Administrative and budgetary issues

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) of the General Assembly on the proposed programme budget for 2025, in New York today:

The United Nations senior management official told delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today that if fourth-quarter collections of assessments from Member States do not arrive as estimated, the Organization could end 2024 with a cash deficit that would place more liquidity pressure on the Organization’s finances in 2025.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today considered the Secretary-General’s appeal for $711.3 million for three dozen special political missions for 2025 as several delegations again pushed for the creation of a special financing mechanism to sustain them.

The General Assembly today elected 18 members to the Human Rights Council for the 2025-2027 term, adopted a resolution on matters regarding the assessment scale for distributing the costs of the United Nations' expenses and concluded its debate on last month’s high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance.

General Assembly President Philémon Yang (Cameroon) urged Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) delegates today to adopt a realistic, implementable budget for 2025 by year’s end, ideally well before the set deadline, and to plead with their respective capitals to pay their assessed contributions in full, on time and without conditions.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) elected Egriselda Aracely González López (El Salvador) Chair on 6 June.

Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today tackled how — or even whether — to recalibrate the complex financial methodology used to determine how much money each Member State will contribute to the Organization’s regular and peacekeeping budgets.

Increasingly alarmed by the Organization’s ongoing liquidity crisis and its impact on United Nations operations around the globe, delegates at the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today ardently insisted Member States fulfil their financial obligations by paying their assessed contributions in full and on time.

The United Nations senior management official told delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today that the United Nations 2024 regular budget has the potential to be “as bad or worse” than year-end 2023 unless collections significantly exceed the average of the last five years.

The representative of Mali called for the necessary resources to ensure the stabilization mission in his country can liquidate its operations on schedule by year’s end, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today examined the proposed 2024/25 budgets for that mission as well as two other peacekeeping operations and their logistics and support entities.