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Informal Ad hoc Working Group on UN80 initiative - General Assembly, 80th session — 30 October 2025
Language: en
Automatically generated transcript — may contain errors. Not an official United Nations record.

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IAHWG · Co-Chair · Carolyn Schwalger [0:02]:

Good afternoon. Again, I call to order the informal meeting of the Working Group to hear a technical briefing on mandate implementation. We warmly welcome all of you to this technical briefing. We recognize the presence on screen for everyone of Mr. Guy Ryder, under Secretary General for Policy and chair of the UN 80 task force.

Also His Excellency Christian Venavesa, Permanent representative of Liechtenstein Mr. Martin Kamani, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Centre and former Permanent Representative of Kenya and Ms. Amerihak, the former United Nations Under Secretary General for the Department of Field Support, former CO Chair of the High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations and former Secretary General Special Representative for Timor Leste and Head of the United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor. Before handing the floor to our briefers, please allow me to deliver some opening remarks on behalf of the CO Chairs. We wish to take this opportunity to warmly thank all of you for your continued engagement in this important process. The briefing we convened on mandate creation on 13th October was fruitful. It delivered useful information, data and analysis to Working Group members.

Your questions to the briefers were incisive and brought to light areas of shared interest. This included questions around the lessons we have learned from previous attempts to to review mandates, the tools we might employ to support visibility of the mandate landscape and the relationship between the mandate creation process and the budgetary cycle. Your remarks at the subsequent mandate creation consultations on 23 October demonstrated that the briefings had stimulated some useful inputs from the Working Group. You presented new ideas about how we might improve the way we work together to create mandates. And we also heard a desire to return to some of the ideas that have been raised in the past.

In addition to offering suggestions on general principles that could guide our work, you made concrete proposals of actions to be taken. This included ideas around enhanced support from the Secretariat for those leading resolutions, improved working methods in the Committees and UN bodies where mandates are created, and a recasting of the budgetary process so the financial and time costs of mandates are better understood. Many of you expressed a desire for more discipline in the creation of mandates. Your desire to embrace technology to support our work was tempered with clear statements about the need for human oversight. And you reaffirmed the centrality of Member States as the drivers of mandate creation.

We have taken careful note of your inputs to the Working Group and we encourage you to start thinking about the merit of some of the proposals made by your fellow Working Group members and in addition to discussions in this room.

That's right. At least you have really great taste in music. Yeah. In addition to discussions in this room, Working Group member inputs are being made available on the UN80 website. Further, we will continue to make ourselves available to you for smaller group discussions.

And we really do appreciate the engagement with many of you that we have had to date. Some of you are interested in having a clearer idea of where this process is heading. As we said at the outset, we will be guided by you. At the same time, please be sure that we, as co Chairs, are striving for the highest level of ambition. We believe that reform of the UN is not only desirable, but but inevitable.

We want to work with you to ensure that mandates that we create are more impactful, that the resources to deliver them are used wisely and efficiently, and that the processes and working methods we deploy to create, implement and review mandates are less laborious, while remaining inclusive and transparent.

We have many options available to us in terms of the outcome of this process. Options include pledges, recommendations, guidelines, reports, decisions and resolutions. But none of these options will be meaningful unless we are genuinely committed to collective implementation. This will require a shift in behaviour, a shift in psychology and a shift in how we communicate with each other. And it will take sustained leadership.

Before we settle on the specific modality or outcome from this process, you need to tell us your level of ambition for reform and a demonstrated commitment to implementation. With that, I would now like to pass the floor to my co Chair, Ambassador Wallace, to get us underway with today's discussion. Thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [5:53]:

Thank you, Ambassador Carolyn. Colleagues, we hope that today's briefing on mandate implementation will be as fruitful as our recent discussions on mandate creation.

Each of our briefers today have or have had leadership roles in different aspects of mandate implementation across the UN system. We have asked our briefers to share their perspectives on how the mandates are implemented, whether it be well or poorly or unevenly, and ask them to share their ideas on how implementation might be improved. Understanding that the stages of the mandate lifecycle are intricately connected, they may also wish to share insights into the relationship between mandate creation and implementation and review. Before they begin, allow us to share a few thoughts from our perspective. In our many discussions with Member States, the Secretariat, the UN system more broadly and with stakeholders, we have heard widespread agreement that reform is urgently needed to restore public trust and the confidence of political decision makers in the UN and to strengthen its ability to deliver across the its core mandates.

During our recent mandate creation briefing and consultations, we could see that Working Group members clearly understand the link between mandate creation and mandate implementation. Mandates that are carefully crafted, assigned and costed that is, those that are created as a result of a deliberate and sound process are well set up for effective implementation from the moment of their creation. Effective implementation of mandates sits at the core of the UN's legitimacy. We encourage Working Group members to keep open minds as you listen to the data and analysis presented to you today. Once you've had a chance to ask questions of the briefers and reflect on what you have heard, we hope you will bring concrete, ambitious and creative ideas to the Working Group at the Mandate implementation consultations on 14 November.

From the discussion so far, we are confident that many of your conclusions and suggestions will align with the Co Chair's desire to achieve the most ambitious outcome from this process. As we noted earlier, today's briefers have been selected for their varied experience and perspectives with mandate implementation. Like all of us here today, they are invested in the good functioning of the un. Following the presentations by the briefers, there will be an opportunity for questions from the floor. I will now give the floor to Mr.

Guy Ryder, Undersecretary General for Policy and chair of the UN 80 task force. Guy, the floor is yours and thank you for taking the time.


UN Secretariat · USG Policy · Guy Ryder [8:54]:

Well, thank you very much, Co Chairs, Excellencies, dear participants, let me first thank you for inviting me to speak at this session of the Working Group focusing on the delivery phase of the mandate life cycle, and allow me at the outset an expression of solidarity and support through you, Ambassador Wallace, to the government and people of Jamaica in the wake of the passage of Hurricane Melissa. I would also like to express appreciation to all of you for your investment in the UN 80 initiative, particularly over the past couple of weeks, which have been really quite intensive. The Secretary General, my colleagues and I have benefited from the multiple engagements with you on the various work streams and the thoughtful feedback and strong commitment you have provided, not least right here in this Working group.

Progress is being made. I believe we are on the right path and that working together can and will make a real difference. But I think we all recognize as well that we have a long way to go. Perhaps it would be useful before turning to today's topic, mandate Delivery, to provide you with a very brief update on current developments across the whole of the UN 80 initiative. By way of context, I am joining you virtually because we are currently holding the UN system's Chief Executive Board, which twice a year brings together senior leaders from across the UN system to align on strategic issues and one of the main items on the agenda, and it will be discussed tomorrow morning, concerns next steps in the UN 80 initiative.

As the Secretary General said when he briefed you all two weeks ago on Work stream three of the initiative, we are developing an action plan that would establish an internal architecture, assign lead responsibilities and establish timelines to deliver on all action points across the entirety of the UN 80 work streams. I want to stress that this is an internal process and the Action Plan will operate, of course, in the fullest respect of established procedures and Member State prerogatives, in full transparency. Accordingly, we'll be informing Member States about the Action Plan once it is finalized.

