Fifth Committee

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today weighed in on the Secretary-General’s proposal to restructure the pension schemes for incoming judges of three United Nations courts — a move that would save the Organization nearly $10 million in the next three decades.

Proposals to change the methodology to determine the scale of Member States’ assessments to the United Nations, concerns over the delay in implementing the Capital Master Plan and whether to make public reports of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) dominated the discussions of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today, as it opened its resumed session.

After protracted, all-night negotiations, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) wrapped up the main part of its sixty-sixth session Saturday morning by recommending a $5.152 billion budget for the Organization for 2012-2013.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon took stock of the financing needs of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), delegates urged approval of the Secretary-General’s proposed amounts to keep that operation running until the end of next June.

While agreeing that the current funding and backstopping arrangements for the United Nations special political missions were inadequate, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today argued over how to rectify that situation and offered diverging views on the Secretary-General’s proposals for doing so.

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

The ambitious, multi-year overhaul of the historic United Nations Headquarters — known as the Capital Master Plan — was on track for completion by the end of 2014 within a variance of no more than 4 per cent of the original approved budget of $1.88 billion, the Plan’s top official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today.

Stressing the need for the Secretary-General to make every effort to ensure that technical and logistical support is provided for elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in full and on time, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today asked the General Assembly to appropriate $69.56 million to the Special Account for the United Nations Mission in that country.

Touting the United Nations ambitious projects in information and communications technology development and enterprise resource planning as the “engine and enabler” of the Organization’s reform and strengthening, the Deputy Secretary-General urged delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today to supply the necessary funds to implement them.

A senior official in the Department of Management unveiled before the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon the first phase of efforts to create a comprehensive emergency management framework, part of the major push to make the Organization’s New York Headquarters better able to cope with man-made threats and natural hazards.