The Aleinikoff Appointment

T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, has been appointed U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. According to the UNHCR news item, Aleinikoff's "appointment, in consultation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was announced following an extensive search and interviews with several candidates." Of course, that depends on what the phrase "extensive search" means, as the position of Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees is, in practice, invariably given to an American. Aleinikoff's predecessor was L. Craig Johnstone, who served for many years in the State Department. Johnstone took over from Wendy Chamberlin, also a former State Department official. Chamberlin replaced Mary Ann Wyrsch, who replaced Frederick Barton, both of whom had previously held positions in the U.S. Government. In 1999, Barton replaced Gerald Walzer, an Austrian and a long-time UNHCR official, who had held the position since 1993. But Walzer's appointment was an anomaly, the result of a deal made between the United States and Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali that gave other U.N. positions to the United States in exchange for the refugees slot. Walzer had replaced M. Douglas Stafford, an American. See Al Kamen, A Power Drain at the United Nations?, Washington Post, June 21, 1993, at A15. I review the practice of informal control of high-level appointments at international organizations in Representation and Power in International Organization: The Operational Constitution and Its Critics, published earlier this year in the American Journal of International Law. (Because of space constraints, I was unable to discuss in that article the informal agreement regarding the Deputy position at UNCHR described here.)

Let me be clear that I point this out not to criticize Aleinikoff's appointment itself. He is clearly well-qualified for the position in a number of ways. And there may be advantages to having an American in the Deputy's office. So I make no claim regarding the appropriateness of Aleinikoff's selection or the informal agreement that apparently limited the pool of candidates. I point this out, simply, because it is worth knowing how things actually work (the press releases and news reports will not or cannot provide this information), so that an honest conversation can be had regarding current and future practice.