Dear Co Chairs, Dear Participants, Let me turn then to today's topic, Mandate delivery. Now, mandates set out the actions which Member States instruct the UN to undertake, and mandate delivery is how we carry out those mandated actions today. As you all know, our mandates are quite numerous, very varied. By way of example, your decisions and your resolutions provide for such things as the establishment of subsidiary organs of the General Assembly, ECOSOC or the Security Council, for reports of the Secretary General, for the holding of meetings or workshops on particular subjects, for the establishment of of a peace operation, or for the establishment of an envoy, for example, to undertake good offices, and a great deal else. So we can see the great variety of issues dealt with under mandates.

Colleagues we currently have more than 400 intergovernmental bodies in New York, Geneva, Nairobi and Vienna alone. All of these bodies have their own agenda, meetings and documents. So let me give you a bit of an insight into some of the implications of your decisions in these areas. When Member States mandate the production of a report, for example, they should perhaps be aware that the costs related to to the issuance of an additional report in all six languages of 8,500 words amounts to US$24,500 at headquarters. This is just the cost of editing, translation and issuance of the document doesn't include the drafting, consultation and review of content.

And in 2024 alone, 1/4 billion that's billion with a b words were translated by the Secretariat in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi. If Member States mandate the holding of a meeting, they might keep in mind that the cost of holding an additional two sessions at headquarters in all six official languages lasting up to three hours for each session, comes to $15,900 per day. This includes the costs related to interpretation and meeting services, but does not include the cost of substantive support by a Secretariat office or webcast services. And in 2024 alone, nearly 27,000 meetings were held again in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi. And if Member States choose to mandate the establishment of a peacekeeping operation or special political mission.

Costs can range from around US$68 million per year for a small mission such as the UN Mission for the referendum in Western Sahara Minoso, with around 400 military and civilian personnel, to a large mission such as the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Monusco, which costs almost a billion dollars per year and has over 13,000 personnel in all. Now this information perhaps gives you a sense of the breadth of what we are referring to, what we mean by mandate delivery and the significant implications that your decisions have in terms of financial and opportunity costs. And with that sort of introduction, let me turn to the key issues which are identified in the Secretary General's report in respect of mandate delivery. We believe that the report presents an objective, data driven analysis of our current situation and three basic concerns arise from this analysis. Firstly, the proliferation of meetings and reports.

Secondly, the inadequate coordination in the distribution of tasks and responsibilities in the Secretariat for Mandate delivery and thirdly, misaligned funding modalities which can amplify challenges in the effective delivery of mandates. So a few comments from me on each of these three concerns with a view to help frame your deliberations in the Working Group on the question of meetings and reports. Quantitatively, over one in every ten dollars in the UN's regular budget is spent on direct costs associated with with meetings and reports, with indirect costs coming on top of that. Despite this I think remarkable output, most of these reports are not widely read. Last year more than half of reports were downloaded less than 2,000 times worldwide.

Another example, the UN observes almost 250 international days and weeks every year, each of them established by a specific resolution, there is a significant time and cost resource cost both in negotiating and observing these international days and weeks. And whilst the General assembly decided in Resolution 79, 327 to pause the consideration of new proposals for international days, the fact remains that so many international days already vie for attention and that situation remains. No less than six international days have been proclaimed for 21 March alone.

Co chairs Dear Participants, it is of course for you Member States to determine whether all of this represents the best use of both time and constrained financial resources, or whether there may be value in redirecting some of these resources to alternatives that might deliver greater impact. As you know, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the work of the General assembly has in recent years already taken steps towards streamlining the agenda of the assembly and improving the working methods of the main Committees. The Secretary General's report points to the option of such steps being taken further across various organs, Member States could consider prioritizing requests for reports and meetings, could combine requests for reports on similar themes, or could adjust the frequency or the format of reports. And if the Working Group is interested in examining this topic further, we of course stand ready to support you with analytics, including for example, a list of reports mandated to the Secretariat by topic and by periodicity, and that could perhaps help all of you to get a better insight into the volume and the types of report currently mandated. We have also committed to publishing download statistics for the reports we produce so that Member States can have full understanding of of the readership of the different reports, and we are working on an online tool to make that data accessible and to help to inform your work.

Turning to the second concern, which relates to the management of mandate delivery, there is evidence that in the absence of appropriate management and coordination arrangements, too often individual UN entities work in isolation rather than seeking to ensure strategic alignment across the system to drive impact and efficiency in mandate delivery. The result is an unclear or a poor division of labour, which risks duplication that can generate waste and weaken impact.

The Secretary General's report also points to the need to strengthen internal oversight to ensure a better division of labour across entities and stronger accountability for our performance. I would note also that proposals in the SG's recent report under UN 80 Work Stream 3 develop some aspects of this area and the thinking that we have upon it.

Thirdly, and finally, the question of funding misalignment.

Dear Participants, A great majority of UN funds comes from voluntary contributions and not from assessed contributions. Voluntary contributions were about 80% of total UN income in 2023, and this has important consequences for the ability of the UN to allocate resources optimally. Moreover, most voluntary funding is both earmarked and provided in small grants. In 2023, 85% of voluntary funding was earmarked and 60% of government grants were below US$1 million. All of this limits our ability to deploy resources where they are needed most and imposes high transaction costs.

As already acknowledged in the discussions on the 2019 Funding Compact, pooled funds can enable more strategic and more cost efficient approaches for the work of the United nations as a whole, and we look forward to working with you to develop ideas on how to make pooled funding a more attractive option, a preferred option to overcome fragmented delivery that can result from fragmented funding Co Chairs, Distinguished Delegates to conclude, let me reiterate that my colleagues and myself are at your disposal to provide all additional support that you might consider helpful and appropriate. I have unfortunately to leave the meeting at this point I I have to return to the Chief Executive Board discussion but members of my team are with you there in the room and I look forward to finding out through them the readout of your deliberations today. And I look forward as well to continuing and resuming our dialogue on the 14th of November. Thank you very much for this opportunity.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [24:18]:

Thank you so much, Mr. Ryder. And we completely understand that you have to return to the ceb, but thank you for that presentation. I will now give the floor to His Excellency Christian Beneveso, Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein.


Liechtenstein · Permanent Representative · Christian Beneveso [24:34]:

Thank you so much to both of you and it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation to talk about our experience in putting resolutions forward and on both on mandate design and and the implementation.

We have over the past nine years put forward five resolutions in the General assembly in chronological order. The first in 2016, the creation of the so called IIM, the accountability mechanism for Syria. Then in the times of the lockdown. First the so called Laguna Group resolution and I'm pleased to see some of the members of the group in the room. That was a resolution on Solidarity in the times of COVID 19.

Third again during the lockdown procedural decision on electronic voting in the channel assembly in 2021, a resolution on the situation in Myanmar and finally and maybe best known the Veto initiative in 2022. The first resolution on the IIIM obviously created a mandate. In fact it created an entity that is now located in Geneva and interestingly it did not at the time of the adoption create a pbi, even though that entity had has now an annual budget of about US$20 million. That happened for technical reasons that would be too lengthy to go into. But if somebody wants to take this up in the Q and A, I'll be happy to go a bit deeper on it.

