United Nations General Assembly: Fifth Committee
9 May 2007
Item 132. Administrative and Budgetary aspects of the financing of UN Peacekeeping Operations
Statement by Edwina Stevens
First Secretary
Permanent Mission of Australia to the United Nations
On behalf of Canada, Australia and New Zealand
(as delivered)
Mr Chairman
I have the honour of speaking on behalf of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
I would like to thank the representatives from the ACABQ, Board of Auditors, JIU, OIOS and the Secretariat for introducing their reports. I will address a number of non-mission specific issues in this statement relating to reports listed under Item 132, the administrative and budgetary aspects of the financing of the UN peacekeeping operations. My colleague from Canada will also present a CANZ statement on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
Mr Chairman
CANZ has long been a strong supporter of UN peacekeeping operations and readily acknowledges the vital contribution peacekeeping makes to global peace, security and well-being. Peacekeeping staff in the field and those who support peacekeeping operations at Headquarters do a good job, often in very difficult circumstances.
The General Assembly has just recently recognized the need to strengthen peacekeeping with its framework resolution of 15 March 2007 and we are looking forward to considering the detail of the Secretary-General’s proposal to restructure DPKO later this session.
Mr Chairman
Member states are increasingly asking more of peacekeeping. The total peacekeeping budget continues to rise – potentially to over US$6 billion by the end of this year, and possibly even higher in the first half of 2008. Member states have to pay for the missions they endorse. And in this climate of increasing budgets, we look to the Secretariat to ensure accountability, efficiency and innovation in peacekeeping management.
We note that as peacekeeping operations, and their budgets, grow in size and complexity, so too does the impact of outstanding assessed contributions. We urge all member states to pay their assessed contributions on time, in full and without conditions.
Mr Chairman
The reports we have before us make some very good suggestions, some of which we shall highlight in our statement today, and others we shall reserve comment for the informal sessions. In particular, we would like to thank the ACABQ for a high-quality report.
Firstly, on results based budgeting. CANZ see results based budgeting as a means for managers to meaningfully assess performance and in so doing, better utilize resources. It also strengthens accountability. We note that member states have an important role to play in improving results based budgeting and should provide clear objectives for mandated activities. Notwithstanding, for the last two years at least, the Board of Auditors, JIU and the ACABQ have suggested that results based budgeting is not practically applied as a management tool and that, in reality, it is more a paper-exercise.
We encourage the Secretary-General to improve the application of results based budgeting. To that end, we support the regular refinement of the indicators of achievement and outputs in peacekeeping budgets so they have concrete meaning. We are very interested in the ACABQ’s recommendation to synchronize the budget and electronic performance appraisal cycles; we look forward to learning more. CANZ support the alignment of financial resources to a results-based presentation.
We fully support the ACABQ’s recommendation for the Secretary-General to develop a specific strategy and plan for work process improvement, and to demonstrate that the management and administrative processes are efficient when seeking increased resources for administrative and support functions.
Moving to financial management, CANZ would like clarity on what resources in the field and headquarters are devoted to the budget process. We, like many member states, are interested to know if improvements can be made. It seems to us that streamlining this process makes good management sense.
We welcome the benchmarking analysis which aims to develop planning models for sizing and structuring multi-dimensional missions. We support the ACABQ’s recommendations that analysis should be based on the mandates and should draw not only on past patterns, but also review the relationship between staff members, concrete workload, and the difficulties foreseen, as well as the possible streamlining and simplification of working procedures.
While we recognise that the budgetary planning of peacekeeping operations is not an exact science, we are concerned by the increase by almost 50% of unencumbered balances for the year 2005-06 compared to 2004-05. As a result, the membership was assessed almost half a billion dollars in excess, largely to the detriment of Member States which pay in full and on time. We agree with the ACABQ that resources are often asserted, rather than justified programmatically. We believe that it may contribute to a pattern of over-budgeting.
The reports show us how the good planning of peacekeeping operations is the lynchpin to rigorous budgeting. The template approach has limitations. CANZ encourage realistic budgeting for the staffing of operations, as well as drawing on lessons learnt and Best Practice. We support new approaches to the recruitment of international and national staff for peacekeeping, along with commensurate accountability.
CANZ would like to highlight several issues on personnel management. Firstly, we support a uniform policy on mission subsistence allowance (MSA) to staff officers and accept the DPKO working group’s recommendation to pay MSA to staff officers in lieu of reimbursement to troop contributing countries. Secondly, we would like to learn more about temporary duty assignments between missions and whether it would be more effective to second a staff member for up to a year. Thirdly, we support a review of the standards for the recruitment of national officers, in order to allow the Mission to draw from the local human resources to the maximum extent possible.
CANZ remains concerned by the high vacancy rate in peacekeeping operations. What is the impact of these high vacancy rates on the implementation of peacekeeping? It also begs the question of the necessity of these persistently vacant posts. We believe that posts that have been vacant for an extended period of time should be rejustified.
We are also concerned by the very high turnover rate in professional staff. The Secretary-General’s report “Investing in the United Nations” makes proposals which aim to improve the retention of staff in the field and reduce vacancy rates. But there is also a need to look at best practice in terms of working conditions and how such conditions affect the quality of life and retention rates of staff in peacekeeping operations.
Mr Chairman
The reports make a number of observations and recommendations on peacekeeping’s operational costs, too many for us to detail here. We would like to note our appreciation for advances made in the following areas: regional and inter-mission cooperation; air operations; and, the continued improvement in the use of technology. We note plans to construct a central satellite hub at the Logistics Base in Brindisi.
We trust future reporting will document progress in all these areas, in particular in air operations. We would also like to see more details and justifications when presenting resource requirements for operational costs in future budgetary proposals.
We look forward to working with member states and the Secretariat to tighten the management of fraud, travel, spare parts, fuel management and procurement.
Thank you