Remarks of the United Nations Secretary-General at an informal meeting of the General Assembly on the UN80 Initiative.
Briefing by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the informal meeting of the General Assembly on the next phase of the UN80 Initiative.
Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you for this opportunity.
Since I last briefed you on the UN80 Initiative, work has advanced across all three workstreams.
Let me begin with a brief update.
With respect to the first workstream on efficiencies and improvements, we are finalizing a first package of concrete proposals -- aimed at strengthening accountability, improving service delivery and reducing costs across the United Nations system, with particular attention to those who are most in need of our support.
For the Secretariat, these proposals will be reflected in the revised estimates for the 2026 programme budget, to be submitted for consideration to the General Assembly in the upcoming session. Further work will be developed after this proposal and it will be included in our proposals for the programme budget of 2027.
With regard to the third workstream on structural changes and programmatic realignments, Principals from across the UN System are advancing work in seven thematic clusters.
Some briefed you on their initial findings last month. I received an oral preview of their ideas last week – and I am now receiving their written contributions.
I will review their proposals in detail – and keep you informed as the process unfolds in order to be able to present concrete options for your consideration in due course.
Today, I want to focus on workstream two – and specifically the report before you on mandate implementation.
You received the report in English yesterday. Translated versions will follow. But the objective of this session is to allow me to do a brief presentation of the report.
Let me preface this by clarifying that by "mandates", we mean a request or directive for action set out in the UN Charter, a resolution, or decision by a UN intergovernmental organ.
Before going into the details of this report, I want to stress two vital points.
First, let me be absolutely clear: mandates are the business of Member States.
They are the expression of your will.
And they are the sole property and responsibility of Member States.
The vital task of creating, reviewing or retiring them lies with you – and you alone.
Our role is to implement them – fully, faithfully, and efficiently.
This report respects that division. It looks at how we carry out the mandates you entrust to us.
At the same time, we offer some reflections for your consideration in the case that Member States choose to launch an inter-governmental process on mandate review.
Second, we recognize that mandates are critical to everything we do.
They define our work. They shape our structures. They are the basis for how we are held accountable.
And yet, for many years, there has been broad recognition – including most especially by the General Assembly – that the way we manage mandates needs to change.
The problems are well known:
Burdensome processes.
Overlap.
Duplicative structures.
And a growing gap between mandates and resources.
These issues have been identified many times – including through the 2006 mandate review process.
But they were not resolved. In fact, as we all know, these problems have grown worse.
We must learn from what went wrong. We must do better. And I believe we can.
And let me add this: none of the work in implementing mandates is possible without our staff – the women and men of the United Nations.
Across duty stations and time zones, in headquarters and in the field, they are the ones who translate mandates into action.
Delivering services.
Supporting peace processes.
Responding to crises.
And upholding the values and principles of the UN Charter every day.
Their expertise, dedication and courage are indispensable to this endeavor.
If we are to improve how we implement mandates, we must also support and empower the people who carry them out.
Excellencies,
Today, I am putting forward some ideas for your consideration – focused on practical solutions.
These ideas are new and different in three key ways.
First, we utilized new data analytical tools to better understand the scope and scale of the challenge.
Second, instead of reviewing thousands of mandates one-by-one, we focused on the systemic and structural issues that cut across them.
Third, the urgency of the situation – and the potential benefits of reform – demand a new level of seriousness and shared resolve.
I stress again – this is not about questioning your decisions.
It is about implementing them -- more effectively, more efficiently, and with greater impact.
Excellencies,
The report before you takes a full "life-cycle" approach to the management of mandates.
It begins with how mandates are created.
It examines how they are delivered.
And it looks at how – or whether – they are reviewed and assessed.
At each stage, the report offers possible actions.
Some are for your consideration.
Others are directed to the Secretariat, as appropriate.
But one principle runs through them all:
We must never lose sight of the people we serve.
Mandates are not ends in themselves.
They are tools – to deliver real results, in real lives, in the real world.
Let me now turn to some of the specific proposals -- starting with mandate creation.
The report identifies two major challenges.
First, the mandate landscape is vast – and often opaque.
There is no easy way to know what already exists, or what has been adopted across different bodies.
Today, there are more than 40,000 resolutions and decisions on the books – and counting.
The risks of duplication and overlap are clear.
One suggestion is the creation of digital mandate registries -- easily accessible tools like those already developed under the UN80 Initiative for the UN Secretariat, and by OHCHR and UNFCCC.
These tools could be scaled system-wide.
And with AI-assisted analysis, we can now flag potential duplication before it happens.
Second, the design of mandates is getting more complex – and more difficult to implement.
Texts are getting longer.
Since 2020, the average word count of General Assembly resolutions has increased by 55 per cent.
ECOSOC texts have grown by 95 per cent.
