Climate change, Mozart and General Services

Big news: to fight climate change, the UN freezes General Service posts. What’s the link, you rightfully wonder. Frankly, I don’t have a clue, but it’s the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for the General Assembly’s decision to freeze the recruitment of General Services. Because the argument that is being put forward in some quarters, namely that the ratio between “Gs” and “Ps” is too high, is even more absurd.

It reminds me of the famous anecdote about the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, who commented to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on his new opera The Abduction from the Seraglio: “Your work is ingenious, my dear Mozart, but there’s something not quite right… I think that there are too many notes!” It was as stupid to ask Mozart to drop some notes from his masterpiece as it is to cut the number of General Service staff in the Organization.

Dear delegates, allow me to ask you a few simple questions: who prepares your meetings? Your travels? Who takes care of your security? Who breathes life into the Organization? Of course, you know the answer to these questions as well as I do: General Service staff.

As it is, you complain bitterly that the documents are always late, although you’re the ones who cut the posts of the staff who prepared these documents. Too bad you didn’t learn the lesson. Believing that modern technology can replace everybody is as naive as suppressing all C sharp from A Little Night Music in order to save the ebony piano keys.

This type of penny-pinching hides a much greater malaise. The Organization needs profound changes, like the distribution of seats on the Security Council, increasing the powers of the Secretary-General, suppressing such dead bodies as the ECOSOC, to mention but a few. The problem is that Member States are totally incapable of tackling these contentious issues. The result is that to hide their incompetence they strike at the weakest: the General Services and above all the temporary staff, who will be the first to suffer from this freeze.

Frankly, it’s mean and rather absurd. Furthermore, it doesn’t serve the ideals that we are meant to defend.

Jean Michel Jakobowicz, Editor-in-Chief