United Nations

Targeted Strategies Could Help Boost U.S. Representation Gao ID: GAO-01-839 July 27, 2001

The United Nations (U.N.) and its affiliated entities face the dual challenge of attracting and retaining staff who meet the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity while maintaining the international character of the organizations by ensuring equitable geographic balance in the workforce. Nevertheless, U.N. organizations have made slow progress in addressing U.S. concerns about underrepresentation, and, except for the U.N. secretariat in New York, the organizations with representation targets that GAO studied have not achieved equitable employment of Americans since 1992. Although the U.N. organizations are ultimately responsible for achieving fair geographic balance among its member countries, the State Department, in coordination with other U.S. agencies, plays a role in ensuring that the United States is fairly represented. U.N. organizations have not fully developed long-range workforce planning strategies, and neither State nor the U.N. agencies have formal recruiting and hiring action plans to improve U.S. representation in the U.N. system. Without these measures, the United States' ability to even maintain the number of Americans employed in the United Nations could be hampered.

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