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General Assembly Adopts Resolution on SWC: Key Issues to be Continued17 September 2008 On Monday, 15 September 2008, Member States unanimously adopted a resolution on the process of System-wide Coherence. According to the text, the membership will continue its work on System-wide Coherence, while focusing exclusively on the issues of “Delivering as One,” harmonization of business practices, funding, governance, and gender equality & the empowerment of women. The text (document A/62/L.51) further includes a request for “…the Secretary-General, drawing on the resources and expertise of the United Nations system and building on the outcome of the triennial comprehensive policy review to provide to Member States substantive papers on the issues of funding and governance with a view to facilitating substantive action by the General Assembly within the sixty-third session.” It also welcomes the paper on “Institutional options to strengthen United Nations work on gender equality and the empowerment of women,” while requesting the Secretary-General to provide “…a further, detailed modalities paper in respect of the options of the options set out in the Deputy Secretary-General’s paper of 23 July 2008, including as regards funding, governance structure, staffing, specific functions, relationship with the Commission on the Status of Women and other relevant bodies…” Finally, the resolution calls for, “…at the conclusion of its entire process on system-wide coherence, to review and take stock of all of its prior actions and deliberations in a single resolution or decision.” Recommendations and Conclusions of the Co-facilitators Recommendations and conclusions of the two co-facilitators, Ambassadors Paul Kavanagh of Ireland and Augustine Mahiga of Tanzania, are included as annexes to the resolution. As for “delivering as one,” the conclusions note positive developments across the board; “Assistance is being delivered with greater effectiveness, savings are being realized and greater reductions in transaction costs are clearly in prospect.” The conclusion is equally positive on the developments within the Chief Executives Board (CEB), although it is noted that “…headquarters levels across the system empower the respective country-level agency representatives with much greater latitude, flexibility and encouragement to advance a more coherent and therefore more effective delivery of United Nations system assistance on the ground in the ‘delivering as one’ approach.” On the issue of funding, the co-facilitators write that “…there clearly needs to be greater flows of and greater predictability in funding […] Overall, there needs to be a significantly improved balance between core and non-core funding.” “As for intergovernmental governance at the central level,” the co-facilitators say, “we have detected no palpable appetite in the General Assembly for establishing new intergovernmental bodies. However; the report notes, “…the United Nations system and the Bretton Woods institutions ought to be consistently encouraged to develop, in a pragmatic manner, a far greater degree of cooperation and collaboration…” Finally, on the issues of gender equality and the empowerment of women, “…we recommend that the Assembly be invited to address the matter, including in the light of the Secretary-General’s paper on the institutional dimension, in open, informal plenary consultations at an early opportunity, perhaps in the early days of September.” An agreed approach “…could then be taken up and completed in the sixty-third session.” It should be noted that the resolution is based on recommendations made by the co-facilitators of the process, Ambassadors Paul Kavanagh of Ireland and Augustine Mahiga of Tanzania, in their report of 21 July 2008 to Member States. The report was a product of a series of consultations on the eight major themes of System-wide Coherence held during the 61st and 62nd General Assembly sessions. These eight themes were drawn from the recommendations of a High-level Panel report published in November 2006. For more information on the process of System-wide Coherence, please see recent articles from ReformtheUN.org “New Resolution Would Move System-wide Coherence Forward” (12 September 2008) and “States to Consider Co-Chairs’ Report on System-Wide Coherence and Options Paper on Gender Architecture” (5 September 2008). For more information on recent negotiations on gender issues, please visit IWTC WOMEN’S GLOBALNET #341: “UN General Assembly Set to Advance Process on New UN Gender Entity”. For a detailed background, please visit Managing Change at the United Nations.
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