Trade and Development Board, Twenty-sixth special session
19 June 2012
Thank you, Mr. President
Allow me to start where we ended last Friday: on the issue of, I quote, "undue interference by at least one top management official from the secretariat with the conduct of the review", unquote. The phrase about "interference" was introduced in the final version of the report after the UNCTAD secretariat presented its comments on the report's first draft in January. It is as puzzling now as it was back then. An official letter was then addressed to the JIU, asking for clarifications - and we received a response informing us that the Inspector would prefer not to provide further information at that time. This is reflected on page 12 of our management response. I am therefore grateful for the question raised by Ambassador Wasecha, as it gives the secretariat the opportunity to set the record straight.
With the hindsight of last week's eloquent presentation, one could probably see how, committed to paper, the response to our query would have lost some of the impact of the inspector's persuasiveness and goodwill. For the record, here are the facts:
The Inspector spoke about a meeting between senior UNCTAD officials and the JIU Chairman. I believe he was referring to a meeting I held with the Chairman of the JIU on 30th January. Indeed, at the point when the secretariat was about to communicate its factual comments to the first draft of the JIU report, I tried to invite Inspector Fontaine Ortiz for a discussion on those comments and the next steps in the review process, but was informed that he was away on travel. We had agreed, as pointed out in the report itself, that the UNCTAD secretariat would provide its comments and factual corrections on the first draft by 31st January. In view of this, in his absence from the office, I then invited the JIU Chairman for a meeting to give him a short overview of our comments and to inquire about the next steps in the review process. Frankly, it never occurred to me at that point that I had to call Inspector Fontaine Ortiz on the phone, or send him a text message first. The JIU statute that the Inspector was kind enough to show you on this podium last week, in its article 18, explicitly states that the JIU Chairman "shall be the formal channel of communication with the competent bodies and the executive heads of the organizations". I regret any misunderstanding I may have caused. I simply followed that rule unaware that it could upset anyone.
The purpose of this internal working meeting was to present to the JIU the factual comments and corrections proposed by the secretariat, and to confirm that the JIU would be receiving these as agreed on the following day. I also inquired about the next steps in the review process. In this context, I touched on the question of the venue for the consideration of the report. Based on my first-hand experience with every previous UNCTAD Ministerial Conference since Midrand in 1996, and more importantly, based on the timelines before us, I did express a personal opinion about the Doha Conference not being the best forum to discuss the JIU report. Throughout this review I always felt it my duty to give my honest views and expert opinions to the JIU. Some of those are reflected in the report, some are not. Yet, my formally expressed position at this meeting was and always has been that it is for the member States to decide on the venue for the consideration of the report and that we would abide by that decision. There were all in all seven people present at the meeting, three from the JIU and four from the UNCTAD secretariat. Had Inspector Fontaine Ortiz been in Geneva, he would have been present, too. No attempt to interfere and, I am sorry to say, no coffee was ever proposed. It was a procedural meeting: to present our comments and to better understand the key steps in the review process after we had submitted our comments. I fail to understand how this could be construed as an interference with the independence of the inspector and as a reason for a "significant delay in the finalization" of the report.
I would like to state that throughout the process that started back in February last year, the secretariat has assisted and collaborated to the best of its capacity with the conduct of the review. The only two-week extension of the deadline the secretariat asked for is reflected in paragraph 3 of the report. The first draft of the report was received in UNCTAD on the evening of 22nd December 2011, the last working day before the Christmas and New Year holidays and the deadline was set for 16th January - but that was not the main reason for our request for an extension. UNCTAD staff did work on the management response over those holidays. The main reason was the amount of work to be done and that we wanted to do it in earnest. The secretariat's comments and corrections that I mentioned took some 57 pages, and I can assure you that a lot of hard work was put into the management response. I am taking you through these boring facts only because Paragraph 3 of the report qualifies the alleged undue interference and the two-week request as the events that "resulted in a significant delay" in the finalization of the report. For the record, when the UNCTAD secretariat received the first draft of the report on 22nd December, strictly speaking, this was formally already too late for member States to be able to consider the report with the management response in Doha, because the statutory deadlines foreseen for the drafting of the response, its editing and translation and timely submission to member States could no longer be respected. Hence, the discussion on the venue was more a discussion on the timelines.
Nevertheless, the secretariat made sure that at UNCTAD XIII all member States had had ample opportunity to get acquainted with the contents of the report, and the secretariat made the necessary effort to be ready for a verbal presentation of the management response, if needed. We went out of our way for delegations to receive the text of the JIU report at the earliest possible date, as soon as we got special permission from JIU to distribute the unedited version. In close collaboration with Conference Services we ensured that the report was expeditiously translated. Had there been any notion on the part of the secretariat to delay the process, we could have just made use of the time (three months) accorded by the Statute.
The Inspector also alluded to a leak of the draft report to certain delegates before the original, corrected version was issued. This is indeed worrying. Let me state in no unclear terms: no manager in the UNCTAD secretariat authorized any such distribution. The text was treated at all times as an internal UNCTAD document. The management had no motive, either, and, quite obviously, no possible interest or benefit in distributing such an unofficial draft document.
Mr. President,
Like the Inspector, I am not happy to have to take up your time with such issues. I do hope this has cleared any possible misunderstandings. My positive ending will be about the Organization. You said last Friday that we are not in a court here, and I completely agree with you. The UNCTAD secretariat sees this session as a forum of discussion on how to improve our work and I hope we will make good use of this occasion. UNCTAD's secretariat is committed to the shared vision of an efficient and transparent organization working for development. I would like to think that UNCTAD is not a patient, to use another quote from the previous session, but rather an athlete or, better even, a team, and that what we are doing here is trying to devise the most appropriate training schedules and the best tactical schemes for the team to achieve our common goal, namely the effective and successful implementation of our mandate. Because a win for UNCTAD is really a win for all.
I thank you.
