Statement by Mr Andrew Rose, First Secretary and Legal Adviser of Australia on behalf of Canada and New Zealand to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Administration of Justice
10 April 2008
(As delivered)
Mr Chairman,
I have the honour to speak on behalf of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
CANZ has been a long standing supporter of management reform of the United Nations. As a reflection of this, CANZ attaches great importance to the reform of the internal Administration of Justice system and has been working constructively to ensure that the staff members of the United Nations have access to a fair and efficient system of internal justice that is transparent, impartial and consistent with the principles of the rule of law and due process.
CANZ was very pleased that the General Assembly, in its Resolution 62/228 of 22 December 2007, agreed to approve the necessary resources for all essential elements of the new system, thereby paving the way for its timely establishment. Through this Resolution, the General Assembly also identified a number of items that would require further consideration. CANZ considers that this resolution should be a valuable reference point for our work over the coming weeks. The effort of this Ad Hoc Committee should be focused on those legal issues which need to be decided now to allow for the timely establishment of the new system.
We thank the Secretary-General for his report A/62/748, which was prepared in response to our request for additional information. We welcome that this report also includes, for our consideration, draft statutes for the United Nations Dispute Tribunal and the United Nations Appeal Tribunal. We look forward to examining and discussing these draft statutes, against the backdrop of the General Assembly’s Resolutions 62/228 and 61/261.
For the new system to be successful, it must engender the trust of both management and staff. Part of building that trust is to implement the new system of internal justice as scheduled, before 1 January 2009. CANZ looks forward to working constructively with all delegations and taking those decisions necessary to move us closer towards achieving this goal.
Thank you Mr Chairman.