Written by: Teel Lidow

On the 23rd of June, the US, Japan and Australia presented a suggested list of reforms meant as a compromise proposal to the G77's hard-line position. The G77 insisted upon lifting the budget cap without condition (a position from which the three previously mentioned states disassociated). However, on July 7th, the 5th Committee released a draft resolution that supported many of the points touched upon by the compromise proposal, including a major concession to budgetary discretion of the Secretary-General that allows him control of around $20m per biennium on an experimental basis. Further, the committee decided to "approve the adoption by the United Nations of International Public Sector Accounting Standards," which was a key point in the US/Japan/Australia compromise proposal. These are two considerable steps forward for reform and further show the willingness of the developing nations to cooperate with the reform process; the unwillingness that we saw at the end of June was most likely a specific reaction to the negotiation tactics of the US. Nonetheless, the current power struggle and its relevance to the reform issue should not be downplayed: the developing nations are still weary of loosening their grip on UN funds and are willing to risk loss of US funding in order to assert their steadfastness in this matter. All of the first secretaries of G77 states that I spoke to before the budget cap decision seemed to be under the impression that the G77 would have to compromise on its position for fear of financial withholding; this is clearly not what happened, so we should all be aware that this marks a dramatic statement on the ambassador level: the G77 will not tolerate movement away from what they perceive as multilateral controls of the purse-strings.

Teel Lidow is a senior in Princeton University’s Department of Philosophy. He has been covering UN Management Reform issues for the World Federation and contributing to related publications and posts.