The United Nations General Assembly on Friday adopted a budget for 2023 of $3.4 billion (€3.169 billion), an increase of $280 million over the organization’s budget of €3.12 billion (€2.789 billion).
Specifically, the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly — the one in charge of the administrative and budgetary part — has concluded the main part of its seventy-seventh session by sending to the General Assembly a budget for 2023 of almost 3.2 billion euros, the organization said in a statement.
This figure is 200 million higher than the budget figure presented by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in mid-October 2022.
«I thank all the members of the Fifth Committee, the chairman and members of the bureau and the secretariat for ensuring that our organization has adequate funds to respond to the many intertwined crises facing the world,» said the president of the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations, Csaba Korosi.
«I thank you for averting the imminent prospect of a possible closure of the United Nations. Our 8 billion stakeholders are looking to us for solutions,» he added during his address to the General Assembly.
The approval of the UN resources for 2023 was marked by the discussion among the delegates of the commission on the decision to allocate more money to support the mandates of the Human Rights Council.
The representative of the Czech Republic, on behalf of the European Union, called for additional resources, drawing criticism from China.
The latter’s representative argued that the amendment would impose «a financial burden on member states» and undermine the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ).
Nevertheless, by sending the Assembly another budget resolution, on the review of budget cycle changes, the committee has confirmed the final change initiated in a three-year trial in 2020, shifting to an annual rather than a biennial budget model.
Guterres has repeatedly argued that the move to an annual exercise improves the accuracy of resource estimates and allows the organization to adapt «more quickly to mandate changes.»
In addition, according to the UN secretary-general, it also gives member states «the opportunity to provide more frequent instructions on resource allocation and to align decisions with recent or sudden events, such as the global pandemic.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
