III. Key challenges

16. In the course of preparing this analysis it has become apparent that, if Member States are to conduct a proper and fully comprehensive review, they will need the tools and information to enable them to serve as better custodians of their mandates, and to analyse the effectiveness of those mandates and how they contribute to the achievement of the overall priorities of the Organization. The mandate-generation cycle, by which mandates are adopted, funded and implemented, and then considered for continuation, change or elimination, should be re-examined. Currently the system does not sufficiently allow an intergovernmental organ, once it has adopted a resolution, to analyse the effectiveness of the mandate within the broader picture of the Organization's work as a basis for subsequent decisions about it. There are gaps in the cycle, and responsibility for each part of the follow-up is not clearly defined. Sometimes, decisions to change programmatic mandates and priorities are assigned to bodies that may not be appropriately empowered to do so.

17. For the renewal of current mandates or the adoption of future ones, the system should be significantly strengthened to ensure that the intergovernmental body from which a mandate originated has clear, transparent and timely information about its effectiveness. This includes knowing whether and how effectively the mandate was implemented, how well its outcomes contributed to the overall objectives of the Organization, what further actions or resources are needed, and whether the need for the mandate may have decreased. Importantly, it also includes making use of that information. Indeed, during informal consultations on the review of mandates, many delegations made it clear that, to conduct this exercise, they wished to have better information on the status of implementation of each of their mandates and whether mandated activities were effectively serving their intended purpose. However, concise, regular and transparent information of this nature is not adequately available and used for making decisions. [9]

18. Such a critical gap has contributed to or exacerbated the following problems, which are common to issue areas and departments across the Organization:

Burdensome reporting requirements

19. The single greatest symptom of the lack of a coherent system for evaluating mandates and their effectiveness is the uncoordinated and burdensome mass of reports requested from the Secretariat. About one in every three mandates is a request for a report, making this the mandated activity that is most frequently contained in resolutions. In 2005 alone, almost 1,200 reports and policy documents were provided to the Member States. In addition, the Secretariat is required to provide hundreds of detailed briefings, often for deliberations on the same issue in different intergovernmental bodies. The volume of information to be read and processed also burdens Member States. Many reports are requested in the context of a specific resolution, rather than providing a horizontal view on the work of the Organization. Sometimes the request for a report reflects a political compromise rather than a genuine need for information to illuminate a certain area. Often requests may result in reports that are redundant, and mandates for recurring reports are not updated to reflect changing conditions or requirements.

20. This excessive descriptive and analytical output has created several problems. First, the quality of the reports suffers and their content gets lost in the proliferation of papers. Second, staff and resources are devoted to producing, translating and processing many reports rather than focusing on ensuring better-quality ones. Furthermore, it overburdens delegations, especially the smaller ones which are less able to sort through and process such an immense volume of information from the Secretariat, with the result that many reports are left unread. Lastly, because Member States often do not receive the overall picture of the Organization's work in an area, it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of the mandates in meeting the Organization's objectives. This in turn makes effective governance more difficult, and impedes strategic consideration of substantive issues.

Overlap between and within principal organs

21. The Charter delineates the different responsibilities of the principal organs. However, over the years and in response to more complex challenges and emerging developments around the world, the division of labour in the realities on the ground has become less clear. As I pointed out in my report entitled "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all" (A/59/2005), poverty and the denial of human rights can contribute to instability, violence and crime, while war and conflict can set back development. With such linkages between issues, overlap between the organs is inevitable, and different perspectives are desirable. However, in most cases, inadequate coordination and the adoption of many related mandates by different organs "or indeed by the same organ "can be confusing, redundant and wasteful.

22. Year after year, new mandates continue to be adopted in the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the Security Council, sometimes even under different agenda items in the same organ, on issues that have already been addressed in previous resolutions, usually without introducing new ideas or approaches. Without clearer directives from the principal organs, many parts of the Secretariat and the United Nations system carry out multiple activities on a single issue area without those activities reinforcing one another.

An unwieldy and duplicative architecture for implementation

23. Despite the many successes of the United Nations, the proliferation of resolutions adopted has led to an architecture for implementing mandates in priority areas that is in some cases overlapping, uncoordinated and inconsistent, in which the whole may be less than the sum of its parts. New structures are continually mandated, with little guidance on what to do with older mandates addressing the same issues, which therefore linger on through the years. Mandates that create entities, mechanisms, or forums have been followed by newer ones on the same subject or overridden by newer bodies, when their functions should have been consolidated, phased out or changed. In some areas, duplication of work is also caused by mandates stemming from subsidiary bodies and the governing boards of funds and programmes.

Gap between mandates and resources

24. One of the primary successes of the United Nations, attested by study after study, has been its ability to carry out many field-based activities with far fewer resources than individual Governments would need to produce the same result. But this cost-effectiveness has been achieved despite the fact that the Organization has often been prevented from realizing its full capacity.

25. A fundamental and recurring challenge, particularly for the Secretariat, has been the adoption of hundreds of mandates, year after year, whose implementation must be done within resource constraints that do not keep pace. Member States confer additional responsibilities on top of current activities, but provide neither corresponding funds nor guidance as to how existing resources should be reallocated. This gap leads to real costs for the Organization and the people it serves. The credibility of the United Nations depends on its ability to fully deliver on the commitments it makes.

