Pakistan calls UN to rectify flaws in its recruitment system: Masood Khan

Speaking at the Fifth Committee of the UN General Assembly on “Human Resource Management”, Pakistan Permanent Representative, Ambassador Masood Khan told the world body that the organization has failed to address the current and future needs due to a flawed, and time consuming recruitment and selection system that lacks transparency.
Pointing deficiencies of UN human resource machinery, he emphasized the need for a strong political will, and productive engagement in the General Assembly to address this anomaly.
He expressed the hope that the UN Secretary-General would present comprehensive proposals to the General Assembly for review of methodology of geographic representation in timely manner.
Referring Secretary-General’s latest report, which highlights essence of creating an organization that could implement the mandates entrusted to it by Member States, the ambassador said Pakistan fully support the overarching goal of the continuity of reforms of human resources management. “The fact is that the UN has to go a long way to attain a global character, orientation and composition. It has to cover some ground urgently to reflect geographic diversity”.
The ambassador said that global realities had changed since 1960 when the system of desirable ranges was first established to measure progress towards equitable geographic distribution. He noted that while there had been many reforms in other areas of human resources management in the UN, it was matter of deep concern that the most critical element of system of geographic representation particularly of developing countries had remained unchanged.
“The new human resources management scorecards should promote geographic representation as one of its priority indicators. The longstanding and unresolved issue of equitable geographic distribution should be amicably addressed during the current session. The status quo is not an option”, Pak envoy underlined.
In order to rectify the chronic imbalance in the representation of Member States in the Secretariat, he recommended a stronger role of performance management board for the accountability of programme managers in the area of delegated authority in respect to recruitment process and effective implementation of scorecards.
“A number of critical areas with regard to the Secretary General’s proposed mobility and career development framework are undefined and, therefore, need clarification so as to develop broader understanding of this Committee towards taking the reform process forward”.
He emphasized that the first and foremost steps, in the implementation of any mobility policy in the organization should be to ensure that the staff who have served in hardship duty stations for long periods of time would get equal opportunity to serve across duty stations and termination of inordinate lien system used by the staff at the New York and other Headquarter duty stations.
Reaffirming Pakistan’s support to the system of human resources management in the UN, which was based on principles of fairness, equity, transparency and accountability, ambassador Masood called for the continuation of the existing eligibility criteria for recruitment and selection of candidates in the United Nations Secretariat, which include relevant qualification experience, skills, and gender and geographic benchmarks.
Ambassador Khan cautioned that a staff mobility and re-assignment policy, which reintroduced the defunct discriminatory treatment of external candidates and negatively affected the merit based selection system, geographic representation and gender balance in the Organization would not be accepted.