Briefly, it might flip a transformative agenda right into a technocratic one, she argued.
Any restructuring should protect UN Girls’s distinct mandate. Member States should improve core funding for UN Girls and help its integration throughout all UN businesses. Political backing should match rhetorical help, she mentioned.
“The creation of UN Girls was the fruits of years of negotiations amongst Member States and advocacy by the worldwide girls’s motion. Thus, the UN80 Job Pressure and different reform our bodies should interact overtly with all stakeholders”.
“ I additionally emphasize the necessity for significant session with feminist actions earlier than making structural modifications as they’re the watchdogs and visionaries of worldwide gender justice.
Choices affecting UN Girls’s future should be clear, inclusive, and grounded in human rights—not simply cost-efficiency,” mentioned Mohamed, a US Public Voices Fellow with the OPED Challenge and Equality Now on Advancing the Rights of Girls and Women.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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