By comparison with 20 years ago, there has been a shift of emphasis. The Assembly now devotes somewhat less attention than it did then to the main regional conflicts, several of which have fortunately been resolved during the last decade, and devotes more time to economic and social matters and to a number of generic questions of primordial importance for the effective functioning of the Organization, notably a cluster of financial issues. These arise from the failure of Member States to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time and from the enormous expansion in the cost of peace-keeping, which has risen from about $626 million per annum in 1986 to about $3.6 billion in 1995.
The Organization now faces a very serious financial situation. In a statement to the Assembly on 12 October 1994, I drew attention to this, emphasizing that it had become an urgent political question. I was gratified by the Assembly's subsequent decision to establish a high-level working group and to entrust to it the consideration of additional measures to ensure a sound and viable financial basis for the Organization. That working group has worked intensively during 1995. I addressed it on 22 June and sought its urgent assistance in averting a serious financial crisis. In parallel, the Assembly established another working group of experts on the principle of capacity to pay.
An index of the severity of the current problems is that the Organization as at January 1995 owed some $850 million to Governments who have contributed troops and equipment to peace-keeping operations. This debt represents an involuntary loan to the Organization by Member States who have in addition accepted the risk of exposing their young men and women to the perils of peace-keeping. This is manifestly unjust.
Another index is the number of Member States whose arrears exceed the contributions due for the last two years and who are therefore, under Article 19 of the Charter, unable to vote in the General Assembly. As at mid-August, they numbered 17, nearly 10 per cent of the membership. A number of other Member States have indicated to the President of the Assembly that they are not able to meet their obligations under Article 17 and will therefore also soon lose their right to vote.
As regards the financing of peace-keeping, the General Assembly reaffirmed at its forty-ninth session that the costs of peace-keeping are the collective responsibility of all Member States in accordance with Article 17 of the Charter. The Assembly also adopted procedures to strengthen the administrative and budgetary aspects of peace-keeping, including the establishment of a financial year for each peace-keeping operation starting on 1 July and a request to the Secretary-General to submit twice a year, for the Assembly's information, a table summarizing the proposed budgetary requirements of each operation.
Development continued to receive special attention from the General Assembly, emphasizing that the importance of this aspect of the Organization's activities should not be overshadowed by the intense public interest in its peace-keeping activities. The holding of three important United Nations conferences during a period of 12 months (on population and development in Cairo in September 1994, on social development in Copenhagen in March 1995 and on women in Beijing in September 1995) was evidence of the importance that Member States attach to the Organization's role in the economic and social fields.
On 6 May 1994, I published "An Agenda for Development" (A/48/935). In response the General Assembly established an ad hoc open-ended working group to elaborate further an action-oriented, comprehensive agenda that would take into account reports and recommendations presented by the Secretary-General, the work of the Economic and Social Council, views expressed in the Assembly itself and a number of other views and proposals.
The question of enlargement of the Security Council attracted intense interest throughout the period under review, as a possible means of making more efficient and democratic the work of the Organization in the field of peace and security. In September 1994 the General Assembly reviewed the progress report of the Open-ended Working Group on the Question of Equitable Representation on and Increase in the Membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Security Council, and decided that the Working Group should continue its work and submit a report before the end of the forty-ninth session. The Working Group has held 21 meetings and a number of informal consultations and has addressed two clusters of issues, the first covering the size and composition of the Council, including permanent, non-permanent and new categories of membership, and the second the Council's working methods and procedures, its efficiency and effectiveness, and its relationship with other United Nations organs.
The Assembly has increasingly adopted the informal, open-ended working group as an effective instrument in seeking solutions to major problems relating to the efficient working of the Organization. These bodies, each comprising the entire membership, have been instrumental in allowing a concentrated and issue-specific exchange of views on Security Council reform, "An Agenda for Peace", "An Agenda for Development", the financial situation of the United Nations and, most recently, the strengthening of the United Nations system. The activities of these working groups, their interrelated mandates, the depth and complexity of their deliberations and the frequency of their meetings pose a challenge to the capacity of the Secretariat to provide the required substantive and technical support from within already scarce resources.
The agenda for the forty-ninth session comprised 164 items, a reduction from 180 items in the previous session (see fig. 1). This results from the consolidation of related items and the decision to discuss some of them only every second or third year. Further rationalization seems possible. Broadly worded agenda items allow flexibility to examine several topics or aspects of a question under a single item. Areas where this possibility could be explored are disarmament (18 items on the agenda of the forty-ninth session), cooperation between the United Nations and intergovernmental organizations (5), decolonization (5) and the financing of peace-keeping operations (19). There are also 10 items that have not been considered at all for several years.
An issue closely related to the number of items on the agenda is the number and periodicity of reports requested by the Assembly. In addition to the reports of principal organs and their subsidiary bodies, over 200 reports of the Secretary-General were issued at the forty-ninth session, not including several reports of special rapporteurs and of the Office of Internal Oversight Services. The difficulties and expense involved in producing so many reports in a timely manner are evident, given the frequency with which the Assembly and other principal and subsidiary organs now meet. Streamlining and cost-cutting efforts cannot ultimately succeed unless the number of reports requested is significantly reduced.
During the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly, its General Committee and its Main Committees held 377 meetings, as compared with a total of 401 during the forty-eighth session and 426 during the forty-seventh session. The Main Committees held 237 informal meetings and consultations, a decrease from the 285 held during the forty-eighth session. Meetings held by working groups increased to 141 from the previous session's 86. The Assembly has so far adopted 324 resolutions during its forty-ninth session, compared with 333 during the forty-eighth session. Some 79 per cent were adopted without a vote or by consensus, as compared with 81 per cent at the previous session. The number of Heads of State and Government who participated in the general debate of the Assembly rose from 43 (23 per cent) of the membership to 45 (24 per cent) at the forty-ninth session (see fig. 2).