UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Statement by H.E. Mr Gilbert Laurin, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of the Canadian Mission to the United Nations on behalf of Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Fifth Committee Statement

Item 121: Proposed Programme Budget for the Biennium 2004-2005

New York 29 October 2003

Mr. Chairman:

I have the honour to speak on behalf of Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Secretary-General, thank you for introducing the proposed programme budget for 2004-05. Ambassador Mselle, we appreciate your introduction of the report of the ACABQ. It is a thoughtful report that will improve our decision making.

Mr. Chairman:

The tumultuous events since the Millennium Assembly have only strengthened our view of the United Nations and its Charter as indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world. These three years have placed formidable new demands on our Organization, to respond to new threats to international security and to address post-conflict situations, while pursuing vital responsibilities for development, human rights, and broad social progress. As the attacks on UN premises in Baghdad have tragically reminded us, the UN must pursue these missions with greater and more costly attention to the safety of its staff – our staff, really.

Secretary-General

You are an advocate of reform. We welcome your recent decision to establish a high level panel to recommend ways of strengthening the ability of United Nations institutions to address threats to peace and security. Your initiatives since 1997 have improved our effectiveness and have helped the UN to evolve with the times. Your Agenda for Further Change last year outlined numerous actions, which can be summarized by your challenge to us all to “Do What Matters”. Our delegations strongly supported the vision you laid out and addressed by the General Assembly. Our objective for the budget process is to enable the implementation of this vision and thereby improve the capacity of the Organization to respond flexibly to changing demands while pursuing effectively ongoing responsibilities. This approach reinforces our over-arching expectation of budget rigour and discipline. Budget stringency stimulates reform and improves quality.

Mr. Chairman:

We like the philosophy of the budget:

• the clearly stated need to focus on priorities;
• reallocation as the source of funding for new needs;
• the eloquently expressed need to drop activities of marginal utility in order to free resources to respond better to the vision of the Millennium Declaration.
• a larger share for human rights and some humanitarian functions, as a small step toward funding core functions and providing better balance.
• the provision made to support African development.

We see the significant progress made with the results approach in a relatively short time. The next logical step, as suggested by the ACABQ, is to define more specific and measurable accomplishments and indicators of achievement. This would also support the necessary efforts of Departments to manage for results.

The specific reference to the gender dimension of issues in the results format is welcome, reflecting, we hope, growing understanding of the need for gender analysis in programmatic work.

We welcome these positive measures. Still, there is a lot of work to be done both by Member States and the Secretariat to rise to the challenge of aligning resources with priorities and to deploy them effectively. As we see it, real progress requires at least three elements.

Most basic is to cease incremental budgeting, -- merely adding new activities and resources to the large base. This appproach drains vitality from our programmes. The budget base itself should be reviewed to test programmes as to continued relevance and effectiveness, especially against the benchmarks of the Millennium Declaration and key conference outcomes.

Second, is to drop outdated or ineffective activities. The identified total of 912 to be dropped is better than in the past, but still low, considering the base is about 36,000. Managers should as a matter of course weed out less useful work. For their part, Member States can build in rigour by setting time limits for initiatives requiring resources.

Third is to use redeployment as the front line response to new demands. We see virtually no movement across budget sections. This structural rigidity needs to be overcome. In these circumstances, we cannot agree that new posts are the right way to respond to the new functions that need to be discharged. The ACABQ makes useful suggestions about managing the staffing table as a whole that would add flexibility while retaining accountability.




Mr. Chairman:

Further measures are needed to improve management, efficiency, productivity, as well as to modernize working methods. In this connection, the ACABQ points to the excessive number of General Service posts. The share of overhead in the overall budget also seems very high. The effective use of our major investment in information technology is a concern. The ACABQ raises an important point about the need for senior and strategic IT leadership. It is also important to proceed with decentralization of authority in administrative processes in order to make the transition from a culture of central control to one of enablement linked to accountability.

Mr. Chairman:

We are concerned about the rate of growth in the budget. The present biennium continues to experience substantial growth, and the level proposed for 2004-05 may well be augmented substantially by recosting and new programmatic demands. Of course new tasks need to be funded, but we do not accept that such costs must always be added to a baseline that has seen little scrutiny. We would also recall that the baseline for the proposed budget includes significant sums earmarked in the present biennium for specific non-recurrent items. Our delegations will seek material reductions beyond the sums recommended by the ACABQ.

Our approach, however, will not be driven not by level alone, but by how its utilization helps reform and improves the functioning of the Organization. We intend energetically to support the full implementation of the reform initiative addressed by the General Assembly last year. The goal is to ensure that the United Nations remains able to meet the high expectations of all our peoples.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.