United Nations Finances

GAO views were presented on financial management in the United Nations (U.N.) system, with emphasis on what was being done and what needed to be done to cope with financial-management problems. Growth in membership and expansion of the goals, activities, and responsibilities of the U.N. since its formation have caused large increases in U.N. budgets and created the need for a more sophisticated system of accounting for income and expenditures. GAO recently pointed out the advantages of reorganizing the Board of Auditors, which is the external audit machinery of the U.N. Despite improvement in the work of the Board in recent years, it was believed that certain fundamental changes were necessary to ensure that the United Nations has the most effective audit organization possible. The most important change in this regard would be the designation of an Auditor General with permanent staff having the continuity and capability to review the complex U.N. system and impart central direction to the Board. Within the U.N. system itself, a subsidiary of the General Assembly, the Joint Inspection Unit, has the system-wide responsibility to assist and perform evaluations of the U.N., its related, subsidiary bodies, and most of its specialized agencies. Under a charter revision in effect as of January 1978, this Unit would assist U.N. organizations in carrying out their responsibilities for external evaluations, and would advise organizations on their methods of internal evaluations. GAO had made no comprehensive evaluation of the Unit, but an earlier report indicated that its limited staff did not enable it to evaluate all U.N. system programs adequately. In 1973, Congress called upon the President to seek the establishment of a single, professionally qualified group to evaluate U.N. performance independently. It was clear that the present administration regarded the Unit, with its January 1978 charter revisions, as the independent evaluation unit that Congress sought to establish. GAO intended to continue to monitor the evaluation efforts underway in the U.N. to determine what effect they would have on financial management and on the implementation of needed programs in accordance with available resources.