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Statement by Mr. Jun Yamada
First Secretary, Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations
Agenda item 146: Administrative and Budgetary
Aspects of Financing UN PKOs: Support Account for PKOs
Second Resumed Part of the Sixty-Fourth Session
of the United Nations General Assembly
12 May 2010
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like first to thank Mr. Jun Yamazaki, the Controller, and Ms. Susan McLurg, Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, for introducing their respective reports and then briefly present the views of my delegation.
Mr. Chairman,
The general position of my delegation continues to be that we need to exercise the utmost prudence in determining the optimal size of the support account to finance the backstopping activities of peacekeeping operations. To that end, the Secretariat should strive to recruit and appoint staff in a prompt manner, and it should make optimal use of the posts and positions already approved, rather than request that new ones be created.
During our consideration of the budget for the support account for the year 2010/11, even greater prudence is merited, in light of the following developments. First, as we discuss the Global Field Support Strategy, the Secretary-General’s efforts to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of peacekeeping operations should be gaining greater momentum. Second, due to the expenses for reform items, such as costs related to ICT/ERP and Inspira, the budget for the support account is increasing substantially. And third, the UNLB budget, too, is increasing significantly, and there may be some overlapping in the requests for the UNLB and the support account.
According to the Secretary-General’s report on the support account (A/64/697), the amount requested for the year 2010/11 is 313,891,800 US dollars, not including the costs for ERP for the same year. This is an increase of 6.8% over the current budget year and includes an increase of 9.7% in post resources and 21.9% in GTA resources. While the Secretariat has demonstrated that it is making efforts to find savings in the areas of consultancy services and information technology, the increase in posts and GTA resources is still higher for total peacekeeping mission budgets. We also note that the number of posts and GTAs requested in the support account is continuing to grow, even as the military contingents, UN police and civilian staff deployed in missions are starting to decrease.
The ACABQ recommends a reduction in newly requested resources of approximately 4.5 million US dollars. For the reasons just mentioned, my delegation is of the view that we need to seek further reductions by scrutinizing the merits of each proposal. Three years after the restructuring of the DPKO and the creation of DFS, it is puzzling to see that very little adjustments are carried out amongst different offices in these departments. We agree with the ACABQ that the existing resource level and management structures should be actively reviewed so that the existing resources can be reassigned, redeployed and reduced in order to streamline and update the backstopping functions of peacekeeping operations to meet the changing requirements in the field. We also concur with the recommendations of the ACABQ on the use of the GTAs.
In closing, I would like to reiterate that my delegation will participate actively in the discussions during the informal consultations on all aspects of the support account.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. |
