Rules of procedure
Annex VII (a)
Conclusions of the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and
on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization concerning
the rationalization of existing United Nations procedures
1. Without prejudice to Article 18 of the Charter of the United Nations and with a view to facilitating the work of the United Nations, including, whenever possible, the adoption by the General Assembly of agreed texts of resolutions and decisions, informal consultations should be carried out with the widest possible participation of Member States.
2. When an electronic voting system is available for recording how votes were cast, a roll-call vote should as far as possible not be requested.
3. Before the end of each session of the General Assembly, the General Committee should, in the light of the experience it has acquired during that session, consider drawing up its observations on the organization of the work of the session, with a view to facilitating the organization of the work of future sessions of the General Assembly.
4. The agenda of the General Assembly should be simplified by grouping or merging, to the extent possible, related items and, where it is appropriate for discussion of a particular item, by setting an interval of more than a year between the discussions on it. For this purpose, the Chairman of the Main Committee concerned or, as appropriate, the President of the General Assembly, should undertake consultations with delegations.
5. The General Committee should consider, at the beginning of each session of the General Assembly, recommending that certain Main Committees should meet in sequential order, taking into account such matters as the number of meetings required for the consideration of the questions with which they are charged at that session, the organization of the work of the whole session and the problem of participation of smaller delegations.
6. In making recommendations as to how agenda items should be allocated to the Main Committees and to the plenary Assembly, the General Committee should ensure the best use of the expertise of the Committees.
7. When the General Assembly considers whether it needs to establish subsidiary organs, in accordance with Article 22 of the Charter, it should give careful consideration as to whether the subject matter in question could be dealt with by existing organs, including its Main Committees and their working groups. Subsidiary organs should seek constantly to improve their procedures and methods of work in order to ensure effective consideration of questions allocated to them by the Assembly.
8. The dates and length of the sessions of bodies of the General Assembly that meet intersessionally should be determined as soon as possible by the Assembly, as appropriate, following advice from the Committee on Conferences, on the proposal of the Secretary-General. The Assembly should take account of the past experience, the state of current work in regard to the mandate given to the body in question and the need to avoid as far as possible overlapping meetings of bodies that deal with subject matter of a similar nature.
9. Informal consultations about the work of bodies of the General Assembly that meet intersessionally should continue to be held in advance of the sessions of such bodies in order to facilitate the conduct of their sessions, especially as regards the composition of the bureau and the organization of work.
10. Resolutions should request observations from States or reports by the Secretary-General insofar as they are likely to facilitate the implementation of the resolutions or the continued examination of the question.
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(a) By resolution 39/88 B of 13 December 1984, the General Assembly approved the conclusions of the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and
on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization concerning the
rationalization of the procedures of the General Assembly and decided that they
should be annexed to the rules of procedures these conclusions are reproduced in
the present annex.
