UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Statement by Ms Jessica Thorpe, Representative of the Australian Mission to the United Nations on behalf of Canada, New Zealand and Australia 

Fifth Committee Statement

Item 130: Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Office of Internal Oversight Services

New York 15 March 2004

I have the honour to speak on behalf of Canada, New Zealand and Australia on agenda item 130, the OIOS report on strengthening the investigation functions in the UN. I would firstly like to thank USG Nair for introducing the report.

The report provides constructive follow-up to the JIU’s report from December 2002 on the same subject. We support the approach described in the report and encourage the OIOS to continue its good work in this area. We look forward to a further report to the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session. Further work on this issue is warranted to address the problems identified in this report on the lack of investigations training in the Organization.

The proposal for serious cases to be investigated independently is a good one. However, the Committee will recall that these JIU and OIOS reports originated from its call for “proper accountability.” Thus, our goal should not be to centralize oversight functions to a cadre of professional investigators. Instead, we must involve the departments, offices, funds and missions in order to entrench a culture of accountability and ensure the long term integrity of the Organization.

The report’s recommendations are timely in calling for further training and development of procedures to improve the investigative capacity in UN offices. It will be important to ensure that new procedures are not onerous. If reporting requirements are too cumbersome, it may exacerbate the problem the report highlighted of a lack of information- sharing on investigations with OIOS.

We appreciate the critical role that OIOS will play in training and conducting investigations to foster accountability and integrity in the United Nations.