Personnel Problems and the United Nations Secretariat

The United Nations Charter states that, in building the Secretariat, the Secretary General must give “paramount consideration†to achieving “the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity†, and adds that he must recruit “on as wide a geographical basis as possible†. A dozen years have passed since these standards were set down at San Francisco, and in those years two Secretaries General have attempted to apply them. In their efforts to create a professional civil service, they have had to face extraordinarily difficult problems, but it is clear that the Secretariat today largely fulfills the expectations of the Charter