(SBU) UNHCR 44TH STANDING COMMITTEE: FOCUS ON

UNCLAS GENEVA 000250


DEPT FOR PRM

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREF PREL
SUBJECT: (SBU) UNHCR 44TH STANDING COMMITTEE: FOCUS ON
MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

REF: A. GENEVA 238



1. (U) SUMMARY. Developments related to UNHCR's operational
management and program budgets figured prominently during the
March 3-5, 2008, Standing Committee meeting. Discussions
included UNHCR's ongoing structural and management change
process, implementation of recommendations made by the Board
of Auditors, inspections and investigations undertaken by the
Inspector General's Office, and program budgets and income.
UNHCR is on track to finish the roll-out process of its
Global Needs Assessment and Focus planning software over the
course of the next few months, tools that will underpin its
2010 budget. UNHCR fears that the suffering global economy
and fluctuating exchange rates will negatively impact on its
income levels in 2009, thus adding more urgency to UNHCR's
efforts to maximize productivity, efficiency and cost
savings. During the Standing Committee, member states
generally voiced approval for UNHCR's reform process, which
was echoed in a recent UNHCR staff survey. Member states did
not react to UNHCR's budget presentation, as the preparatory
documents were circulated only one day in advance of the
meeting. END SUMMARY.

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UNHCR's Structural and Management Reform
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2. (U) Deputy High Commissioner Craig Johnstone and Volker
Turk, the Director of the Office for Organizational
Development and Management, led the discussion focused on
structural and management changes implemented to date and the
road ahead in 2009. UNHCR has made progress in its reform
and structural and management change initiatives and is on
track to finish the roll-out process over the course of the
next few months, with plans to incorporate the changes into
the 2010 budget. Currently in the implementation stage is the
new Focus software as well as the Global Needs Assessment
(GNA),which have received very positive feedback from the
field staff that has been trained thus far. UNHCR has been
providing extensive training and workshops over the past two
months with field staff while headquarters staff continues to
receive training. UNHCR continues working on and finalizing
its Global Management Accountability Framework, a map of the
division of accountabilities, responsibilities and
authorities between UNHCR headquarters, regional offices and
field offices. It will also establish a Steering Committee
for follow-up both at headquarters and in the field.


3. (U) The decentralization and regionalization process
continues at UNHCR with the goal of having a better response
time and a greater capacity. To be able to build this
capacity, UNHCR is placing the Office of the Director of the
Europe Bureau in Brussels, as well as relocating the Office
of the Deputy Director of the Americas Bureau to Panama. The
Deputy Director of the European Bureau and the Director of
the Americas Bureau will remain at headquarters. UNHCR is
currently engaged in discussions regarding the next steps of
the process, including consideration of adding new regional
offices in both southern and western Africa. Decisions will
be aided by the Global Management Accountability Framework,
which analyzes the division of workload and responsibility.
Some member states questioned the ability to manage all of
these changes at the same time and how UNHCR can maintain a
decentralized yet coherent organization. Overall, however,
member states supported the bold approach to restructuring
and many said it could be replicated in other parts of the
UN. The U.S. voiced support for the outposting and
decentralization process, and expressed its interest in more
details towards action plans and the forthcoming
accountability frameworks. The U.S. also asked for the
overall cost savings of these efforts and UNHCR's plans to
establish a unit for monitoring and evaluating UNHCR's global
performance.


4. (U) A major concern according to UNHCR continues to be its
high number of 144 members of staff in between assignments
(SIBAs). The auditors have strongly recommended that it
carry out systematic and accurate budgetary monitoring of
costs associated with SIBAs. The DHC stated that SIBAs add
an additional $30 million cost to the budget. UNHCR
maintains the stance that there will always be a number of
legitimate SIBAs who have completed the appropriate rotation,
but there are also those who abuse the ability to reject
offered assignments. A few of the SIBAs are on short-term
posts, but there is currently no flexibility for their
classification in human resources as being usefully employed,
since they are not filling permanent full-time positions. In
order to address the issue of those who are working but
considered SIBAs, the capacity of UNHCR,s human resources
employee management system needs to improve as well as a new
career management support agency to ensure appropriate
internal placement. This is a need UNHCR acknowledges and
plans to address in addition to the new three-strike policy.
While the U.S. Del agreed with UNHCR about the reduction in
SIBAs, they also urged the consideration of the need for
staff with appropriate qualifications to fill the positions
in addition to evaluation of work performance.


5. (U) In order to increase efficiency and its capacity to
respond to emergencies, UNHCR has made plans to consolidate
asset and supply information in a central location for faster
and more comprehensive deployment in emergency response
situation. UNHCR plans to establish full reviews of all
assets and will be cleaning up its asset database. The Asset
Management Unit has been relocated to the Global Service
Center in Budapest to be closer to Supply Management Service
for better efficiency. They now have new policies regarding
inventories, non-expendable property and serially tracked
items.

