UN General Assembly
1986

Fortunately for us, the Group of High-Level Intergovernmental Experts, which was entrusted with the task of reviewing administrative and financial matters in the United Nations, has come up with a reasonable report recommending some reforms. Staff should be reduced by 15 per cent and the overstaffed higher levels by 25 per cent. Fewer consultants should be hired. Official travel should be curtailed. The political departments should be consolidated. The forty-first session of the General Assembly should quickly endorse those recommendations. There is, unfortunately, one unresolved issue in the report of the Group of Kigh-Level Intergovernmental Experts, and this concerns the critical question of budgetary management. I fear that if this issue is not resolved quickly the financial crisis will drag on. The existence of the United Nations will continue to be precarious. Each time the Organization stumbles the interests of the small States suffer. As they make up the vast majority of the membership, the small States can easily vote in any budgetary procedure they like - as the* have tended