Fifth Committee

Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today underlined the importance of ensuring that all United Nations premises meet health, safety and accessibility standards, as they began the strategic capital review, an examination of the management of overseas property and construction projects.

While commending the progress made in the past two years to expand the pool of civilian experts providing immediate aid and support for institution-building in post-conflict countries, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) sought greater clarity today on the budgetary implications of those efforts and on ways to align the work of United Nations field personnel with the national decision-making cycles of the countries concerned.

Good progress was being made on the creation of an emergency management system to better prepare the United Nations to withstand disruptive crises and natural disasters, Secretariat officials and delegates alike told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today as they scrutinized reports on the subject.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) opened the first part of its resumed sixty-eighth session today with a review of its 2014 work programme and organization of work, and of the role of the Joint Inspection Unit in light of its importance in the “United Nations oversight landscape”.

After heated negotiations that stretched beyond Christmas Day, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) concluded the main part of the sixty-eighth session today, recommending a $5.53 billion budget for the 2014-2015 biennium.

The United Nations must provide predictable and sufficient funds to its intergovernmental bodies, Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) delegates said today as they scrutinized the costs during the next biennium of new and existing activities of entities focused on human rights and sustainable development.

Delegations of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today voiced their concerns with the cost overruns of the Organization’s two-year, multibillion-dollar budget that ends on 31 December 2013, as well as with the significant financial demands of nearly two dozen special political missions for the upcoming two-year budget cycle that begins in January.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) charted progress made in building new office space at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) headquarters in Addis Ababa, delegates voiced serious concern over architectural and contracting mishandling that had significantly delayed its completion and given rise to extra costs.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took stock of the financing requirements for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, as it heard Secretariat officials shed light on progress in completing those bodies’ work and the transferring of their functions to a residual mechanism.