THE FOREIGN MINISTRY’S UNDERSECRETARY FOR MANAGEMENT PARTICIPATES IN A DEBATE ON THE EFFICIENCY OF THE UN 

• Urges reforms to make the UN more efficient

• Calls on the Permanent Members of the Security Council to meet their responsibilities for financing peacekeeping missions and actions related to international security

• Unacceptable for 188 countries to subsidize the responsibilities of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council

The Foreign Ministry’s Undersecretary for Management and Budget, Julio Camarena Villaseñor, spoke at the opening session of the UN General Assembly’s Fifth Committee with responsibilities for administration and budgetary matters. During his speech, Mr. Camarena discussed the efforts being made to reform the way the UN operates by promoting transparency, austerity and efficiency in the use of resources.

Specifically, he said that Mexico supports immediate implementation of staff mobility policy, through which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon seeks to give the UN’s human resources a truly global character. Mexico is the tenth largest contributor to the UN’s regular budget and believes that a more equitable formula for dividing the UN’s expenses among the 193 States Members must be found.

He also said that the scale of assessment for both peacekeeping operations and special political missions (including UN missions without blue helmets such as those currently in Iraq and Afghanistan), which are mostly established by the Security Council, must reflect not only the member states’ capacity to pay but also the permanent Council members’ special responsibility to maintain global peace and security.

It should be noted that, according to existing international law, the Permanent Members must pay a higher quota than other Member States, particularly developing countries.

Over the last decade, the cost of special political missions has increased by more than 1,200 percent, and now represents almost a quarter of the UN’s regular budget (1.16 billion dollars).

Mr. Camarena said it is unacceptable that the UN’s regular activities subsidize the maintenance of international peace and security. He stressed that it is doubly unacceptable that 188 countries subsidize the responsibilities of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

Lastly, he called on the Member States to comply fully with supervising the UN’s expenditures.