26. For my part, I have sought, and will continue to seek, the most efficient and effective way to implement all the mandates that Member States have adopted. The management reforms I have proposed will, if adopted, help greatly in this task. But Member States must also do their part. They should eliminate, or at least significantly narrow, the gap between mandates and funding, by taking into account existing mandates and architecture; ensuring that mandates reflect contemporary needs and strategic priorities; building a system to regularly review and consolidate older mandates that no longer respond to Member State priorities; and providing sufficient and timely resources.

A Way Forward

27. Some of these problems might be addressed if the system were strengthened to improve Member States"custodianship of their mandates through the use of better tools and interaction with the Secretariat. Strategic interaction between the Member States and the Secretariat would enable Member States to ascertain whether mandates are effectively implemented and how they contribute to the overall goals and priorities of the Organization. This would make possible a more transparent system, in which Member States, when considering the adoption or renewal of future mandates, could make informed and deliberate decisions about the direction in which they want the Organization to go.

28. An effective process "one in which an intergovernmental body issues directives, tracks implementation, takes necessary follow-up action, and decides on additional mandates "requires the development and more strategic use of three tools:

1. (a) Reports and documentation requirements. Reporting should be improved and consolidated to provide timely, concise and clear information in a way that meets the needs of the Member States and in a manner that does not overburden the Secretariat.
2. (b) Mandate monitoring and evaluation. The principal organ from which a mandate originated should have information on its effectiveness and an understanding of how it fits into the overall programme of work of the Organization, in order to make decisions about future mandates. Evaluative information is crucial for this purpose: it must be strengthened.
3. (c) Legislative decisions and resolutions. When adopting resolutions, Member States should provide strategic direction and objectives and, for fuller accountability, the Secretary-General should determine which entity or department is the most competent to lead implementation efforts.

Towards a rationalized documentation architecture

29. The problem of an excessive number of reports and documents is not new. Indeed, in my report entitled "Strengthening of the United Nations: an agenda for further change" (A/57/387 and Corr.1) I made proposals for reducing it, and some progress was achieved. More needs to be done, however. It is now more vital than ever to ensure that the Secretariat provides information in a strategic and creative manner that meets the true demand for knowledge about the work of the United Nations. On this issue, I would like to build on proposals contained in the report entitled "Investing in the United Nations: for a stronger Organization worldwide" (A/60/692), with the following suggestions:

30. In addition to the comprehensive annual report that includes financial and programme information, proposed in that report, there could be consolidated analytical reports on core areas of work and major policy issues, instead of separate reports on individual agenda items. A set of core policy reports on each of the Organization's priority areas could be prepared biannually. More concise supplementary reports on country or regional situations or on specific issues could be provided as necessary, or in response to specific requests. Issues relating to the work of United Nations agencies or programmes outside the Secretariat could be simply referred to in those core policy reports and remitted to the appropriate documentation from those agencies. This would provide more strategic and broad-based information to Member States on the major issues of the day within thematic areas, while helping to reduce the volume of documents prepared and processed by the Organization and to improve the quality of its work.

31. A large share of documentation comes from Member States, reporting on their fulfilment of their treaty obligations. This produces a larger volume of information to be considered and places an enormous burden on translation services. Firm page limits should be set for national submissions and communications, and where submissions exceed these limits, they should be returned with a request to bring them within the mandated lengths. Furthermore, subsidiary bodies, especially the subsidiary machinery of the Economic and Social Council, should provide reports in a standard format for ease of reading and finding information. Member States may wish to reconsider for how many meetings they wish the Secretariat to provide verbatim records. One suggestion is that verbatim records should be provided only for plenary meetings of the Security Council, the general debate in the General Assembly, high-level and special meetings, and meetings at which resolutions and decisions are considered. For other meetings, summary records could be provided. The Secretariat may make further suggestions on these issues in due course.

Improved mandate implementation through strategic evaluation

32. In considering their review of mandates, Member States have enquired about the availability of information necessary for conducting the review. They have indicated that receiving a list of mandates, while useful for viewing the totality of what they have requested, does not by itself provide a sufficient basis for deciding whether a mandate should be continued, whether it has outlived its usefulness, or whether it should be strengthened, changed or consolidated.

33. As I have already pointed out in the management reform report "Investing in the United Nations" good management by the Secretariat will depend on effective governance by the Member States. This requires that the principal organs have a clear and complete picture of what the United Nations does, particularly when they consider adopting or renewing a resolution, whether the newly mandated programme will complement and build on the existing programmes and activities under way, and how it can contribute to the overall goals of the Organization. The current process, which does not allow the intergovernmental organs to follow at all easily how their mandates are implemented, or to understand the strategic picture, makes it more likely that they will adopt duplicative resolutions. The information they need should be built into the cycle of mandate adoption, implementation and renewal. This would enable Member States, as custodians of mandates, to exercise better oversight of their implementation.

