What is the Future for the International Civil Service? On Global Public Administration
| Author | Jean‐Marc Coicaud |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12466 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
What is the Future for the International Civil
Service? On Global Public Administration
Jean-Marc Coicaud
Rutgers University
Generally speaking, questions of human resources in the
United Nations common system,
1
which brings together 28
organizations,
2
tend to be understudied by academics. Very
little scholarship is indeed dedicated to these questions.
Academics prefer to focus on diplomatic, political, security,
development, and issues of the sort. Like questions of public
information, statistics and data in the United Nations con-
text, human resources have tended to be viewed by schol-
ars of the UN as unattractive because as not strategic
enough.
3
But, of course, this is a mistake. If there is an area
that is truly strategic in any organization, it is human
resources. This is especially the case for the United Nations.
For an organization like the UN, which has global mandates
and minimal financial resources, human resources are abso-
lutely critical for its day-to-day activities and its ability to
deliver. Unless the United Nations manages its resources
well, unless it maximizes them, it is very challenging for the
organization as a whole to succeed.
Against this background, this article touches upon four
points which, in one way or another, are all related to and
have a bearing on three issues at the core of the future of
UN human resources, that is: independence and neutrality
of the international civil service; how to maintain the United
Nations’competitive edge over other actors in a changing
global environment, and certainly new compared to the
time the United Nations was created; and the use of talents,
at the international and national levels.
The four points are the following: first, where do we come
from and where do we currently stand in terms of the evolu-
tion of UN human resources in the past years? Second, what
are the challenges but also the opportunities that constitute
the context in which the international civil service is operating
today? Third, what are the dilemmas, generic and specific, that
the management of UN human resources has to face in con-
nection with trying to strengthen the independence and neu-
trality of the international civil service, maintain the United
Nations’competitive edge and mobilize the best talents, both
internationally and locally? Fourth, and finally, what could be
possible orientations or recommendations for enhancing in
the coming years the management of UN human resources?
1. Where do we come from and where do we
stand?
A few years ago I published a study on UN human
resources, titled “International Organizations as a Profession:
Professional Mobility and Power Distribution”.
4
To this day
there are aspects highlighted in this study that remain valid.
But, at the same time, there are also a number of elements
that display change underway since the publication of this
study.
Continuity
Among the findings of this study that remain valid today,
four are worth mentioning. To begin with, concerning finan-
cial benefits, it continues to be the case that the financial
benefits for people working for the United Nations as full-
fledged UN staff, that is, having regular UN contracts of a
long-term/continuous nature, are better than for personnel
operating in the national civil service of developing coun-
tries. This is all the more so considering that the financial
benefits of regular UN contracts are not limited to salaries
but can include also pensions, dependency benefits, educa-
tional grants, rental subsidies, family-visit travels, annual
leave and other benefits. And it continues to be the case
that the financial benefits for staff in the national civil ser-
vice of developed countries are quite competitive with
those of UN staff. This is especially true when national civil
servants of developed countries are posted abroad, like in
the Foreign Service.
Then, focusing on the relationships between the private
sector and the United Nations, the study noticed that
while professionals coming from the private sector in
areas relevant for the United Nations are highly mar-
ketable, the marketability of UN staff in the private sector,
as an average, is low. By and large, this also continues to
be true. In fact, to some extent, particularly for mid-level
staff, the longer people work for the United Nations, the
more their professional marketability outside the UN tends
to decrease.
Staying on the issue of comparison between the private
sector and the United Nations, the study stressed that both
shared the trend of hiring staff on short-term contracts. This
is still a shared trend today. As a matter of fact, this is a
trend that has had the tendency to deepen in both sectors.
More specifically, on the work culture in the UN System,
the study highlighted the process rather than result-oriented
nature of the work at the United Nations. This is still the
case. Despite the operational character of the functions per-
formed by a number of United Nations organizations, such
as the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, process-
©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2017) 8:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12466
Global Policy Volume 8 . Issue 4 . November 2017
574
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