So this mechanism was first financed through voluntary contributions, then moved to the regular budget and today, for better or worse, it relies again heavily on voluntary contributions, but still still has a core funding from the regular budget. The COVID 19 solidarity resolution has been cited by parts of the UN system, did not create a mandate and did not mean to create a mandate. And I will not go deeper on this resolution, therefore, because we are talking about mandates here. The Myanmar resolution in 2021 was primarily a political resolution in the absence of of action in the Security Council advocating for action after the unconstitutional military seizure of power and again and actually intentionally did not create a mandate either, but was an impactful text nonetheless. The other two Texts are perhaps, from a mandate perspective, the most interesting ones.

While they did not directly mandate specific activities, they did create overarching mandates that can be triggered and then also result in costs. The decision that we put forward during the pandemic, and for those who were not here, this was a time when obviously we were not able to meet in person. The General assembly continued its work, but. But because we were not able to meet in person, the view emerged that only resolutions that found consensus in the membership could be adopted. And we found that to be, with many others, an untenable situation for the Council to be subject to a permanent threat of veto de facto by one member of the organization.

This is why the E voting procedure was introduced so today. If, for whatever reason we are not able to meet in the General assembly, we are nonetheless able to vote without being in the same room together. This is a mechanism that was technically complicated to develop and that was done certainly with the help from the Secretariat. And it has not since been used and triggered. If it were to be used, of course it would lead to costs in application, but it did not incur a PBI or had any sort of costing attached to it at the time of adoption.

The veto initiative. And maybe good to read out the technical title of this resolution. It's called a standing mandate for the General assembly debate when a veto is cast in the Security Council. End of quote, end of title. So obviously this creates a mandate.

But. It did not incur any cost because the costs only arise if and when the Channel assembly meets as a result of a veto. So that means the costs incurred are actually caused in the Security Council and through the veto cast in the Security Council. There was for this reason also no PBI and no costing attached to this, to this resolution, as for us, has become clear in discussion, one of the problems that we have is that sometimes it's unclear what counts as a mandate and what does not. For the resolutions.

I have talked about our resolutions, we do believe that this is clear. While some people may question whether mandate is the correct term to describe the e voting procedure, we think it is. But maybe that is up for discussion. But I think one of the things that we certainly need to get clarity on is what is a mandate, what creates a mandate. And that should be a building block of how we move forward and mandate creation in other cases, and I'll use the triple IM here, it is clear that there is a mandate created and literally people working for a body laid out by a resolution.

So in our view, the triple IM and the Veto initiative clearly create mandates, and I have already talked about E voting with respect to whether that is a mandate or not. For us, a key observation is that the strength of resolutions relied in our case very heavily on the extensive consultations we had with the relevant parts of the UN system, sometimes also with outside actors. That was the case to a very significant extent for the triple im, where we talked very extensively with the Commission of Inquiry established by the Office of the High Commissioner, the Office of the High Commissioner itself, and other parts of the UN system, but also with independent experts on international criminal law from the outside. Also, importantly, after the adoption of the mandate, we were part of the implementation, in particular in the discussions on the terms of reference with ohchr, and I really cannot overemphasize how important that is and how important that conversation is both at the phase of the creation of the mandate and thereafter. Similarly, for the E voting decision, we consulted very closely with the relevant parts of the Secretariat, in particular the jcm, on feasibility and technical modalities, and without the active support and the positive mindset from the Secretariat, we would not have been able to create this mechanism either.

We also engaged very extensively with the Secretariat on technical and practical questions raised in the drafting of the veto initiative.

One of the questions I think that are key here are fragmentation and maybe more importantly, duplication. If there are ways to address this issue from a terminological perspective using AI tool, that is great. But the tools we have do not yet, in our view, manage to do this, partly because mandates can be arrived at with many different terms, many different turns of phrase in a resolution. So we should, at the phase of drafting a mandate, again, I think, benefit in particular from the input from the Secretariat and to have an overview of what is already happening. One thing on mandate implementation that we can clearly do is to give guidance to the SG to determine who carries out what mandate.

Part of the duplication appears to come from a reality today where departments look for mandates to implement. There is a bit of a place for that. But we do believe it is more important to have the SG use the discretion vested in his office, in her office, to give guidance to the system. And we think that is certainly key in avoiding duplication. And it's something we're drafters of resolutions, and those who have ownership over them can play a significant role.

On a side note, I think worth noting that both the Myanmar and the veto initiative resolutions were aimed at the same goal, namely to have the GA act on issues of peace and security when the Council is unable to do so in line with the Charter's mandate. The GA of course does adopt many resolutions with mandates for peace and security, which we believe the Secretariat implements accordingly. With respect to the recent report of the sg, one resolution that comes up relatively often is of course the GA revitalization resolution which recommends shorter action oriented text, something that is clearly beneficial, and the introduction of expiration clauses where appropriate. This has double benefit of making mandates clearer so they can be delivered more effectively and reducing the amount of text being processed. On the issue of periodicity, again, I think a key aspect of our conversation certainly interesting and probably unusual, all the resolutions that we presented were one off resolutions, so none of them needed to be adopted again to be in force or to be or to have an impact.

You know, we do not really have the capacity as a small state to put forward five resolutions a year and we're certainly very happy that we don't have to because otherwise that's how we would be spending our time. But that's not the main reason why we drafted the resolutions this way. We simply did not feel that it was necessary or in fact helpful, even though in context of a couple of them it was discussed. And I really want to encourage states to think about this when they present resolutions that the one off resolution certainly can be as meaningful, as impactful as other resolutions. As a minimum, I believe we should move away from this prevailing logic that the default position is that resolution is an annual resolution.

I think that is clearly wrong. I see actually pretty much no reason for that. And there are at the end, if you look at everything together, it's probably a minority of resolutions where that is in fact justified. On a similar note, there is not per se a need to ask for NSG report every year. Again, I think there is a certain automaticity in how we think about this.

You write a resolution, so obviously the last para you write is you request a report from the sg and that does not necessarily mean that you know why you want the report, except that that is the basis for the discussion that you have next year. So again, none of our resolutions did have a report and we don't think they're any less meaningful for that matter. Of course they are a bit sui generis, at least some of them. But again, I think it's extremely important to think about this and also to think about the proposal made by our colleague from Costa Rica here that perhaps at the beginning when you have a new mandate, it may be helpful to have an SG report that helps you frame the discussion. But that does not mean that you have to have a report every single year or at the very least you should ask for something more specific.

A primary point that is rarely clear at the point of adoption is how much a resolution might cost in terms of budget. We think that as a matter of transparency, every resolution should be costed and that this should happen as a matter of course so we know how much we are spending. Last point on the interrelated nature of mandate creation, implementation and review. The tools we use to build a mandate are inextricably linked to the overall design of the mandate and the purpose for which we build it. So we should not separate these two things.

And if you write a mandate, if you write a resolution, you should at the same time already think about the implementation. And again, that's why the dialogue with the Secretariat is so important. So in conclusion, just you know, the takeaways from our perspective, the first is a one off resolution can be fine. Some of the most famous resolutions that the General assembly in particular has adopted, of course were adopted one time only. And that maybe is something that is worth thinking about BE 26, 25, 3314 or many others.

And at the very least we should look, and that's the second point, at the periodicity of a resolution on the basis of of the merits of the text at a time of creation, an SG report is not required to mandate action or in our view to make a resolution impactful. As a minimum, it should be understood that there is no automaticity in asking for NSG report. We should have an estimate of how much a resolution may cost, including if provisions are triggered by another body or or by a Member State later. In our case, that was the example given was the veto initiative. And certainly Member States should engage very extensively with the Secretariat on products and to achieve different purposes to improve the quality of the resolutions, but also of the mandates.

