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Statement by Mr. Hiroshi Onuma
First Secretary, Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations
On agenda item 132: Special Political Missions (SPMs)
Main Part of the Sixty-Ninth Session
United Nations General Assembly
17 December 2014
Mr. Chairman,
At the outset, I wish to thank Mr. Chandramouli Ramanathan, Officer-in-Charge of the Office of Programme Planning, Budget and Accounts, and Mr. Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), for introducing their respective reports on this agenda item. In the following statement, I wish to share my delegation’s views on these reports.
Mr. Chairman,
First of all, Japan supports each of the Special Political Missions’ respective mandates. On the other hand, Japan carefully notes that the Secretary-General has proposed a budget allocation for Special Political Missions (SPMs) of 485,909,600 US dollars for 2015, without taking into account the funding requirements for the second half of the year for UNSMIL and UNAMA. Assuming the requirements for the first and second halves of the year for these missions are roughly equal, the total budget allocation would actually amount to about 612 million US dollars.
My delegation deems it important that the total amount of 2014 and 2015 SPM budgets should be contained within the provided envelope of 1.081 billion US dollars in accordance with Section 3 of the proposed biennium 2014-2015 budget. Therefore, Japan is concerned that the total of the proposed SPM budget for both 2014 and 2015 together would significantly exceed the approved SPM budget envelope for the biennium 2014-2015 by approximately 164 million US dollars, as also pointed out in the report of the ACABQ. In this regard, my delegation would like to further examine the Secretary-General’s reports as well as the Secretariat’s response to be presented at the informal meetings, in order to seek further efficiency in resource utilization.
My delegation welcomes the recommendations and comments of the ACABQ presented in its report, which carefully and technically scrutinized the proposed budget in a balanced manner, fully taking into account the mandate of each of the Missions. We believe that the recommendations of the ACABQ would be a good starting point for our discussion.
Mr. Chairman,
On this occasion let me touch briefly upon my delegation’s views on SPMs. There is a broad range of demands in the field of peace and security. In this regard, I would like to emphasize the importance of utilizing best configuration of tools at our disposal, including PKOs, SPMs, UN Country Teams, as well as regional and bilateral support functions to address these various demands respectively. Taking into consideration the strength and weakness of each activity, we need to take measures that best-fit the varied situations on the ground. We should also be able to refit them to changing situations on the ground with timely and smooth transitions.
Such considerations could help us achieve right-sizing -including the drawdown and closure of missions- and ultimately the best allocation of our limited financial and human resources. To this end, greater collaboration with and among the Security Council, the Secretariat, and the General Assembly is strongly called for. In this regard, Japan welcomes establishment by the Secretary-General of the High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations and expects the Panel to consider methods to enhance such collaboration toward better employment of peace and security instruments, in a transparent manner.
Mr. Chairman,
With respect to the Funding and Backstopping of the SPMs, which is being discussed at the informal consultations, my delegation is concerned that the establishment of a separate account for SPMs would negatively affect the fiscal discipline of the UN, and result in an increase of the budget. However, my delegation will continue to participate constructively in the discussion on this issue with a view to reaching a mutually acceptable conclusion.
Mr. Chairman,
In closing, I would like to reiterate that my delegation will participate actively and constructively in the discussions on all issues of this agenda item.
I thank you Mr. Chairman.
