On 30th April 2019, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the "Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly" met for the seventh and last time during the 73rd Session of the General Assembly (GA). The meeting was a thematic debate on strengthening the Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA), and was co-chaired by the Permanent Representatives of Slovakia and Jordan. In attendance was the current President of the General Assembly (PGA), María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, her Chef de Cabinet, Kwabena Osei-Danquah, and Under-Secretary-General (USG) for General Assembly and Conference Management Catherine Pollard who spoke on behalf of the Secretariat.
As would be discussed throughout the meeting, the role of the PGA has changed significantly in the last few decades. What was once a primarily ceremonial position has grown with time to become an instrumental position of administration, responsible for enacting the will and policies of the GA through mandates passed in resolutions, along with organizing and paying for high-level events, and setting the focus of each session of the GA through the incumbent's own agenda. To this end, an under-equipped OPGA represents a hindrance to the strength and effectiveness of the GA.
In her speech to the assembly, the PGA highlighted seven categories of issues that can be improved to strengthen the office: staffing, funding, the workload, transparency and accountability, institutional memory, communications, and the dates for the beginning of the GA session. Very quickly, it became clear that the three interconnected obstacles of the dearth of funding, the issue of too few staff at too high a rate of turnover, and bringing institutional memory of the office, were the most critical issues when dealing with the fourth: the ever-increasing (due to mandates passed by the GA) workload and responsibilities of the office.
Catherine Pollard spoke next, briefing on the support that the Secretariat lends the office, which comes in the forms of staff, operational services, and financial assistance. She started by listing the seven permanent staffers of various levels which the Secretariat “lends” the OPGA. Other services that the Secretariat provides can generally be described as logistical functions which the Secretariat provides for all UN organs, including security, translation and other office support, a car and driver, etc.
The USG then went on to summarize the OPGA’s current models for financing. The OPGA receives contributions from the regular budget, an amount set in 1995 and currently valued at $331,000 as each year it is adjusted for inflation. This makes up 13% of the total expenditure for the office operations. The rest comes from the Trust Fund, a mechanism set up in 2010 to allow the OPGA to accept voluntary donations from member states (MS). Lastly, the OPGA relies on funding from the current PGA’s own MS, in this case Ecuador. A current listing of contributors to the Trust Fund for the 73rd session can be found on the PGA’s website under Ethics and Transparency. This makes any given PGA’s funding highly irregular, a practical reality which does not assist in resolving the issues of under-staffing and finding funding for the ever-increasing number of MS’s mandates. The USG also noted the 14% to 7% decrease in office support which was approved by the Department of Management in 2015.
Questions from the assembly for the panel ranged from questions regarding clarification on time frames for transition periods, why moving opening dates for the session would improve the effectiveness of the office, and questions and suggestions about improving the institutional memory of the office. PGA Maria Espinosa Garcés responded herself to most of the questions, but handed one over to her Chef de Cabinet, Kwabena Osei-Danquah, so he could explicate on the practical issues of staffing the office and setting it up during the one-month transition period currently allotted.
This interactive period was followed by an opportunity for MS to make statements, beginning with the representative of Algeria and the observer from the EU making statements on behalf of NAM and the EU, respectively. This was followed by statements made by individual MS. Most made were in support of the OPGA, calling for reformation of the funding structure and increasing the staffing of the office, emphasizing the importance of gender and regional parity, and applauding the current PGA for her transparency while calling for adoption of a code of ethics for future candidates.
The meeting ended with the Co-chair from Jordan summarizing the themes and modalities for revitalizing the GA which had been discussed throughout the seven meetings of the AHWG during this session. Notably in her list of commonly repeated suggestions, the representative reiterated MS’s calls for the upcoming 75th anniversary to be used as an opportunity for stocktaking and reform.
The co-chairs will now work in closed chambers to produce a zero-draft resolution both summarizing the themes and modalities of the session and crafting mandates which could be taken to revitalize UN structures, all of which will be presented for review at an upcoming session later in the month.
The full session can be found on the UN’s website here.