To ensure that a mandate is well understood in the Secretariat and implement it accordingly and probably most importantly, to avoid duplication and to know what is already happening. And that may well be part of a mandate that you're about to create. And finally there is a responsibility for follow up and implementation with a view to ensuring that Secretariat has the assistance and the guidance needed to process a mandate as efficiently as possible. Thank you so much.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [41:18]:

Thank you, Christian.

And I'll give the floor to Mr. Martin Kimani, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Africa center and former Permanent Representative of Kenya. It's good to see you, Martin.


Africa Centre · President & CEO · Martin Kimani [41:35]:

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for giving me the floor. Dear Chairs Excellencies and distinguished colleagues, I'm very glad to be participating in these important deliberations as we discuss gaps in mandates and implementation. Our sense of urgency must be sharpened by the atrocities unfolding in El Fascia, Sudan. Yesterday, the WHO condemned reports of killings and abduction of hundreds inside a maternity ward.

The unfortunate reality is that human beings are impelled to make the most radical changes due to emergency. Such indeed was a necessity that impelled the creation of the un. The world is beset by emergency today, especially, as I've just mentioned, in Sudan and Gaza and here in headquarters, there is a budget crisis. We should use them to build the un. The world needs.

As you know, the reality of being a permanent representative or a delegate here is that one is constantly busy and yet finds that business quite frustrating. Many times during the day you sit in the machinery that is built to maintain peace and protect life, yet you see it falter repeatedly in real time. That helplessness is not abstract to me. It was my daily experience, including during Kenya's term on the Security Council a few years ago. We increased our staff, had two substantive DPRs at ambassador level, and our experts tried to be present across the system.

Yet we still worked seven days a week from early morning into the night. And while I am proud of our work, so much was left undone due to the weaknesses of the implementation system here. My focus today, however, goes beyond the time constraints of delegations to the role of knowledge in implementation, especially across the peace and development nexus. While I served as the president of one of the executive boards, I used to quip quite often that the UN is the world's most knowledgeable organization. But its inability to effectively manage knowledge means that its workers seldom have what they need at the moment of decision.

It knows a lot, but it doesn't know what it knows. An American study of knowledge workers found that they spend nearly a fifth of their time searching for information. With thousands of meetings, overlapping mandates and siloed repositories, the figure at the UN is likely to be higher. This is a direct financial and effectiveness tax on implementation. We face three linked weak points or failures.

First is information asymmetry. Agencies and departments meet, learn and decide in isolation. Insights stay where they are produced and entities cite the same mandates without a shared implementation picture. Second is search inefficiency. Staff spend a large share of time hunting across unconnected systems.

Time that should fund analysis and delivery is consumed by retrieval. Included in this are delegations with their oversight function, which is consequently weakened. Third, we suffer knowledge loss at scale rotation in Peace operations and turnover in country teams drain institutional memory. When countries move from peacekeeping to peace building, they often build initiatives such as community policing from scratch. Despite the UN's years of mission experience that should contribute to that task.

The knowledge exists here, but it's too often inaccessible.

There have been attempts to change this before, of course. There have been lessons learned. Units launched knowledge networks and individual agencies have built repositories. But most have underperformed for three reasons. They were siloed by entity under resourced aside projects rather than core infrastructure, and had no accountability for usage or contribution.

What is different now is technology and of course, the emergency that we are facing. For instance, artificial intelligence can search across silos. It can surface patterns and cut retrieval time by orders of magnitude. Recent advances in Australia, for instance, demonstrate how institutions are experimenting with multimodal AI systems to deploy autonomous digital workers that perform entire workflows. These AI systems are being tested to manage routine back office functions, freeing human staff for analysis, judgment and partnership building.

Early evidence suggests substantial productivity gains and error reduction when standardized processes are automated, provided that oversight and ethical safeguards remain strong. The relevance to the work of the UN is clear. Much of its administrative and reporting work is repeatable and rule based, while implementation decisions are human and contextual. A similar division of labor could release significant capacity across the system. Machines handle structured workflows.

People focus on diplomacy, negotiation and learning. The goal here is augmentation, not to just replace UN staff. The question is whether we have the discipline to deploy it with clear governance and joint ownership. I very much recall talking to different executive directors about the data flows and asking them if they could pool knowledge information in one data pool. And of course all of them, because I was president of the board that year, were very welcoming of my remarks, but they went nowhere with it.

So I propose three integrated moves. Each addresses a past weak point and I think together they can change how we deliver. The first is to build country knowledge infrastructure with joint ownership. So in every nexus context on peace and development established an index repository that surfaces conflict analysis, the political economy program evidence, human rights reporting and financing data to all UN actors and key partners. And this of course can build on already the reforms and the existence of the resident coordinator working with mission leadership to ensure that no single entity controls access or content standards.

That infrastructure should include an AI enabled layer that allows queries across resolutions, SG reports, evaluations and lessons databases. A practitioner should be able to ask what worked for demobilization in a context like theirs and receive some form of design elements, contact details for implementers and ready to use indicators within minutes. Let's make usage visible in senior compacts. If a product is not discoverable through this system, do not ask the field to produce it. Assign executive ownership at the ASG level, perhaps in each entity to ensure that this is core business, not a side project.

2. We need to link tacit knowledge to accountability structures. Tacit knowledge is how so much of the great work in this organization is done. It travels through people. So we should establish more practitioner networks that connect peace operations, special political missions, resident coordinator offices and humanitarian workers.

Let's name nexus coordinators with dual reporting to the resident coordinators and mission leads. Let's give them shared indicators, e.g. sustained reduction in violence incidents around key project areas and time to transition to specific services from mission to national systems. Let's have budget lines that must acknowledge nexus work even if they're not joint budget lines. 3.

Let's rationalize reporting and measure knowledge use. As Christian was saying, we can replace bundles of low use reports with consolidated decision briefs in each context. We can track open rates, references in decisions and follow through. We can percentage of new programs at site and apply evaluation lessons and share of joint analysis actually used at decision points. We can track all these.

We really. You know I have to say that I was really struck when I visited N. Nigeria to go to the Northeast and see the development and peace building work that was done. And I felt the power of the tacit knowledge that was there. The depth of communication between the UN system and the national authorities and the decision making participation by the national authorities in operations in the Northeast showed the UN at its best. I am pretty much convinced that after the movement of those UN staff that instituted that that the new ones had to learn all those lessons all over again.

It's too expensive.

Centralizing knowledge raises legitimate concerns about sensitive information. Let's keep the systems that I'm proposing on secure UN infrastructure. Default access should be here to the UN and delegations and and pre agreed partners such as the African Union. Let's restrict sensitive material through role based permissions that are managed and lets member states receive consolidated products, not raw field analysis. We want our technology to produce productivity, not be an intelligence gathering exercise.

And you can establish a small interagency board to set standards and resolve access disputes. And of course you have to protect sources while making inclusion the operating principle. As I come to a close, we all know that most of the nexus contexts are in Africa. I think that is an opportunity to use that concentration of effort to lead the agenda. Let's establish an Africa Nexus knowledge hub that connects AU structures, regional economic communities and UN teams.