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Global Reviews and Surveys
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6. (U) UNHCR has undertaken several inspections and surveys
regarding its staff and departments to make general and
specific assessments of which the baselines, or recommended
averages, are being taken very seriously. The 2008 Global
Staff Survey results gave a mixed outlook on the way forward
and provided suggestions on additional reforms that might be
necessary. The response rate of 2008 was significantly
higher than 2006, 57 percent vs. 34 percent, respectively.
The results show that UNHCR staff are highly motivated and
engaged, proud of their work, and confident in their
abilities to respond to UNHCR's mandate. However, at the
same time, it was found that one of four staff members lacks
full confidence in his/her managers, and that there is a 48%
confidence rating in senior management. The questionnaire
asked about long-term plans, and it was found that 40% of
staff would consider leaving UNHCR should a similar job with
the same pay be offered elsewhere. Ethics was another area
in which there was a statistically significant decrease in
confidence and one out of four staff members was unaware as
to where to report ethics issues. Considering these negative
findings, some areas for improvement under this survey were:
management and professional development, improved upper-level
transparency, human resource development, vertical internal
communications, as well as ethics. The US expressed its
approval of the benchmarks and guidelines in place. All of
these issues are currently included in the reform process and
a Steering Committee will be initiated for follow-up on these
concerns. Previously, however, as reported in the Global
Survey, there had been concern at the low level of
implementation of the action plans created to address several
previously identified issues of concern.

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Update from the Inspector General
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7. (U) The Inspector General Kofi Asomani said that his
office had initiated several inspections to delve into some
deeper concerns involving operational activities. These were
conducted in nine countries and also at headquarters. They
found that offices continue to improve in general; Jordan and
Ethiopia were specifically noted as exhibiting superior
external relations. On the other hand, they found that
refugees and asylum seekers need to have better access to
UNHCR staff; there were 113 registered cases of staff
misconduct registered during 2008, one-third of which
directly affected UNHCR beneficiaries, most commonly under
the categories of abuse of authority and harassment. The U.S.
voiced its deep concern on this extraordinary number of
cases, solicited the strengthening of the Office of the
Inspector General (IGO's) efforts in following up on these
efforts, and encouraged cooperation among in-house actors to
address these complaints throughout the agency. UNHCR has
since implemented a web-based complaint system for
beneficiaries and staff to log complaints through to
headquarters. Canada pointed out that an online complaint
system might not be accessible to all UNHCR beneficiaries,
but the Inspector General assured member states that it would
be improved and made highly accessible. The Netherlands and
the U.S. urged UNHCR to implement the recommendations made in
the European Commission's Anti-Fraud Office's (OLAF's)
independent review undertaken in 2008; the Inspector General
said that the High Commissioner had established a working
group to develop an implementation plan by the end of March.
The U.S. pointed out that UNHCR's oversight committee, which
oversees audits, does not meet standards for independence.
The U.S. also asked UNHCR to clarify the role of the IGO in
relation to other in-house functions, like the Ethics Office
and Office of the Ombudsman.

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Cooperating with Others
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8. (U) Volker Turk reported that in the process of
strengthening its own capacity, UNHCR has taken an active
stance on coordination with other agencies. It continues to
be an active member of the Interagency Standing Committee
(IASC). IASC has recently been working to consolidate views
and create a unified stance and shared policy on a variety of
issues such as climate change and migration. In addition,
UNHCR is in consultations with OCHA to discuss its management
of the Global Needs Assessment (GNA) and Results Based
Management initiatives. There will be an IASC meeting about
the GNA later in March.


9. (U)COMMENT: Donors have been unsure whether the GNA will
comprise a full "Global" Needs Assessment in which all
stakeholders, areas of responsibility are outlined, or
whether the GNA will only present a snapshot of needs falling
within the UNHCR mandate. UNHCR staff clarified to U.S.Del
that UNHCR will only present donors with its comprehensive
plans for UNHCR planned activities, as it would be too
ambitious to capture the needs of other entities like host
governments and UNICEF. END COMMENT.

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Budget and Funding
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10. (U) DHC Johnstone reported that 2008 was a good financial
year for UNHCR: contributions amounted to 92 percent of
UNHCR,s approved budget (as compared to 91 percent in 2007
and 79 percent in 2006). He said that a question mark looms
over 2009 (given the current global financial situation and
fluctuating exchange rates),and a dark cloud looms over 2010
(given UNHCR,s plans to ask donors for more funds under the
GNA and the full impact of the financial crisis on government
budgets). Because the budget for 2009 was released only one
day prior to the Standing Committee meeting, there was no
in-depth discussion.


11. (U) UNHCR is pushing for pledges to be honored as early
as possible so that it can ensure continuity of programming.
Throughout the presentation, member states posed questions
regarding the future of Supplementary Budgets (SBs); UNHCR
has stated that the new four-pillared budget will incorporate
some of the SBs, while IDP programs, longer-term
reintegration programming and emergency responses will
continue to be funded as SBs, so they will not be spending
any more money than they actually receive in those
non-core-mandate areas.


12. (U) COMMENT: The pillar system will allocate funds
between four pillars: 1) core refugee activities, 2)
statelessness activities, 3) longer-term reintegration
activities and 4) IDP activities. Funding cannot be shifted
between pillars. END COMMENT.

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Strengths and Areas for Improvement
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13. (U) According to Turk, management and resource polices
are at the top of this list as areas for improvement. To
address management and professional development as well as
ethics issues, UNHCR has begun the decentralization process
as well as set up an Ombudsman and Ethics offices. UNHCR
staff has contributed to the strength of the Structural
Management Change process by being generally highly motivated
and engaged, proud of their work and organization. To track
the progress of improvement, UNHCR has initiated a Steering
Committee for dedicated follow up as well as having regional
and field offices follow up internally.

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COMMENT
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14. (SBU) UNHCR headquarters has been actively striving to
improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of its work in the
field. The current financial climate has added urgency to
these efforts. Unfortunately, many of the questions and
concerns voiced by countries in attendance were left
unanswered, including a request that UNHCR quantify the
impacts of its reforms on its budget and the field and a
concern that UNHCR's efforts to decentralize/ regionalize
should be counterbalanced by a commensurate effort to
establish strong quality control measures at the central
level.


STORELLA