29 November 2006

Mandate Review Status Report and Informal Working Group to begin Phase II of the Review with Cluster on Drug Control, Crime Prevention and Combating International Terrorism.

Member States agreed this week to begin Phase II of the mandate review with the thematic cluster on ‘Drug Control, Crime Prevention and Combating International Terrorism,’ following the preference expressed by the Group of 77 (G77). The first meeting of the Working Group will be held this Friday, December 1st. Phase II of the review exercise will entail evaluating all mandates older than five years that have been renewed. The fact that Member States finally agreed to move on to Phase II represents a significant step forward in the process, as the G77 had previously been insisting that the scope of the review, as expressed in the World Summit Outcome Document, was to be limited only to mandates older than five years that had not been renewed.

Earlier in the week, on 27 November, the finalized Status Report of the Informal Working Group on Mandate Review was circulated to Member States. The report provides a summary of the work of the Group with respect to Phase I of the Mandate Review process, during which all mandates older than five years and not renewed were evaluated. The Group, inter alia, designated 74 mandates as completed and deferred the discussions on the ‘Regular Programme for Technical Cooperation’ (RPTC) mandate to be assigned to an appropriate body for further analysis. The report also suggests that the Office of Internal Oversight Services conduct a review of the RPTC mandate.

With respect to the guiding principles for the current review, which were circulated on September 8th, further discussions will probably be needed as the G77 members have expressed concerns that they have not received sufficient assurance that politically sensitive mandates will not be addressed without having first consulted with the effected Member States. Also, especially with respect to mandates related to development, the G77 believes that better guidelines should be formulated on how to ensure that the review process can be used to add additional resources to mandates and not only as a cost-cutting exercise. Thus, the G77 has issued its own guidelines on how they believe the Review should be performed, which differs from the guidelines submitted by the Co-Chairs.

With regards to the working method of the Group for Phase II, Member States have been asked to come forward with a list of mandates belonging to the ‘Drug Control, Crime Prevention and International Terrorism’ cluster that they would like to see reviewed. There are 203 mandates belonging to the Drug Control cluster. The speed at which the Group will be able to conclude the review of this first cluster will depend on: the number of mandates that Member States bring forward for evaluation; how long it will take for the Secretariat to provide all the necessary information Member States need to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs, use of the resources assigned and establish whether they have reached their objectives and to what extent they have contributed to drug control, thus reducing crime and/or international terrorism.

Once the review of mandates in the Drug Control cluster is completed, the Group will continue with the remaining three clusters selected for Phase II. Since CANZ (Canada, Australia and New Zealand), supported by the EU, had suggested that Phase II of the review begin with the cluster on ‘Effective Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance Efforts’, it is likely that the Informal Working Group will approach this cluster next.

However, the continuation of the Mandate Review exercise is constrained by an “expiration date,” December 2006. It is essential, at this stage, that Member States begin discussions on how to extend the time limit and re-examine its scope in the light of the experience acquired during Phase I. The current President of the General Assembly, H.E. Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, has the task of initiating consultations with Member States on extending the time limit for the Mandate Review exercise.

Whether the Mandate Review exercise will be allowed to continue beyond the end of December 2006 will depend on how the process unfolds in the next few meetings dedicated to Phase II. In the first half of 2006, the G77 and China had expressed the view that Mandate Review should not be extended beyond its currently assigned time limit, but the Group has come a long way since the Putrajaya Ministerial Meeting, in May 2006, and there is some hope for a shift of position in this regard. Indeed, the G77 has already begun to show a certain degree of flexibility by agreeing to allow the review to proceed to Phase II. Thus, their agreement to extend the time limit to continue with the mandate reviews will probably depend on how the G77 perceives the exercise will be conducted. A key point is certainly to be the degree to which they see their own guidelines being taken into consideration by the Informal Working Group during Phase II.

More at ReformtheUN.org