In a first regional pilot of this approach, let's build regional learning networks around shared problems such as cross border transhumans or urban violence. For a field team, less time searching, more time tailoring. When a mission planner rotates out, successors will inherit a living record of their decisions, why they were taken, and what they achieved. For you member states, it comes up with fewer, better products that synthesize across organs and entities and allow smaller delegations to enter debates with the same factual base as the larger ones. But of course, knowledge management is not a substitute for political will, adequate resources or clear mandates.

Christian spoke deeply and knowledgeably about that. It cannot resolve policy agreements among Member States. It cannot make up for chronic underfunding. What it can do is ensure that we have agreement and resources and we do not waste them relearning what we already know. The best knowledge systems fail without the right people to use them.

We must hire for both excellence and inclusion. Excellence means recruiting staff with the technical skills, contextual knowledge and judgment. Inclusion means drawing that talent from the broadest possible pool, particularly from the regions where we work. A country team without nationals in senior roles will miss context that determines whether programs succeed or fail. I am constantly approached by young people and professionals who want to work for the un.

People who I find utterly brilliant. And I find many UN staff utterly brilliant. But I have to say it seems like a rigged game where a lot of people who have the qualifications that would uplift this organization are just not given the chance. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how much knowledge management you put in the system. The whole system will not work.

Geographic and gender balance are key to operational effectiveness.

So let me close by just finishing by noting the obvious. Our problem is not lack of knowledge. It is really how to build systems that harness that knowledge, direct it and allow access to it. Humanity and countries and states and philanthropists, so many have contributed many billions of dollars to the work of the un. The collected knowledge and expertise is humanity's great prize, not only for the work of the un, but all those civil society organizations that would like access to the same information subject to reasonable limits.

Thank you so much for giving me the chance to contribute to this debate. And I wish all of you all the best in delivering to us the United nations that we so solely need. Thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [56:15]:

Thank you so much Martin, for that intervention. It was almost as if you never left us. I now give the floor to Mr. Meera Haq former UN Under Secretary General for the Department of Field Support, former co Chair of the High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, former Secretary General, Special Representative for Timor Lester, and head of the UN Integrated Mission Initiative, East Timor. Ms. Hack, you have the floor and welcome.


UN Secretariat · Former USG DFS · Meera Haq [56:51]:

Thank you very much. I will try to go through very quickly, but first just want to say that all protocols observed I have had a career in the United nations. My career spanned 40 years. Of that 40 years, I spent 21 years in the field where the implementation was taking place in many countries. But I spent 19 years, obviously in headquarters where I think it was also very important to get the perspective of the political frameworks, policy frameworks and other things that go into mandate creation and implementation that many of the speakers have have touched on this morning.

I also feel very fortunate because in the course of my career in the UN I had the opportunity to work in all three specific areas of the un, namely in development, in humanitarian and in the peace and security sectors. So, you know, and I've looked at implementation in all of these areas. I retired 10 years ago and obviously once you're retired you have time to reflect and very often I do. And I Wonder Whether my 40 years, you know, made an impact because sometimes when I see where the world is, particularly countries that I worked in, you know, the crisis situations that they are still in, as the earlier speaker referred to in, in Sudan, you know, you have to sit back and wonder, you know, what, what is it that we did? Did we do everything, you know, correctly?

Is there something that we could have done better? So I hope today in talking to you, I'll be able to reflect some of that in the context of what you're discussing, which is so important in terms of the UN at 80 years. So let me start by speaking of the development work, because I spent of the 40 years, I spent 20 years in development primarily with UNDP. And let me say that in 1976, when I started my career, it was in Jakarta, Indonesia. And I remember going to the UNDP office and I was ushered into a meeting with the UN DP in Jakarta and the resident representative there introduced me.

And then he went on to introduce everyone else who was sitting around the table. And he introduced me to someone who he said was the senior agricultural advisor and that was the representative from fao. And then sitting next to him was the senior industrial advisor and that was the representative from unido, and then there was the UN Population advisor who was the representative of the UN FPA and so on. We all worked in the Same building in Jakarta. There were two agencies, the ILO and the and UNESCO, that had their own offices and country representatives, but those representatives were also in that.

In that meeting. And UNDP at the time was the central funding agency. And the meetings that we had there was very much anchored in national ownership of the UN program. And we worked with the Indonesian Planning Agency with their national development plan to see how the UN could intervene and work with the government on certain aspects of the plan. So it was the discussions were, you know, how much should go into agriculture, how much should go into, you know, manpower and, you know, setting up social safety nets in terms of Social Security administration, how much should we be supporting the national census that was going to be built there?

It all came under one funding. But I should also tell you that in the two years that I was in Indonesia, in the course of those two years, the senior agricultural advisor of FAO became the FAO country representative, and FAO set up a separate representation outside of those premises. The same happened with unido, the same happened with unfpa. So this fragmentation that Guy Rider talked about, I witnessed that in the course. And part of what I, you know, what I want to call attention to is that many countries then, you know, that central pooled funding or the central funding that was there for the country program of Indonesia got broken up and fragmented into direct funding to the agency programs.

And so, you know, when I read some of the documents, what I think of is that we're trying to go back to the future to what it was, because it was one UN sitting around the table working with national authorities, you know, in sort of supporting their development plan. Now, the UN and I have been resident coordinator in four countries, was that I feel I spent a lot of time as resident coordinator and as resident representative of the UN in mobilizing resources because I think development has been chronically underfunded. And the mandates that we get for development, whether it's the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals or earlier Millennium Development Goals or other mandates that we've had, remain underfunded. And so a great deal of my time was spent in mobilizing resources and as Resident coordinator, not only mobilizing resources for the undp, but for the UN country team as well. And there's also the, you know, we come with the technical agencies of the un.

We come with, you know, technical assistance programs and projects. But sometimes we don't get that seat at the table because the larger financial institutes, IFIs, world banks, regional development banks, they come with massive investment in the sector and so very often the ministries of finance in those other countries are more interested obviously in looking at these huge investments that come into these sectors. So a lot of development work seems to suffer because of that. In moving to the humanitarian side, I would say that the humanitarian side of the UN in my experience, has been the side that delivers the best it may be. And I think it is largely so that in humanitarian work the mandate is saving lives.

And in times of critical situations, there is very little that holds back, even though humanitarian appeals are never fully funded. But nevertheless, the mission of saving lives brings more to the table than a long term development goal. For instance. And in the humanitarian sector, I have seen that the interagency standing committee works well. The cluster system of the humanitarian system, where there's a lead agency, other agencies follow support, you know, that that works well as, and bringing in the non governmental and outside workers.

So that part of the system I think is the one. But as I say, their mandate is very strong in terms of these are life saving actions that must be done. But I think the UN has worked out its mechanics well in this sector. Let me move then to the final sector where I spent the last 10 years of my career, which was in peace operations. And there I worked both in political and peacekeeping missions.

In Afghanistan it was working in a political mission where the troops were NATO troops, but in Sudan we had our own UN troops. And in Timor Leste it was primarily a policing mission with the UN police contingent working very closely with other bilateral inputs as well. And where the UN had executive authority going back to Afghanistan immediately in the aftermath of 9 11, when the Karzai government was installed, it was very important for civil servants to be paid. And again, this goes a little bit into that. You know, what do you do as quick wins and the flexibility that is required for implementation under those circumstances.

