UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY 55th SESSION

Fifth Committee - Second Resumed Session

Item 153: Administrative and Budgetary Aspects of the Financing of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations

Statement by Mr Henry Fox, Representative of Australia, on behalf of the Delegations of New Zealand, Canada and Australia

8 May 2001

Mr Chairman

I have the honour to speak on behalf of New Zealand, Canada and Australia. I would like to make a number of points of a general nature on the administrative and budgetary aspects of the financing of United Nations peacekeeping operations.

We would like to thank the Controller Mr Halbwachs for his thorough and useful introduction of the many reports before us. We would also like to thank Ambassador Mselle for introducing the related reports of the ACABQ. We continue to find the ACABQ reports very useful, including the commendable effort to comment on general themes in report A/55/874.

Mr Chairman we found Annex II of the general report which sets out estimates for the budgetary requirements for each peacekeeping operation for the period 1 July 2001 to 30 June 2002 to be particularly illuminating. A footnote indicates that the overall peacekeeping operations budget level would be in the order of $2.4 billion initially. Once the budgets for UNAMSIL UNMEE, MOUNT have been finalised, the additional requirements could take the budget level to between $2.6 and $3 billion.

Yesterday the Controller provided a new estimate advising the Committee the overall level would now, in all likelihood, be between $3 and $3.4 billion.

Mr Chairman these are large amounts and they continue to increase.

In the context of this growing peacekeeping budget level, we wish to stress the importance our capitals place on receiving regular and accurate forecasts - in so far as this is possible - of estimated budgetary requirements for peacekeeping for the twelve months ahead. Our Governments generally make decisions about funds for peacekeeping considerably in advance of the bills becoming due. If we are to continue to pay peacekeeping bills which are getting bigger in full and on time accurate and regular forecasting will become more and more important.

As well as knowing how much to set aside, planning by our Finance Ministries for payment could be improved if there was greater certainty in the current arrangements, in particular if they knew when to expect peacekeeping bills. The ability of members states to pay on time would be enhanced if the Secretariat were able to provide us with a twelve month billing schedule indicating roughly when it expects to issue assessments for particular operations. The current arrangements are characterised by a large element of surprise and are not particularly satisfactory, especially at a time when bills are growing.

Finally, Mr Chairman, we take note of the large volume of reports before us. The Controller referred to 37 reports on different aspects of the financing of peacekeeping. We would welcome suggestions from the Secretariat on how this reporting burden might be streamlined. In this context we note it is the intention of the Secretariat, in line with General Assembly decisions, to apply results-based budgeting to future support account - and we would hope other peacekeeping financing - proposals. This is something we welcome and we hope the Secretariat will take the opportunity of this change to review the need for the current volume of reports.