Excellencies, Dear Colleagues,
I have the honour today of speaking on behalf of the 27 Members of the Accountability, Coherence, and Transparency Group.
ACT welcomes the adoption of today’s draft resolution on the revitalization of the work of the General Assembly, just in time for the end of the session. We thank the Co-Chairs of the working group, Ambassadors Cornel Feruță and Mathu Joyini, as well as their talented and hard-working teams, for their patient, effective and principled stewardship of this year’s negotiations. We thank our colleagues from the Secretariat, in particular from the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management, for their continued wisdom and support. And last but not least, ACT thanks the delegates charged with reaching agreement on the text adopted today.
Excellences, Dear Colleagues,
The UN faces headwinds unlike those we have seen in many years. In response, the General Assembly must be ambitious in defining its role and in its interaction with the other principal organs. In this respect, please allow me to comment on a few paragraphs of interest to ACT, as well as the areas in which we regret the inability to achieve more far-reaching agreement.
- In the section on the role and authority of the General Assembly, we are pleased that its functions, powers and role in the area of Peace and Security have been recognized in a more detailed manner. This resolution reaffirms that the General Assembly is capable of acting to uphold peace and security, in line with Charter’s purposes and principles. To this end the resolution also supports the Digital Handbook mandated by its predecessor text and encourages both its update and wider dissemination.
- The resolution also charges the General Assembly with supporting credible, timely, and decisive action by the Security Council on atrocity crimes and its Members to refrain from impeding action to prevent or end these crimes. Our reaffirmation of the obligation of all Member States to fully implement and adhere to provisions of the Charter of the United Nations as they relate to decision-making in the Security Council would, for example, include Article 27(3) in full, as was made clear in the Pact for the Future.
- We also note valuable language on the Annual Report, and on the GA’s relationships with the ICJ and PBC.
- The section on the selection and appointment of the Secretary-General and other executive heads sets out, for the first time in a resolution of the Ad Hoc Working Group, the contours for the process as a whole, as well as requirements of candidates and of the President of the General Assembly.
- These elements point to the need for a transparent While we regret that this word was not incorporated into the final text, counter to our previous resolutions, it is clear that this text requires all actors to uphold it as a principle. Candidates must be accountable to the full Membership of this organization, including through the close engagement between the President of the General Assembly and Member States as set out in the text. We also strongly believe that the text as adopted allows for the involvement of civil society in this process, as has been the case in the last two selection and appointment processes, and we urge the PGA to take this forward.
- We regret that it was not possible to reach agreement on many elements that could improve the process, and which lie well within the prerogatives of the General Assembly, due to objections by permanent members of the Security Council. These include, among others, a discussion with a candidate after their recommendation by the Council, a formal mechanism to gauge support by the General Assembly for candidate, or an explicit reference to the continuation of the Global Townhall held in 2016. The text as drafted of course, does not prevent the PGA from moving forward with such initiatives.
- Lastly, we note that the text as drafted allows the Security Council to make more than one recommendation to the General Assembly. We regret that this was not made clearer in the text. And we note that, even in this scenario, the timelines agreed to in this section remain valid.
Going forward, ACT hopes that this resolution will lead to unprecedented levels of cooperation between the General Assembly and Security Council in these areas and others, reflecting our progress in this resolution of the Ad Hoc Working Group. And we look forward to adopting a further text in three years that builds on our progress today.
I thank you.