And at that time, a brilliant boss that I had, Julia Taft, who worked in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, said, we have civil servants. And, you know, we sort of went through all kinds of, you know, discussions, but we were able to sort of make a real headway in saying, okay, we are going to deliver to every single civil servant in Afghanistan their first monthly salary. So In January of 2002, in brown paper bags, cash was given to every single civil servant of Afghanistan that stayed, that remained as a kind of one off. And this is where I think, you know, Ambassador Kimani was saying, the knowledge that we have, sometimes it is not used. You know, the flexibility that we had there, as I understand, didn't work in Aceh when the money was there, but the money couldn't go to those who desperately needed it at the time.

So I think these kinds of flexibility in implementation is what is needed with the peace, whether it's political or peacekeeping missions. Again, I think both Ambassador Kimani and others referred to it that when the mandates are set up, it's very important to recognize that there is expertise that already resides within the UN system in the country for a long time. And so when I went to East Timor, for example, and we saw, you know, I had large numbers of staff who were experts on injustice and protection of civilians in, you know, domestic violence. Since that was quite a big issue in East Timor, you know, we were able to again in the context of East Timor, move that expertise to be embedded with the country team to provide the capacity that was needed to the institutions in East Timor, to the respective ministries and others in East Timor now. And at the time that the mission was closing, we also had to do quite a lot of groundbreaking work to say let's pass on some of these resources to the country team.

And here one of the co chairs, New Zealand, knows very well how much we work to try and get community policing to continue so that when the mission stopped, that work didn't stop, but continued through the country team and continued through bilateral partners. So these things should not be anomalies. These things should be the norm. And as people have said, the knowledge exists there. The, you know, we need to take these lessons learned.

We need to see how we can bring the system together. And you know, in, in many cases it's been demonstrated that, that it can be done. Lastly, on exit strategy, I'm a firm believer of that. It was very much a part of the HIPPO report recommendations as well. But this goes for just not within the peace and security sector, but everywhere.

The, that whatever you do is finite. It's not sort of open ended and never ending. And so I think it's very important that the accountabilities are set in to have an exit strategy, to have a review structure and the accountability structure to see if things are being met and when you sort of make a plan to end it. And I always tell people that in my UN career I really felt that I was one of the most fortunate UN officials because what I, you know, and a ceremony that I was part of remains, you know, ingrained in me. When we lowered the flag of the UN and we raised the flag of Timor Leste and handed over the responsibility, closed the mission and handed over the responsibility of the police to the Timorese authorities.

And the UN was able to say, you know, we've closed our mission successfully. That rarely happens in the un. So I feel very privileged that I was part of that. But I think it can. So, you know, I just want to close by saying that some of these things, I mean, people have spoken about it.

I think people can ask more questions if they want, but I think there's quite a bit of experience, quite a bit of groundbreaking work that has been done. The key is how we can get back to some good practices that we had that brought the system together, that recognized where expertise was and matched the resources to where the expertise could best deliver on the ground. And finally to realize when it's time to say, you know, we need to leave. Thank you very much.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:12:03]:

Thank you very much, Ms. Hack, and not only for your presentation today, but for your decades of excellent service to this organization. I'll now open the floor for any questions from delegations on this technical briefing. Delegations are reminded that this technical briefing is to be followed by informal consultations at which there will be an opportunity for delegations to deliver statements. As we have been asked by you to be mindful of the overlap with meetings of the main committees, please don't make statements today. Time limits for your questions and comments to the panelists will therefore be limited.

We are asking you to keep within a minute and a half.

I will now give the floor to Costa Rica, to be followed by China.


Costa Rica [1:12:52]:

Good afternoon. I would like first to thank the. Co facilitators for organizing this session on mandate implementation and to the speakers for their valuable insights. Christian, allow me to recognize your leadership. On a number of important initiatives.

Their implementation has made this organization stronger. And empower the General assembly to act. At all times, even in the face of a pandemic, and particularly in matters. Of peace and security. And Martin, as you notice, excellence must.

Be our North Star. The UN can only excel if we hire the best and if member states bring their best. Let me pose to questions. The Secretary General's report notes the oversight. Of mandates across the UN system is.

Limited mostly to planning, budgeting and individual entity operationalization. If you could implement one measure to. Improve impact and efficiency across the system, what would it be? Second, what drives so many entities to. Spread themselves so thin across too many mandates?

Is it primarily competition for resources? What a larger share of assessed rather than voluntary funding help entities focus on deliver more effectively? I thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:14:24]:

I thank the distinguished representative of Costa Rica. I give the floor now to China, to be followed by Ireland.


China [1:14:32]:

Thank you, Co Chairs. Thank you for organizing today's briefing. We have listened attentively and in light of the recommendations of the SGE report, we have two questions. The first one is regarding reports. What is the conversion rate between the recommendations in UN report and subsequent actions taken by Member States?

What are the characteristics of the reports that have higher utilization rate among Member States? In terms of streamlining reports? What measures can the Secretariat take? And the second one is regarding to the meetings. The SG's report notes that both the establishment and the closure of bodies increase the Secretariat's workload.

What are the characteristics of the more than 50 bodies that have been discontinued over the past decades? What are the steps can the Secretariat take to make full use of the existing resources and to avoid frequently established and closure of the bodies? Thanks.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:15:39]:

I thank the representative of China. I give the floor now to the representative of Ireland to be followed by Mexico.


Ireland [1:15:47]:

Thank you very much, co facilitators. And thank you to all of our briefers for really excellent oversight overview of the various issues that we are dealing with in terms of mandate delivery. So very useful. The last briefing session we spoke about the lessons from the 2008 mandate creation in 2018. As the mandate report showed, there were a number of efforts towards UN reform in 2018 on the development system in particular.

And a lot is flowing through into the report and into our presentations here today. And I guess it's a very general question, but what are the incentives and the disincentives that have driven success in those 2018 reforms and that have actually held back on progress in many of those 2018 reforms because they speak to the same issues. Revitalized and empowered resident coordinator system, new generation of country teams implementing mandates at the regional level in a revamped way. A funding compact which brings less fragmentation, more core funding. Many of the elements that we've spoken.

About were in those reform efforts and. Yet they haven't reached the destination that perhaps we can get to. So looking at what might be holding them back and how we can drive them forward will be very critical in this exercise. And actually, final point, there was an evaluation of key elements of the UN Development system reform published just this July by the sector wide Evaluation Office. And that's a resource that we as a group would be very well advised to read through and understand because it might help us in terms of how the mandate creation and delivery system can work more effectively, including at the country level.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:17:55]:

Thank you very much. I thank the distinguished representative of Ireland. I give the floor now to Mexico to be followed by Cuba.


Mexico [1:18:03]:

Thank you very much. And I would like to pose three questions.

First, one, on proliferation of meetings and reporting, the report suggests rationalizing both the number and the length of meetings and reports and adopting differentiated formats. So we would like to know what strategic criteria should guide decisions on which reports are produced and which are consolidated to ensure that rationalization does not compromise accountability or Member States engagement. On the issue of inadequate mandate implementation, we would like to know. The report suggests making better use of system wide coordination platforms. So how can the Secretariat incentivize effective interagency collaboration with through these platforms?

