Conduct a Google search on “Social Accountability” and you will mostly get references to corporate social accountability and the social accountability of the World Bank and other intergovernmental organisations; but there is little to be found on the concept as applied to the United Nations.
UN Accountability to the governments of Member States is of course universally assumed. In addition, Member States are mutually accountable for their own performance through peer reviews and UN and civil society reports, and the Security Council enjoys mechanisms to enforce its own resolutions. Further, UN Agencies and Programmes are understood to be accountable to their intended beneficiaries.
By and large, however, UN Accountability refers mostly to the “upwards” accountability of the UN to render financial and performance accounts to the Member States, particularly to the largest UN contributors. As Michael Kagan has pointed out, accountability at the UN is really focused on “ensuring that money from rich donor states is not wasted due to incompetence or corruption.” But, in what he calls “the invisible accountability gap at the UN”, “that narrow view ignores the corresponding need for the intended beneficiaries to themselves hold UN agencies accountable to their own mandates, and to the human rights principles which the UN has admirably helped establish.” (The Missing Third Leg of UN Accountability, Foreign Policy in Focus, IRC,
Despite the UN Charter´s solemn opening words “We the Peoples of the United Nations”, the UN remains largely an inter-governmental organisation accountable to the Member States. But much has changed since 1945 in our world, and this is itself a gross understatement. In the last 60 years challenges have become global, requiring not just the consensus of the Security Council and the General Assembly, but the involvement and support of concerned citizens through their civil society organisations.
The idea that the United Nations must be responsive to the human rights of individual citizens is hardly new. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as many UN Treaties, have the needs of human beings in mind, which often do not coincide with the priorities of the governments of some Member States.
At the 2005 World Summit, the UN General Assembly adopted a remarkable resolution, the “Responsibility to Protect”, a veritable revolutionary decision in the sense that, for the first time, it places the human rights of entire populations above the nearly sacrosanct principle of “State sovereignty.” But the “Responsibility to Protect” principle has not yet been applied, not even in the case of Darfur, where all elements seems to be in place for a swift and firm application of such principle.
The question then arises whether the UN as an institution is socially accountable to the people of
Albeit its own structural, operational and other limitations, the UN is the closest thing citizens have to a body of global governance, not just “international” governance. Some progressive governments and global civil society, with its increasing influence and power, are aiming to bring about a profound transformation of the UN by making it truly democratic and accountable to “We the Peoples”.
But, as a the facilitator of the Development Gate Foundation (dgCommunities: Civil Society) forum on social accountability recently put it,
“What are the conditions for a Suitable Environment for Civic Engagement and Social Accountability?
“Social accountability […] is increasingly regarded as an important means to improve governance and development effectiveness, by promoting transparency, accountability and responsiveness of public policy-making, public budgeting, and the delivery of public services. However, to be effective and sustainable, social accountability requires the right set of conditions: an enabling policy, legal and regulatory framework, a permissive political environment, accessible government, and conducive socio-cultural and economic factors. In addition, institutional relationships and capacities of civil society influence the success or failure of social accountability measures. Therefore, it becomes critical for key stakeholder groups - civil society, donors, media, parliamentarians and government institutions to work together to improve their understanding of these conditions and, through careful analysis, to guide policy reforms and capacity building interventions.
In his article, Human Rights and Social Accountability (Social Development Papers, Participation and Civic Engagement, Paper No. 86, May 2005), John Ackerman, writing about social accountability and human development from a Rights Based Approach (RBA), lists five basic principles that development projects should live up to:
“First, the poor should be placed at the center of the design, control, oversight and evaluation of development projects, programmes or policies that affect them […]
Second, the institutions responsible for implementing development programmes should be fully accountable for their actions […]
Third, non-discrimination, equality and inclusiveness should underlie the practice of development […]
Fourth, citizen participation and voices should be ‘scaled up’ and linked with national and international policy processes and international rights frameworks […]
Fifth, RBA encourages the active linkage between development and law[…]”
The pillars for achieving effective social accountability may be summarised as
a) easy and ready access to information (the right to know); b) real and meaningful civic participation in the decision-making process (the right to participate), and, c) easy and effective access to justice if those rights are denied (the right to legal recourse).
These three pillars are specifically embedded in the
In the end, however, “upwards” accountability tends to trump both “downwards” and “horizontal” accountability in most contexts, such as in corporate, inter-governmental organisations (including the UN) and even NGO accountability. Ideally, we should live in a world of “democratic” accountability, where accountability for decision making at all levels extends to those (often ignored) stakeholders with less power who are most affected by such decisions. As Dr Jem Bendell has said, “the ideal is a society where all decision making is accountable to those affected by those decisions or indecisions. This idea of ‘democratic accountability’ is one that concerns the whole of society, not just a particular organisation.” (Debating NGO Accountability, NGLS, 2006.)
In order to contribute to the debate on The Social Accountability of the United Nations, CIVICUS has asked six leading organisations that are familiar with the workings of the United Nations through their own experiences to submit articles which reflect upon, consider or otherwise provide suggestions on this important subject. These six articles will be published during the CIVICUS World Assembly in a special edition of
We hope you, the reader, will find these contributions enlightening, and useful in your work, and, through the CIVICUS blog, we look forward to your active participation in this potentially far-reaching global debate.
Vicente García-Delgado
CIVICUS UN Representative (NY)
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The six contributing organizations are:
UN-NGLS, UN Non-governmental Liaison Service
WFUNA, World Federation of United Nations Associations
AfriMAP,
WEDO, Women’s Environment and Development Organization
KDUN, Committee for a Democratic UN
PDHRE, People’s Movement for Human Rights Education