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- biennia. The first category concerned the International Assistance mechanism under budget lines 1 and 2. Together, they formed about 65 per cent of the Fund. Budget line 3, ' other functions of the Committee' , accounted for 20 per cent of the Fund. Participation in meetings of the governing bodies and assistance to the Committee under budget lines 4, 5, 6 and 7 represented 15 per cent of the Fund. The Reserve Fund - now with 0 per cent under its budget line as the Reserve Fund had been set at a maximum - was full and there was no need to allocate money to this budget line, as decided by the General Assembly. This session of the General Assembly was therefore asked to approve the draft budget, validated by the Committee in Jeju, which covered a period of twenty-four months in 2018 and 2019, as well as the first six months of 2020. The budget for the first six months of 2020 was proposed according to a percentage, meaning one quarter of the total budget approved for the 2018 - 2019 period. For the period from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2019, the total amount of the spending plan to use the resources of the Fund would be US$8,590,922, which represented an increase of 7.6 per cent compared to the previous biennium. This time, the budget proposal included the creation of a sub-line under budget line 1.1 in the spending plan to enhance human resources in order to improve the implementation of the International Assistance mechanisms. This was specifically proposed to address the systematic underutilization of International Assistance.
- 212. As this was a new proposal, the Secretary was pleased to report that there had been several positive points in the way in which International Assistance had been administered. Since the establishment of the procedure for International Assistance, forty States Parties had been granted financial assistance from the Fund for a total amount of US$4.9M in support of seventy-eight projects. It was thus encouraging to see that 66 per cent of the requests approved were submitted by States from Electoral Group V(a) from Africa, representing US$3.5M, which was fully in line with UNESCO's Global Prio rity for Africa. The significance of International Assistance as the operational window of the Convention had been stressed in many instances. This mechanism allowed for a comprehensive and realistic picture of the safeguarding priorities and actions of States. The projects implemented through International Assistance also had the potential to provide a major learning tool in the implementation of the Convention, for example, as a repository of Good Safeguarding Practices from which others could learn. The Secretariat had been reviewing its working methods and exerting efforts to optimize the way it handled International Assistance. The Secretary was also pleased to report that during the 38 C/5 biennium, the Secretariat was able to increase by 40 per cent the number of International Assistance files presented to the Bureau compared with the previous biennium. However, while this increase was the result of an intensification of work concerning the processing of requests for approval to the Bureau, what remained was the important workload related to approvals, including the establishment of contracts, the monitoring of progress, the processing of payments and so on. Thus, it was not sure that the increase in the number of projects approved this year would be sustainable, as it required an increased use of the Secretariat's resources for their implementation. The Secretary explained that monitoring at this stage involved mainly budgetary and administrative aspects, and the Secretariat was missing out on the opportunities this operational mechanism of the Convention could offer in terms of learning. Substantive monitoring of the projects should be an important dimension in the implementation of International Assistance as it could help States Parties create favourable conditions for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage both in the short and longer term. An in-depth analysis and comprehensive evaluation of the results and impact of the projects could be highly useful to understand the effective implementation of the International Assistance mechanism, and thus become a promising means of informing the overall implementation of the Convention. However, this would require a substantial investment from the Secretariat in terms of time and resources, which was currently unavailable.
- 213. The Secretary further explained that the involvement of the Bureau and the Secretariat in the implementation of the International Assistance mechanism was expected to continue growing, as evidenced by the raised ceiling of assistance examined by the Bureau from US$25,000 to US$100,000 in 2016. Concretely, the total amount approved by the Bureau