And what indicators could be used to measure whether this coordination reduces duplication and enhances efficiency? And lastly, on misaligned financing modalities, the report recommends fully implementing the commitments of the funding Compact and increasing flexibility in resource relocation. So what structural or governance obstacles could impede effective implementation of these measures and how might they be addressed to improve efficiency and impact at the country level? Thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:19:33]:

I thank Mexico.

I give the floor now to Cuba, followed by the Russian Federation.


Cuba [1:19:38]:

Thank you, facilitators. I would like to thank to you to the facilitators and the panelists for their briefings and express our full solidarity to the countries impacted by the hurried. Melissa. I would like to make three questions regarding the proposal to prioritize and simplify requests for reports or meetings.

How will it be determined which report takes priority over another? Who will determine this and under what parameters? In line with this question, how it is expected to reduce the number of words in reports, particularly on issues that have been pending for many years, without undermining the priorities of the penholders of the resolution that creates the mandates? Finally, regarding the recommendation to grant United nations entities greater flexibility to redeploy resources with reasonable justification, we would like to know what is meant by reasonable justification and who will define it. How can this proposal be understood in light of the fact that the budget responds to a program plan defined by the Member States?


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:20:57]:

Thank you so much. Thank the representative of Cuba. Give the floor to the Russian Federation followed by Chile.


Russian Federation [1:21:06]:

Thank you very much. So I have a question to the Secretariat.

What are the mechanisms? Whether you have mechanisms in place that. Might ensure that consolidation or shortening of reports does not weaken in depth analysis or create methodological gaps or reduce traceability of decisions? Second question, to redeployment of resources. I think a lot of delegations touched upon this idea.

So the idea to allow quicker deployment of resources to protect delivery, whether it poses risks, creating de facto prioritization of activities that originate with voluntary earmark funding versus those which originate from assessed contribution funding? And I also note that Mr. Guy Ryder touched upon the volumes of the voluntary contributions being the basis for the work of the Secretariat of the UN system. How can we ensure that the activities launched with extra budgetary resources is properly monitored by all the UN Member states and will not be prioritized or included into assets budgets later without an explicit GA decision? And last but not the least, my question goes to the co Chairs.

I would like to thank them for bringing us the wisdom of Mr. Kimani. We're also happy to see him. But we're puzzled to understand why did you choose one PR for a Member state view? With all due respect to Our distinguished ambassador, Mr. Vinavisar, why did you choose him who devoted most of his speech speaking about mandates and decisions which hit the blow to unity of the un? Thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:23:32]:

Thank you, Representative of the Russian Federation. I give the floor now to Chile, followed by the European Union.


Chile [1:23:41]:

Thank you Co Chairs for organizing this comprehensive briefing and to the speakers for sharing their valuable observations, insights and experiences with us. I would like to address one brief. Question to the representatives of the Secretariat. Based on the presentation by USG Guy Rider, the report shows that the length of the resolutions has grown considerably over the past two decades. We also heard about the costs of producing a 8,500 word report.

Has any analysis been carried out to understand the factors driving this increase? And what exactly accounts for the additional thousands of words on average in each resolution in 2025 compared to 20, excuse me, 2005. Thank. You.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:24:40]:

I thank the representative of Chile.

I give the floor now to the European Union followed by Malawi.


EU [1:24:47]:

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Co Chair. Thank you, Co Chairs. This is a very inspiring afternoon. I should say in particular also the very concrete contributions by Ambassador Vena Visa and Ambassador Kumani.

Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I actually echo a little bit the questions by my dear colleague from Mexico on the use of the existing system wide coordination mechanisms and how can we use those, for example, but also the. UN Sustainable Development Group or the Interagency Standing Committee to improve coherent mandate implementation. Of course at country level we have the RC system, but more at the overall level here in New York and elsewhere.

And the second question I have, and. I'm exposing my ignorance here, is when a mandate is adopted in a resolution. For example by the ga, who then. Decides within the Secretariat or within the system here, which part of the system. Will be sort of the owner of that mandate and gets to implement it.

And last, but not least, as I. Said, following the Mexican question on the. Reports, what are the steps and the operational staffing and budgetary implications of combining reports? And is it possible to give an. Overview of.

What would happen if we merge reports? And I recall that Guy Rider offered to produce a list of reports by topic and by periodicity, and maybe that's. Helpful to look into that as well. Thank you very much. I thank the European Union.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:26:30]:

I give the floor to Malawi and then El Salvador. Thank you.


Malawi [1:26:35]:

Thank you Co Chairs for your presentations and all the presenters for their insights on the UN 80 initiative. My delegation noted during the UNGA 80 that the UN some of the concerns that were expressed was that the UN has moved away from its basic mandate and therefore has not been efficient and effective. So first, how will the UN initiative ensure that the UN mandate is brought back to basics? And second, how will the review of the implementation of the UN mandate ensure that the UN work has impact on our people on the ground? Thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:27:26]:

I thank the distinguished representative of Malawi. I give the floor now to El Salvador and then South Africa.


El Salvador [1:27:32]:

Thank you, Excellency. We wish to express our appreciation to the Co Chairs for committing this meeting and to the Undersecretary General Ryder and all the briefers for their valuable contributions to this session. Taking into account the information provided and the content of the ESG report, my delegation wishes to formulate the following questions. Paragraph 43 and 52 of the report refers to risk of duplications in the implementation of mandates, possible functional overlap and potential fragmentation and competition for use of resources, resources which will encourage the adoption of more opportunistic and less strategic approaches in each of the entities? In this regard, has the Secretariat identified a sense of competition for resources between agencies within the system?

Are there any considerations regarding these cases in the field based for instance, or on the findings of the multiple QCPR reports during the last few years? In this Recommendation, in paragraph 52.2, the Secretary General suggests there is need to allow UN system entities greater flexibility to resources quickly with reasonable justification, including to protect essential country level delivery from funding cuts. In this regard, what will flexibility entails in this particular context? How can we provide flexibility without compromising accountability? And finally, with reference to the report and the discussion regarding the request for combined and reporting, the periodicity and other related elements, has there been any consideration of realistic alternatives that take into account the distinct functions, timelines and working approaches of the entities based in Vienna, in Geneva, as well as their relationship with the reports requested by the main Committees of the General assembly and the Subsidiary bodies of ecosoc thank you so much.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:30:17]:

I thank the representative of El Salvador. I give the floor now to South Africa, followed by Kenya and then finally Singapore.


South Africa [1:30:25]:

Thank you co chairs and just to say once again we appreciate these discovery sessions and further thank the four presenters for their extremely useful perspectives. And Ms. Hug, the examples that you gave really just gave us a good sense and a good feel of what can go wrong or right at the at a country level. Coming to the report of the sg, we support the proposed solutions for shorter reports, combining reports on similar issues and introducing different formats to address proliferation of meetings and reports. But we have some questions and I think Mexico and others have asked the same questions as to who will prioritize and streamline requests in mandates for reports and meetings.

Will this task be allocated to the Secretariat and what objective criteria will be used to make this determination of prioritizing and streamlining and maybe should this has not been dealt with at the very beginning during the process of mandate design.

