GA/AB/4054
Sixty-seventh General Assembly
Fifth Committee
19th Meeting (AM)
Also Takes Up Reports on: Department of Safety and Security; Review of Use of Private Security Companies by United Nations
In scrutinizing the Secretary-General’s proposed budget for 33 special political missions for 2013, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today expressed concern over the unabated growth in financing those missions and the present arrangements for doing so.
Next year, the Organization would need $567 million (net of staff assessment) for the missions, according to United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Controller María Eugenia Casar, who introduced the Secretary-General’s reports on the subject. Individual mission requirements varied widely, with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), at 35.4 per cent, and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), at 25.5 per cent, accounting for the lion’s share.
In its related report, which was introduced by its Chair, Collen Kelapile, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) backed the Secretary-General’s proposed amounts and asked the General Assembly to approve them. The ACABQ also welcomed the Organization’s steps to achieve efficiencies, but criticized the Secretary-General’s reports for not clarifying the extent to which reductions had been made possible through better planning and budget management.
Brazil’s representative said a big part of the problem was that the missions were bound to the rigid structure of the regular biennial budget. That hindered support for their volatile mandates and created unnecessary difficulties in programme and budget planning. “This piecemeal approach contributes to neither transparency nor efficiency,” he said.
Mexico’s representative expressed concern that, while the Organization’s overall costs had remained “more or less constant in real terms” in the past five years, the budget for special political missions had expanded a whopping 1,256 per cent in the last decade, and now made up 24 per cent of the current biennium’s resources. In effect, that transferred to the regular budget the financial burden of maintaining international peace and security at the expense of other activities. Moreover, introducing the topic three days before the Committee ended its work left little time to conduct oversight duties.
Cuba’s representative said she, along with other Latin American and Caribbean States, had put forward a proposal that would give the missions access to the same resources as peacekeeping operations, and set up a separate account for them in the same budget cycle for peacekeeping operations. Such a move would lead to more transparency, efficiency and budget monitoring.
Also today, the Committee discussed safety and security. Gregory Starr, Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, introduced the Secretary-General’s reports on the United Nations Department of Safety and Security and the use of private security. Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Vice Chair of the ACABQ, weighed in with that body’s related report.
Algeria’s representative, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, regretted that the Secretary-General still had not complied with the Assembly’s request for presenting a comprehensive policy framework for safety and security. Any framework must be enacted in close consultation with States and host countries and the Organization’s new security risk management model must bear in mind the mandates of different United Nations activities and that threats varied from one place to another.
At the outset of the meeting, the Committee elected by acclamation Juliana Gaspar Ruas, of Brazil, as its Vice Chair effective 1 January 2013 to the end of the sixty-seventh session, to replace Joäo Augusto Costa Vargas, also of Brazil, who resigned the post effective 31 December 2012.
Japan’s representative also made a statement today.
The Committee will reconvene at 3 p.m. on Monday, 17 December, to consider the first performance report of the programme budget for the biennium 2012-2013, revised estimates resulting from resolutions and decisions adopted by the Economic and Social Council at its resumed substantive session of 2012, the programme budget implications of implementation of draft resolution A/C.3/67/L.45 concerning the Committee on Torture, and the financing of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the International Residual Mechanisms for Criminal Tribunals for the biennium 2012-2013.