The regular budget of the United Nations is apportioned among its Member States in accordance with the scale of assessments approved by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Committee on Contributions (see item 114 (b)). This scale, as modified by resolutions 55/235, 55/236 & 58/256 and other resolutions concerning the financing of peacekeeping operations, has also been used to apportion the cost of peacekeeping operations among Member States. The assessment rates used for the regular budget and peacekeeping operations are also used for apportioning the costs of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Rule 160 of the rules of procedure of the General Assembly provides, inter alia, that the Committee on Contributions should advise the General Assembly on the action to be taken with regard to the application of Article 19 of the Charter.
At its fifty-fourth session, in 1999, the General Assembly urged all Member States in arrears requesting exemption under Article 19 to provide the fullest possible supporting information, and decided that such requests must be submitted at least two weeks before the session of the Committee on Contributions, so as to ensure a complete review of the requests (resolution 54/237 C).
At its fifty-seventh session, the General Assembly endorsed the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee on Contributions concerning multi-year payment plans, as contained in paragraphs 17 to 23 of its report (A/57/11).
At its fifty-eighth session, the General Assembly reaffirmed its earlier endorsement, in paragraph 1 of resolution 57/4 B, of the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee on Contributions concerning multi-year payment plans; requested the Committee on Contributions to continue to review the methodology of future scales of assessments based on the principle that the expenses of the Organization should be apportioned broadly according to capacity to pay and to continue its consideration of possible systematic criteria for deciding when market exchange rates should be replaced with price-adjusted rates of exchange or other appropriate conversion rates (resolution 58/1 B).
At its resumed fifty-ninth session, in June 2005, the General Assembly decided to defer the question of the outstanding assessed contributions of the former Yugoslavia to the sixtieth session (resolution 59/551 B).
Also at its resumed fifty-ninth session, in July 2005, the Assembly agreed that the failure of the Central African Republic, the Comoros, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Tajikistan to pay the full minimum amount necessary to avoid the application of Article 19 of the Charter was due to conditions beyond their control and decided that those Member States should be permitted to vote in the General Assembly until the Assembly takes a final decision during the main part of the sixtieth session (resolution 59/312).
In its decision 60/551, the General Assembly decided to defer to the resumed part of its sixtieth sessino the consideration of this agenda item 128: Scale of assessments for the approtionment of the expenses of the United Nations. (decision 60/551).
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