Security Council resolutions are now three times longer than they were 30 years ago.
At the same time, Secretariat capacity is being stretched – especially by the growing use of the phrase "within existing resources."
Last year, 15 per cent of General Assembly resolutions included this language – four times more than in 2000.
Let's face facts.
We cannot expect far greater impact without the means to deliver.
By spreading our capacities so thin, we risk becoming more focused on process than on results.
That is why the report puts for your consideration a possible shift:
Toward shorter, clearer, and more focused mandates.
Toward mandates that are adequately resourced.
We also must recognize the need for a culture in the UN system grounded in the most effective ways to deliver real outcomes.
Excellencies,
Let me now turn to the second stage of the mandate life cycle: delivery.
In other words, everything we do to act on the instructions you entrust to us.
The report identifies three core challenges.
First, as you know so well, the sheer number of meetings and reports is pushing the system – and all of us – to the breaking point.
Last year, the UN system supported 27,000 meetings involving 240 bodies.
Today, more than half of all mandates require reports.
Last year alone, the Secretariat produced 1,100 reports – a 20 per cent increase since 1990.
Three out of five reports are on recurring topics.
And I have to recognize that they, too, are getting longer, with word counts over 40 per cent higher than 20 years ago.
Yet many of these reports are not widely read – and we know the difficulties of following so many things at the same time.
The top 5 per cent of reports are downloaded over 5,500 times, while one in five reports receives fewer than 1,000 downloads. And downloading doesn't necessarily mean reading.
Meanwhile, the cost is staggering.
One out of every ten dollars of the regular budget goes to direct servicing costs – with indirect costs pushing the total far higher.
Meetings and reports are essential.
But we must ask: Are we using our limited resources in the most effective way?
We are proposing a series of suggestions to put us on a better course:
Fewer meetings.
Fewer reports, but ones that are able to fully meet the requirements of all mandates.
And better designed reporting, with tailored formats and monitoring of trends.
Second, we must improve how the Secretariat manages mandates and allocates tasks across the system.
In the original 2026 programme budget proposals now under review, around 4,000 mandates were cited by multiple entities.
This points to real risks of duplication – and insufficiently robust mechanisms for strategic oversight.
Some 50 citations refer to outdated or inactive mandates.
And, too often, our entities plan their work in isolation -- without full visibility of what others are doing.
I have no doubt that we can find better ways to plan together in a complimentary and transparent process.
Of course, some mandates – like those related to the Sustainable Development Goals – require multiple actors.
But this needs to be done in an intentional way to ensure complementarity and avoid duplication.
The report proposes several ideas.
A new system of internal controls for strategic and programmatic oversight.
A requirement for entities to link mandate citations to specific deliverables where they have clear comparative advantage.
And better use of existing coordination platforms across the system.
The third area of mandate delivery is funding.
In 2023, 80 per cent of the funding of the UN system came from voluntary contributions.
Despite the commitments of the 2019 Funding Compact, 85 per cent of the funding of those contributions were heavily earmarked – and over 60 per cent of the total came in contributions of less than $1 million.
This raises transaction costs and lowers impact.
Meanwhile, pooled funding – which offers flexibility and coherence – is under-used and in decline.
The result is clear:
Fragmented funding, combined with fragmented implementation, leads to fragmented impact.
Each of us has a role to play to address this.
And each of us must act on the levers within our control.
The report offers some practical ideas to do just that.
Excellencies,
This brings me to the last stage of the mandate life-cycle – mandate review.
One might expect mandates to be regularly assessed for relevance and impact. But too often, that's not the case.
Effective reviews are the exception, not the rule.
More than 30 per cent of the subjects of resolutions adopted in 1990 were still the subject of resolutions in 2024.
The same mandates are discussed year after year – often with only marginal changes to existing texts.
In fact, over half of the recurrent resolutions we analyzed were nearly identical to previous versions.
In some cases, this may be justified.
Some challenges are long-term with mandates that must endure.
But we lack the mechanisms to make those judgements systematically.
Eighty-five per cent of active mandates contain no instructions for review or termination.
And our working methods do not provide for regular, structured, or collective review processes.
The report before you puts for your consideration some of these issues, and an exploration of ways to streamline and consolidate how mandates are discussed.
Closely linked is the challenge of ensuring that the entire UN system is equipped with results-based management mechanisms – that are not effective at the present moment and that we need to develop, clearly linking activities to resources and results.
This is essential for measuring impact and for strengthening accountability.
Our current arrangements are uneven.
Roughly 40 per cent of UN entities have strategic plans. Only 30 per cent have integrated results and resource frameworks.
I believe we should aim to harmonize these mechanisms across the system.
That would be a major step toward greater accountability to you – the Member States – and toward better demonstrating the value of multilateralism in people's lives.
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