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Budgeting for the United Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Gerard J. Mangone  and
Anand K. Srivastava
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Extract

Since its inception twelve years ago the UN has never handled very large sums of money by comparison with national budgets. Nevertheless, the small contributions have often been given grudgingly by member states with mumblings of “waste” about the personnel and the programs. In our view such innuendoes are unfounded. But we think there is room for improvement in the presentation of the budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies, particularly by developing appropriation categories which tend to indicate and measure the performance of the Organization.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1958 , pp. 473 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1958

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References

1 “Budget Estimates for the Financial Year 1958 and Information Annex,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session), Supplement No. 5.

2 See this issue, p. 475, Table 1, “Expenditures from Nine UN Budgets, 1953–1956 and Appropriations or Estimates, 1957–1958.”

3 “Information Annex III to Budget Estimates for the Financial Year 1958,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session), Supplement No. 5A. The new International Atomic Energy Agency will make a tenth administrative budget, while the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Monetary Fund have administrative budgets financed out of their own revenues and not subject to the scrutiny of the General Assembly.

4 For fuller explanations of program and performance budgeting, see Mosher, Frederic C., Program Budgeting, Public Administration Service, 1954Google Scholar, and Burkehead, Jesse, Government Budgeting, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1956Google Scholar.

5 For the functions of the Advisory Committee, see General Assembly Resolution 14A (I), February 13, 1946. Members are elected as individuals, not national representatives, by the General Assembly. Thanassis Aghnides has been chairman since the Committee's inception on November 19, 1946 and other members have had considerable experience with UN budgetary problems.

6 “First Annual Budget 1946, Second Annual Budget 1947,” General Assembly Official Records (1st session, part), Supplement No. 4.

7 General Assembly Official Records (IIIth session), Administrative and Budgetary Committee, 562d meeting, 01 7, 1957Google Scholar.

8 “Budget Estimates for the Financial Year 1958 and Information Annex,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session), Supplement No. 5, p. viGoogle Scholar.

9 It is significant that the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions was impelled to review the total expenditures of the Public Information activities in 1957 even without the benefit of a program budget.

10 “Form of the Budget,” Report of the Secretary General, Document A/C.5/662.

11 “Budget Estimates for the Financial Year 1958 and Information Annex,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session). Supplement No. 5A, p. 34–38Google Scholar.

12 For illustration, the UN had 238 regularly accredited press correspondents, 93 radio and television representatives, and 113 representatives of newsreels in 1956. See “Annual Report of the Secretary General on the Work of the Organization,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session), Supplement No. 1.

13 Work loads and dollar figures are purely fictitious.

14 General Assembly Official Records (11th session), Fifth Committee. Summary Records, 1956–1957.

15 In 1957 the Advisory Committee met from June 18 to July 25 in New York to consider the 1958 estimates. Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, “Fifth Report to the Twelfth Session of the General Assembly,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session), Supplement No. 7.

16 General Assembly Official Records (11th session), Fifth Committee, Summary Records, 1956–1957, p. 94–97, 99–101.

17 Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, “Fifth Report to the Twelfth Session of the General Assembly,” General Assembly Official Records (12th session), Supplement No. 7, p. 4.