Just as the world expects the United Nations to be led by the best leaders, the UN staff should also represent the brightest from across the globe. Attracting and retaining staff is a core function of any organization and generally led by their human resources departments. In the UN, however, it works differently.
While human resources practitioners can design outreach strategies and professional development programs to attract and retain staff, it is UN member states who determine the salaries and employment conditions that the practitioners can — or cannot — offer prospective employees. That means improving benefits that pertain to dual-career families working for the UN.
These employment conditions are proposed by the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC). It is an independent technical body of 15 commissioners who are nominated and elected by the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee, which consists of representatives of all 193 member states and focuses on UN budgets. To retain institutional memory, not all commissioners are elected at once. This year, three seats are up for election. Member states have until Oct. 25 to nominate candidates.
The salaries and employment conditions have a fundamental impact on the UN’s competitiveness as an employer, including its ability to attract and retain a gender-balanced workforce. This is why all UN stakeholders have a vested interest in understanding the role of the commission and increasing transparency in the election of its next set of commissioners, which happens on Nov. 8.
The elections are conducted by secret ballot in the Fifth Committee to fill the open seats, and the Committee also designates the chair and vice chair, who are the only members who serve full time. Commissioners are compensated for their time and travel expenses for in-person meetings.
Specifically, the commission’s mandate is to recommend to the General Assembly salary scales, dependency allowances and education grants. The latter are additional financial support provided to parents working for the UN outside their home country to cover the cost of schooling. It is the primary source of child care support for UN families. Across the globe, this support is becoming increasingly important because of the growing number of dual-career families.
Such families are very much a reality for women in international employment. Research from across continents indicates that women from various cultures all consider child care a top priority that enables them to balance international careers and family. Yet, UN education grants for staffers kick in only for families with children age five and up, in accordance with the commission’s recommendation.
Even if a human resources professional realizes that offering an additional financial incentive or benefit for child care could attract female talent with young children, they have no authority to offer such an option, unlike many of their private sector counterparts. Multinational corporations like Cisco, Morgan Stanley, Next and Etsy, for example, routinely offer child care vouchers and/or access to subsidized child care to parents of children under age five.
If the UN is seriously trying to attract and retain the world’s best and brightest employees, it needs a commission that will propose competitive employment conditions. Commissioners serve a four-year term, after which their seat is up for election and the same commissioner can, and often is, nominated again and re-elected. According to the commission’s statutes, commissioners should reflect a broad geographic balance and have substantial executive experience in public administration, particularly personnel management. Understanding who the commissioners are is therefore important for member states and UN staff.
Currently, only three of the 15 commissioners, or 20 percent, are women. Even the notoriously male-dominated Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) has surpassed the 20 percent ratio of women in recent years. With three seats up for election this year in the commission, member states have an incredible opportunity to nominate and select women for the open seats, thereby creating a gender balance of 40 percent in the organization.
The elections also present a chance to include a more youthful perspective by electing candidates who have young families. Thirteen of the 15 commissioners are around or above the UN’s retirement ages of 62 and 65, including the three commissioners encumbering the seats up for election in November. (The UN raised its retirement age most recently in 2018, determining that staff who joined before Jan. 1, 1990 must retire at age 60; those between Jan. 1, 1990 and Dec. 31, 2013 can retire at age 62 but continue to work until age 65.)
Yet, information on the candidates presented by member states is not made public until after the Oct. 25 deadline for nominations. There is no way for outsiders to assess the diversity or qualifications of candidates whose names have been submitted until it is too late to advocate for a broader pool.
To further complicate matters, there are no specific criteria for regional diversity, expertise in personnel management or even what constitutes an independent candidate beyond that the person should not receive instructions from governments, secretariats or staff associations of any UN entity, according to Article 6 of the ICSC Statutes and Rules of Procedure.
The lack of specific criteria raises the specter of potential conflict in the Fifth Committee about commission membership, which has become an increasing concern since the divisions that plagued the enlargement of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) in 2020.
The current commissioners from China and Morocco, whose seats are up for re-election this year, have continued to hold positions in their government while also carrying out their commission functions. It is unclear if these same commissioners are being proposed for re-election, or whether alternative candidates who are not employed by a government are being proposed by China or Morocco or other member states. It is entirely conceivable that one or both of the commissioners are up for re-election and that out of deference for their previous experience, other member states will not nominate alternative candidates.
This scenario would put the Fifth Committee in the position of electing commissioners who violate the commission’s own statutes, calling into question the credibility of the commission itself or forcing the Fifth Committee to change the election procedure to allow for new candidates to be nominated after the deadline.
Increased transparency in the nomination and election process would not only allow the Fifth Committee to avoid inflaming divisions among member states, but it would also enhance the credibility and the output of the commission, which can only strengthen the UN system.
This essay was updated to include more precise information on UN staff retirement rules.
This is an opinion essay.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the International Civil Service Commission election?
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Katja Hemmerich is the managing director of ReformWorks, a think tank of academics and practitioners focusing on management reform and researching administrative politics of international organizations.
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Excellent suscint presentation of the dilemma of political appointments to technical bodies which should be “independant” and not subject to political and financial considerations ! The deterioration of the conditions of service for UN common system staff related to salaries allowances medical insurance etc as well as the lack of policies to attract young generations is amazing. Mandates for Commissioners should not exceed five years ! Keep up the good work!
Interesting read. Good to know there’s people who study the UN’s administrative practices.
Many aspects of internal administration make for deeply discouraging outcomes and work against talent retention – lack of mobility, lengthy recruitment processes, arbitrary barriers to recruitment or promotion, skills mismatch & at-times flagrant incompetence among mid-level managers. There are so many brilliant and dynamic people who either want to enter the UN or move up from junior positions, but the system’s internal make-up makes it difficult.
It’s unfortunate, I think the Organization’s performance could be meaningfully enhanced if there were more suitable management of human resources.
Thankfully there are also brilliant managers who know how to navigate administrative irrationalities.
Biases and inefficiencies in the ICSC’s work have not been sufficiently recognized or prioritized for reform; this article is timely (and well-written).
The ways in which the ICSC has hindered progress in developing family-friendly work conditions, which must include the reclassification of some duty stations to enable staff to bring families, is addressed in a 2021 external review of the Secretary-general’s gender parity strategy — see especially pages 103 and 118: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/External-review-of-the-SGs-System-wide-strategy-on-gender-parity-en.pdf