Update on UN Management Reforms
New York, 3 May 2006
A. Secretary General's Report:
Investing in the United Nations: for a stronger Organization worldwide
Over the past few weeks the GA's Fifth Committee, which covers budgetary and administrative decision-making, reviewed the Secretary-General's report on investing in a stronger UN, which includes a range of recommendations for a radical overhaul of the UN Secretariat. On Friday 28 April 2006, the committee voted 108 to 50 (3 abstentions) to approve a resolution introduced by South Africa, on behalf of the G77, calling for the Secretariat to produce 10 additional detailed reports. The resolution was brought to a vote, despite attempts by the Secretary-General to address the concerns of developing countries by withdrawing two of the most contentious proposals involving redistribution of authority from the GA to the Secretary-General on specific decision-making and budgeting aspects. The resolution, which will significantly delay if not block progress on Secretariat and management reform, was opposed by the US, EU and Japan and may provoke some of the larger donors to reduce dues or suspend funds to the UN's assessed budget.
While the purpose of proposals the is to reduce ineffective and time-consuming micromanagement in the General Assembly by allowing the Secretary-General to make basic financial, budgetary and post reallocations without the approval of the GA, developing countries have interpreted the recommendations as an encroachment upon their already limited authority within the UN. The main concern among developing countries is that the recommendations in the report, if implemented, will further reduce the voice of developing countries and allow developed nations to use their contributions to manipulate the new authority of the Secretary-General.
B. Secretary General's Report:
Mandating and delivering: analysis and recommendations to facilitate the review of mandates
While the GA's initial response to the Secretary-General's Report on the mandate review and the accompanying online registry of mandates has been positive with a general recognition of their technical rather than political nature, many obstacles remain. The GA has begun informal consultations on the individual clusters in the report, starting with maintenance of international peace and security and disarmament. Parallel to this process, the Security Council has set up an ad hoc working group on mandate review and ECOSOC is expected to establish its own process shortly. The co-chairs have proposed a number of guidelines for both organs to consider in order facilitate coordination with the GA process.
Within each cluster, the Secretary-General's report looks at reporting, overlap, institutional architecture for implementation, and resources. Based on this framework, Member States made a number of general observations as well as specific comments on the cluster recommendations. The Mexican representative highlighted the need for better distribution of work between the plenary and the main committees. The representatives from various countries, including Brazil and Argentina, suggested that the biennialization and triennialization of reporting should occur on a case-by-case basis. An important question raised by the representative of Saint Lucia was on the type of action that should be taken when a mandate needs to be strengthened rather than eliminated due to lack of implementation. He noted that because repetition and reaffirmation were often due to lack of implementation, eliminating that repetition would require innovative strategies for implementation of mandates. Reaffirming this point, the Brazilian representative highlighted the need to address root causes of lack of implementation.
Co-chair’s opening statement outlining these various principles
Proposed programme of Work for Consultations on the Mandate Review
A. Maintenance of international peace and security: The main mandates in this cluster include provision of good offices, operational prevention, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. The report's recommendations under this section included minimization of reporting on situations that were no longer crisis-driven, consolidation of reporting to different organs on various components of the same issue, ensuring that mandated requirements such as the implementation of peacekeeping and thematic mandates were matched with adequate resources, and reducing the frequency of resolutions without new substantive information.
While the Security Council has the primary responsibility in the area of international peace and security, one of the main issues within this cluster is the overlap between the Security Council, ECOSOC and the General Assembly. The representative from Norway emphasized that on peacekeeping issues, in addition to enhancing cooperation within the UN, the organization needed to work more closely with regional organizations. The EU expressed support the consolidation and streamlining of reporting.
Hope was expressed by several countries that the Peacebuilding Commission would play an important role in harmonizing strategies and consolidating reporting since the GA, ECOSOC and the Security Council all have mandates on peacebuilding activities. The Secretary-General's report encourages Member States to initiate a review of operational mandates issued by the principal organs for those countries to be considered by the Peacebuilding Commission. The goal is to rationalize the relevant mandates into a common country strategy. The NAM countries expressed that it was too early to initiate such a review.
G. Disarmament: Given the lack of progress in this area, it has been suggested that the GA adopt fewer general resolutions and explore new ways to conduct more productive deliberations. The Austrian ambassador, on behalf of the EU, stressed the need to focus on strengthening the disarmament and non-proliferation machinery. Within this category, many countries stressed the need to respect politically sensitive mandates. The Egyptian ambassador, on behalf of NAM, even recommended excluding such mandates completely from the review.
The report notes that the current stalemate is evident in the failure to reach consensus at the May 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the failure of the 2005 World Summit Outcome to include a section on non-proliferation and disarmament, and the inability of the Conference on Disarmament to agree on a work programme.
In the case of disarmament, both the Secretary-General and the majority of Member States agree that streamlining of mandates would be insufficient with the main problem being lack of political will to move forward on implementation. Nonetheless, the Secretary-General has suggested that certain thematic items on general security and disarmament issues be taken up less frequently in the First Committee.
The report recommends reviews of several bodies such as the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), responsible for verifying disarmament in Iraq, and the Standing Advisory Committee on Security Questions in Central Africa. The purpose of these reviews would be to discontinue obsolete projects if necesary while extracting the relevant expertise. The Mexican representative suggested a GA debate on the future of UNMOVIC. The Iraqi representative noted that the Commission was no longer carrying out work on its mandates and Iraq was bearing the financial burden.
The report also advises on developing new ways of conducting expert government studies so as to maximize effectiveness and eliminate redundancies.
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