Before approving a programme of work for their seventy‑fifth session, delegates of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today vowed to work together as they tackle an ambitious agenda that embraces the Organization’s second annual budget and crucial reforms meant to expand efficiency and transparency.
In progress at UNHQ
Fifth Committee
Speakers praised and called for more details about the roll-out of a new framework for assigning senior managers greater authority to make decisions and hold their staff accountable for results, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) met to review the efficiency of that system in the United Nations Secretariat.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today examined how audit and oversight bodies are functioning across the United Nations organizations, while also weighing the benefits and risks of using cloud computing across these entities.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), continuing its first resumed session, put a spotlight on human resources management today, with delegates hailing progress towards gender parity among the Secretariat’s more than 37,000 staff members worldwide while also pressing for greater efforts to recruit personnel on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) opened the first part of its resumed seventy‑fourth session today, approving its provisional work programme amid an outcry from some delegates over the General Assembly’s 14 January decision to expand membership of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) without consulting them.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) concluded the main part of its seventy‑fourth session on Friday, approving resources totalling $3.07 billion for 2020, its first annual budget since 1973 and $200 million more than the $2.87 billion outlay proposed by Secretary‑General António Guterres in early October.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) briefly met today to inform Member States of the extension of its work until Friday, 27 December.
The United Nations ability to carry out its mandate has been constrained by cash shortages in 2018 and 2019, its top official for accounting-related activities warned the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today, as the representative of the Russian Federation challenged the way the Organization is managing the liquidity crisis.
At today’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) meeting, Japan’s delegate expressed her concerns with a Secretariat request to approve $64.5 million in new charges against the contingency fund set aside for the Organization’s upcoming 2020 regular budget.
Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today backed the full 2020 funding of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) at $20.4 million to help the mission created in June by the Security Council carry out its mandate to create a peaceful and stable environment.