34. The ability of the Secretariat to deliver strategic and comprehensive monitoring and evaluative information on mandated programmes will depend on the resources provided, and on the interface with Member States. Despite several resolutions in which the General Assembly requested evaluation [10], the effectiveness of such tools has been severely limited by lack of resources. In the biennium 2004-2005, not more than 0.35 per cent of the regular budget was applied to monitoring and evaluation, compared to the standard of at least 2 to 3 per cent in other large organizations.

35. This has resulted in evaluations of limited scope and depth, and too few of them. As I mentioned in my report on management reform, such information is not sufficiently available even to the technical committees charged with tackling the details of performance and budgeting. The programme performance report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, issued at the end of each biennium, gives some indication of how mandates have been implemented, but its analyses are not rigorously validated by an independent and objective evaluative process. Furthermore, the information currently available is not sufficiently analytical to allow Member States to make decisions about how effective the mandates were in meeting objectives and whether to renew, continue, eliminate or change them. The reforms proposed in "Investing in the United Nations: for a stronger Organization worldwide" if acted upon, will go a long way to improving both implementation and transparency.

36. While the budgeting process allows low-priority and obsolete activities to be identified for discontinuance, by means of the regulations and rules governing programme planning, the budget, and monitoring and evaluation, [11] and some changes in programme support, that process has not resulted in adequate availability and use of information and analysis of the overall effectiveness of mandated programmes. A thorough review of mandates, followed by strategic decisions based on their effectiveness and on Member State priorities, must necessarily be carried out by those who have the authority to strengthen, eliminate, change or renew existing mandates. As most Member States have indicated, those decisions cannot be made by technical committees, but only by the intergovernmental organs from which the mandates originated.

37. For those organs to review and make strategic decisions on their mandates, I propose that the Secretariat provide information about the proposed mandates contained in a draft resolution, in the same way that it provides budget implications during consideration of a draft resolution. This information could include (a) the status of implementation and evaluation of outcomes of previous mandates that address the same issue; (b) how the proposed mandate will complement or supplement existing structures, conferences, reports and activities; and (c) how the mandate might serve the overall goals of the Organization.

38. One useful outcome from the preparation of this analysis has been the development of the online registry of mandates, which will enable Member States to locate, view and compare the mandates they have adopted. As a first step, Member States could also use the registry as a simple monitoring tool to inform themselves of the basic status of the implementation of their mandates, as has been requested by several delegations. To facilitate this, I will ask my programme managers to indicate in the registry on a regular basis whether a mandate has been implemented or is currently being implemented. Since the online registry has already been developed as a companion to this report, this extra step will involve few additional costs beyond regular maintenance, updates and expansion if requested. The registry is at least a starting point for the provision of information on mandates to Member States, and could later be integrated with other management information systems.

39. Further, the problem of inadequate provision of rigorous and regular evaluation of performance and outcomes has been raised for several years. I hope that with a renewed emphasis on making this Organization more effective, the Member States will take early and decisive action on any recommendations to strengthen evaluation functions, including those that may be proposed in the comprehensive review of governance and evaluation of oversight.

Establishing strategic direction for mandates

40. To ensure proper fulfilment of their directives Member States should, when adopting resolutions, consider specifying clear objectives that they wish a mandate to achieve.

41. In recent years, Member States have in some cases begun to specify which entity should be responsible for implementing a given mandate or, in other cases, indicate that "all relevant entities" should implement a mandate. This has contributed to the unwieldy architecture and unclear division of labour between the various entities and departments. To ensure greater accountability and improve coordination of implementation, the Secretary-General should determine which entity or department is the most competent to be the lead agency for implementing the mandate. This could help to reduce overlap, and ensure that Member States"priorities are implemented by the department with the appropriate capacity and competence.

42. To address the current problem, I will further support Member States in their efforts to rationalize mandates in various issue areas, by providing analysis and possible options for consideration. These suggestions will also be submitted for the consideration of the High-level Panel on System-wide Coherence, which I have recently established in response to the invitation in the Summit Outcome to "launch work to further strengthen the management and coordination of United Nations operational activities." [12] At a later stage, the Secretariat must also be ready to facilitate a review of mandates emanating from subsidiary organs, should Member States decide to further expand the mandate review exercise.

43. Finally, Member States may wish to better coordinate their consideration of resolutions in different organs, to reduce, where possible, the risk of inconsistency and overlap in the mandates they adopt. They may wish to initiate a process to consider more fully which intergovernmental organ should be the primary forum for the consideration of certain items, and ways to improve coordination between the principal organs on those issues that are of concern to all organs. In the first instance, this should involve coordinating and consolidating consideration of resolutions on similar issues within the same organ, though attention should also be given to reconciling consideration of resolutions with subsidiary organs, and with other principal organs. A few areas where this problem arises are highlighted in this report.

44. These are only the first steps to improving the mandate generation cycle. They will be complemented by the comprehensive review of governance, by the efforts under way to revitalize the General Assembly and to enhance the role of the Economic and Social Council, and by decisions to provide Member States with better tools for exercising their governance responsibilities, giving strategic guidance on the work of the Organization, and interacting with the Secretariat.

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