Then on the matter of inadequate delivery, management and coordination we do agree that and support the need to strengthen internal strategic oversight and for mandate citations in programs and budget. But when we looked at the examples that have been given system wide coordination platforms, all the mechanisms that are in there in the report are internal and we are wondering if it will not save the system for coordination and avoidance of duplication to also make use of other independent units that we already have in the system like the Joint Inspection Unit or the Member State oversight body such as the Committee for Program and Coordination, the cpc. So looking at independent bodies as part of that system wide thing, then on the misaligned funding modalities that entrenches fragmentation, one of the in the report itself, one of the recommendation there was that the outcome of UNAD pillar 3 is going to assist and we fully agree with that and therefore say we need to look at how we deal with that pillar three carefully because then it's going to help us in dealing with this particular challenge of misaligned finding modalities that entrenches fragmentation. Then lastly, Resolution 79327 on the revitalization of the GA, the work of the GA was mentioned a couple of times and it had a whole section on working methods and some of the recommendations that are there in the report, some of the issues that have been raised are also addressed in that resolution. So we are wondering if maybe that can be lifted and can be demonstrated how do we further integrate again so that you don't you know that resolution is nowhere there and this UNAIDS over here, how do we integrate and show interconnectedness between the outcomes of that resolution and what we are trying to do here?


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:34:15]:

Thank you very much. I thank the distinguished representative of South Africa. Give the floor now to Kenya and then our last intervener will be Singapore.


Kenya [1:34:26]:

Thank you, co chairs. I also wish to take this opportunity to appreciate all the briefers more.

So it's always good listening to brother Ambassador Martin Kimani. The ongoing review under the work stream too offers an opportunity to address challenges. Of fragmentation, underfunding and limited accountability while. Reinforcing coherence across the UN security system. In this regard then, I wish to place about two questions.

One, on financing, how will the reforms. Ensure that newly approved or renewed mandates are matched with predictable, sustainable and adequate financing to avoid persistent implementation gaps? Two, on coherence and efficiency, what mechanisms will be introduced to reduce duplication and fragmentation among entities delivering similar mandates? And lastly on accountability and performance, what. Result based metrics or performance frameworks will be adopted to monitor progress, measure impact and ensure that mandate implementation is effectively evaluated beyond financial compliance?

I thank you. I thank the distinguished representative of Kenya. I give the floor now to Singapore, followed by Argentina. Thank you very much, coaches. This has been a very useful discussion and I thank the presenters, the panelists for their perspectives.


Singapore [1:36:16]:

I think each one of us has tabled resolutions as our national initiatives and our national contribution to the work of the un. So each one of us has an interest in the issue of implementation. And naturally each one of us will have a different perspective. But if we do not collectively agree on some ways to reduce the number of reports, the length of reports and the number of meetings, and the length of meetings, then we would all have collectively failed. 1,100 reports a year plus 27,000 meetings a year is simply overwhelming for many small delegations, including mine.

So that is the perspective from which we are approaching this. Not with a view to prioritizing or deprioritizing certain issues, but how do we collectively find a way to make our work more effective? So here I have three questions. First, with regard to annual reports, About 60% of the annual reports recur, or rather reports recur 60% of them. My question is, to what extent are these reports almost identical?

In other words, if a report is produced with very little substantial changes or modifications, you know, there must be a way of measuring that. So if it's largely identical, how many percentage of that 60% of reports that recur? I mean, if some estimation of that I think will be useful for us to give a sense as to whether we need an annual update that is largely identical. So that's where we can go into differentiated formats. Maybe a two page executive summary update of a previous annual report.

So that's the first set of question. Second question relates to a request for a report.

How many instances are there or how often is it the case that a request for report leads to a duplication of reports within the UN system? So we request the SG for a report, but that could also prompt a series of agencies to also produce their own report. And that I think is not a very helpful situation because when we make a request to the sg, we want to see a coherent coordinated report from the UN system, not a series of reports. And but I want to get some data as to whether this is a big issue of duplication or multiplicity of reports on a specific question when there is a request. I think if some data can be shared with us that would be useful.

Then the third question comment relates to the question of issue of downloaded reports. I mean there were some statistics about, you know, some that are downloaded more than others. Yes, I agree that more downloads does not make it more important an issue. But I think still some data will be useful for me and my delegation to know what are the thematic issues on which there's greater downloading as opposed to other issues. Because if a report is not downloaded very often, not that we do away with the report, but we need to examine why are those requests being made, say for an important issue but nobody's reading them, then something's wrong with us.

If we are producing reports that are important and no one's reading them, I mean that's a serious issue that we need to collectively address. But I think as a starting point we need also some data we could use. And I guess the final point I want to make is more an observation. Very good to see you Martin. I think very interesting presentation that you made.

I think this is an issue that I think we have discussed for some time. The only glimmer of hope I sense is that with AI as a tool, hopefully we know what we know and hopefully we know where to look for what we do not know. But AI is not the solution in its entirety, but it can be a very important tool. So that gives me some hope. But my question though is to what extent is the UN designed to utilize AI as a tool for information or knowledge management as you put it?

I mean this is a large question, but the question is what do we need to do as the UN to make it future ready that's a very broad question for reflection. Thank you very much to the co chairs and all the panelists.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:41:14]:

I thank the distinguished representative of Singapore. Give the floor now to Argentina and then to close us out, the United States. Thank you, Ambassador.


Argentina [1:41:24]:

Thank you to all the panelists. I have one specific question and it's about one of the proposed solutions that the reports provide regarding I would say the fragmentation or duplication and it's number two when it says ensure UN entities review mandate citations in their programs and budgets so that entities only cite mandates for which they have demonstrable comparative advantage. So maybe if in a later stage chair, we could have maybe more insights on how those manned citations are done within the Secretary, but also the role of Member states. I know that the CPC might have a role to play there, but maybe there are other instances where we can address this issue more in deep and maybe the answers will help us to have a also proposal for next meeting. Thank you.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:42:24]:

I thank the representative of Argentina. I give the floor now to the representative of the United States.


United States of America [1:42:30]:

Thanks so much, Ambassador. And I realize I'm last and came. In late, so I'll try to be.

Quick, but I wanted to make a connection to something that we were speaking about in the last session when we were looking at mandate creation. And I think much of the discussion on reports sort of bridges both that discussion and this discussion. One caveat. I think at times the metric of how often a report gets downloaded can be a bit misleading because there are a number of very technical meetings, often with a small number of delegates who need that report to inform their deliberations. For example, I am going to guess that very few Fifth Committee reports get read outside of the Fifth Committee, and yet they're essential to to the work of the fifth committee.

So the downloading of 2,000 reports as a metric might be a misnomer, but I do think the quality of the reports is critical and I want to compliment the Executive Office of the Secretary General for the quality of the reports that have been provided to us on UN80. I think both the analysis, but even more importantly the way that data is presented, the use of visuals, tables, graphs that I think are light years above the sort of standard quality of information presentation that we receive in most UN reports. And my question then, and this is not something that needs to be answered now by any means, but what is the obstacle to bringing the quality of data presentation that that we're Getting in the UN 80 reports to all of the rest of reports that we use across the various committees and bodies of the un. Thanks. I thank the representative of the United States.


IAHWG · Co-Chair · Brian Wallace [1:44:42]:

That brings us to the last speaker for today. In light of the time we had promised to keep these tight, we will provide written answers in as much as we can do so ahead of the consultations which will take place on the 14th of November. And we look forward to seeing you all there. Thank you for your presence today. Thank you to our briefers, our panelists, and to all of you at the the Secretariat team for providing the space as well.

Thank you so much. The meeting is adjourned.