And the debate continues....

Some of the ideas put forward in various position papers considered by the Assembly found their way to the adopted resolution. Others will continue to feed the debate on restructuring, which will be taken up in the Assembly later this year. Some highlights follow:

Nordic Countries: In their joint discussion paper (A/45/1001), Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden suggest that in specific cases the General Assembly may authorize the Economic and Social Council to make final decisions on reports from subsidiary bodies. They also advise that the Council concentrate on one or two major issues per year.

Frequently, the Nordic countries note, the "same United Nations delegates participate in all bodies dealing with the same issues feeding few new ideas into the deliberative process". To put an end to that, they suggest that policy discussions and political debates be limited to the Council, with the subsidiary bodies playing a more technical or expert role.

They target four Council subsidiary bodies in particular for merger or "expertization": the Committee on the Development and Utilization of New and Renewable Sources of Energy; the High-level Committee on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries; the Committee on Natural Resources; and the Inter-governmental Committee on Science and Technology for Development.

With regard to the Assembly's Second (Economic and Financial) and Third (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) Committees, the Nordic countries want to replace, whenever possible, the present system of resolutions with a chairman's summary and, to simplify their agendas, remove items which are no longer useful. They also ask for a more efficient division of labour between those Committees and the Council.

European Community: The twelve member States of the European Community (EC) want the merging, abolition, modification or 'expertization' of some subsidiary bodies", among them the four mentioned by the Nordic group. They also want to look into mandate overlaps, citing in particular those of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development, and the UN Environment Programme in the field of transfer of technology, foreign investment and trade questions. Some General Assembly resolutions should be replaced by Chairman's summaries, the Twelve suggest. The Assembly's social and economic agendas "need to be made leaner, and more topical". Items should be discontinued on the basis of "obsolescence, duplication and/or inactive debates". The way the Assembly deals with the environment should be reorganized, perhaps by creating a separate environmental working group within the Second Committee, the EC members state.

Group of 77: While many of their suggestions are reflected in the adopted resolution, their call for "readjustment" in 1992 of the current Council membership "in order to ensure equitable geographical representation" was not taken up. Instead, the resolution asks for "a review of the composition" of the Council at a resumed forty-seventh Assembly session, "with due regard to equitable geographical representation and other relevant factors".

The Group wants "transparency and openness" strengthened in UN social and economic work. Restructuring and revitalization, it stresses, "should enhance the democratic norm, which underpins the decision-making process of the UN"-hence their call for an enlargement of Council membership along 'geographically-equitable" lines.