Pakistan Affairs

6/recent/ticker-posts

The United Nations General Assembly


The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA/GA) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation. Its powers are to oversee the budget of the United Nations, appoint the non-permanent members to the Security Council, receive reports from other parts of the United Nations and make recommendations in the form of General Assembly Resolutions.[2] It has also established a wide number of subsidiary organs.[3]
The General Assembly meets under its president or Secretary-General in regular yearly sessions the main part of which lasts from September to December and resumed part from January until all issues are addressed (which often is just before the next session's start). It can also reconvene for special and emergency special sessions. Its composition, functions, powers, voting, and procedures are set out in Chapter IV of the United Nations Charter. The first session was convened on 10 January 1946 in the Westminster Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations.
 
Voting in the General Assembly on important questions – recommendations on peace and security; election of members to organs; admission, suspension, and expulsion of members; budgetary matters – is by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting. Other questions are decided by majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from approval of budgetary matters, including adoption of a scale of assessment, Assembly resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security under Security Council consideration.[4] The one state, one vote power structure theoretically allows states comprising just five percent of the world population to pass a resolution by a two-thirds vote.[5]
 
During the 1980s, the Assembly became a forum for the North-South dialogue – the discussion of issues between industrialized nations and developing countries. These issues came to the fore because of the phenomenal growth and changing makeup of the UN membership. In 1945, the UN had 51 members. It now has 193, of which more than two-thirds are developing countries. Because of their numbers, developing countries are often able to determine the agenda of the Assembly (using coordinating groups like the G77), the character of its debates, and the nature of its decisions. For many developing countries, the UN is the source of much of their diplomatic influence and the principal outlet for their foreign relations initiatives.
 
Although the resolutions passed by the General Assembly do not have the binding forces over the member nations(apart from budgetary measures), pursuant to its Uniting for Peace resolution of November 1950 (resolution 377 (V)), the Assembly may also take action if the Security Council fails to act, owing to the negative vote of a permanent member, in a case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. The Assembly can consider the matter immediately with a view to making recommendations to Members for collective measures to maintain or restore international peace and security

Commissions

There are six commissions:
Despite its name, the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) was actually a subsidiary body of ECOSOC.

Boards

There are seven boards which are catogrised into two groups: a) Executive Boards and b) Boards

Executive Boards

  1. Executive Board of the United Nations Children's Fund [established by GA Resolution 57 (I) and 48/162]
  2. Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme and of the United Nations Population Fund [established by GA Resolution 2029 (XX) and 48/162]
  3. Executive Board of the World Food Programme [established by GA Resolution 50/8]

Boards

  1. Board of Auditors [established by GA Resolution 74 (I)]
  2. Trade and Development Board [established by GA Resolution 1995 (XIX)]
  3. United Nations Joint Staff Pension Board [established by GA Resolution 248 (III)]
  4. Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters [established by GA Resolution 37/99 K]

Councils and panels

The newest council is the United Nations Human Rights Council, which replaced the aforementioned UNCHR in March 2006.
There are a total of four councils and one panel.[18]

Working Groups and other

There is a varied group of working groups and other subsidiary bodies.[18]

Seating in the General Assembly

Countries are seated alphabetically in the General Assembly according to English translations of the countries' names. However, the country which occupies the front-most left position (and hence the countries' seating position in the Assembly) is rotated annually by ballot. One country is balloted each year to sit in the front-most left position, and the remaining countries follow alphabetically behind it.[19]

General Assembly reform and UNPA

On 21 March 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a report, In Larger Freedom, that criticized the General Assembly for focusing so much on consensus that it was passing watered-down resolutions reflecting "the lowest common denominator of widely different opinions." He also criticized the Assembly for trying to address too broad an agenda, instead of focusing on "the major substantive issues of the day, such as international migration and the long-debated comprehensive convention on terrorism". Annan recommended streamlining the General Assembly's agenda, committee structure, and procedures; strengthening the role and authority of its president; enhancing the role of civil society; and establishing a mechanism to review the decisions of its committees, in order to minimize unfunded mandates and micromanagement of the United Nations Secretariat. Annan reminded UN members of their responsibility to implement reforms, if they expect to realize improvements in UN effectiveness.[20]
 
The reform proposals were not taken up by the United Nations World Summit in September 2005. Instead, the Summit solely affirmed the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations, as well as the role of the Assembly in the process of standard-setting and the codification of international law. The Summit also called for strengthening the relationship between the General Assembly and the other principal organs to ensure better coordination on topical issues that required coordinated action by the United Nations, in accordance with their respective mandates.[citation needed]
 
A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, or United Nations People's Assembly (UNPA), is a proposed addition to the United Nations System that eventually could allow for direct election of UN parliament members by citizens all over the world. In the General Debate of the 65th General Assembly, Jorge Valero, representing Venezuela, said "The United Nations has exhausted its model and it is not simply a matter of proceeding with reform, the twenty-first century demands deep changes that are only possible with a rebuilding of this organisation." He pointed to the futility of resolutions concerning the Cuban embargo and the Middle East conflict as reasons for the UN model having failed. Venezuela also called for the suspension of veto rights because it was a "remnant of the Second World War [it] is incompatible with the principle of sovereign equality of States."[21].[4]
Enhanced by Zemanta

Post a Comment

0 Comments