Sommaire: EU Presidency Statement - United Nations: Administration of Justice (12 March 2007: New York)
Statement on behalf of the European Union, by Thomas Fitschen, Counsellor (Legal Affairs), Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations, UN General Assembly 6th Committee, Agenda item 128: Administration of justice, New York
Mr Chairman,
Speaking on behalf of the European Union, I should like to take the floor only very briefly for some general observations on our item "Administration of Justice: The report of the Redesign Panel". As to the substantive matters which we have to discuss, the EU concurs with your proposal to address them later today in our Working Group.
So for the moment I shall limit myself to first of all thanking the Redesign Panel - its five members as well as the Secretariat staff who has been working with them - for the report which we have in front of us. We appreciate the expertise and the enormous amount of work that has been invested into it, and we are grateful for the wealth of proposals that the Panel has made.
The EU shares the view of both the Redesign Panel and the Secretary-General that the Organisation as such as well as its staff need an internal justice system that enjoys the trust and confidence of both staff and management. We have taken due note of the Redesign Panel's analysis of the present system, its shortcomings, and the reasons why, in the words of the Secretary-General, it seems to have outlived its relevance. The proposals submitted by the Redesign Panel for the establishment of a
professional, independent and decentralized internal justice system are, compared to the current system, very far-reaching. They amount to a complete restructuring of the entire system, based on a fundamental change in its general outline. These proposals, which the 6th Committee is supposed to discuss during the next ten days, deserve very careful scrutiny by Member States, and the EU is certainly ready to participate very actively in that discussion.
The item has been assigned, in an unprecedented way, to both the 5th and the 6th Committee, and the calendar of meetings finds both Committees actually working back-to-back. The EU is very grateful to the Secretariat for having organized, during the past two weeks, two joint briefings on the Redesign Panel's report. We found them extremely helpful. They have already provided answers to a number of questions, and we hope that some more light can be shed on the proposals in the coming days. These
common briefings have elevated different experts from all delegations to the same level of understanding and knowledge about the proposals of the Redesign Panel and their consequences. In our view this was a very useful exercise, and we hope that this may also serve as a model in other contexts where cross-cutting issues are being discussed in different Committees of the General Assembly.
But as much as the report and the proposals to be considered are the same, we hope that the issues can be properly coordinated so as to avoid overlap and duplication of work in both Committees. We have noted with appreciation the efforts of both bureaus to coordinate the work so that in the end the legal observations of the 6th Committee can make a meaningful input to the work of the 5th Committee. If the 6th Committee focuses on formulating legal views on the proposals - I shall come to some
criteria in a minute - and leaves it to the 5th Committee to examine their organizational and budgetary conditions and consequences, both Committees taken together should be able to come up with a good proposal that serves the purpose which I had mentioned earlier.
Without going into the details of the Redesign Panels proposals now, I would like to mention at least some fundamentals which in our view should guide the 6th Committee in its work:
1. We should regard the effort to improve the United Nations' system of administration of justice as a common effort of all involved - member states, management and staff. We are all "the United Nations", and it is in our common interest to succeed.
2. If we can come up with a new system that is able to gain the trust and find the support of all, it may make a very substantial contribution to the overall process of reform of the UN - a contribution that is meaningful to each and every staff member. The UN is not an abstract flowchart of bureaus and offices, but is composed of the people working for it.
3. The United Nations, which itself is involved in setting norms and in advocating the rule of law, must also internally live up to its own standards. It must, as the Secretary General has put it, "practice what it preaches" and has a duty to provide to its staff justice which is fair, effective, and timely.
4. If we talk about weaknesses and shortcomings of the current system, the Report of the Redesign Panel makes it clear that those are mostly due to structural flaws in the very outline of the system - a system that has not been able to keep pace with the enormous expansion of the UN system over the past decades. Where we criticize the flaws, we mean the system as such, not the people who have worked in it. The EU explicitly acknowledges the work of innumerable individuals, many of them
volunteers, who have served, and still serve, in the various bodies that form part of the current system.
5. In our deliberations we as the Sixth Committee should be guided by the relevant rules and standards of international law and the principles of the rule of law that oblige and guide us as Member States, at the national and international level. A reformed system of administration of justice will also contribute to strengthening the rule of law within the Organization. As we all know the 6th Committee has identified the rule of law as an important new topic on its agenda, which is why we think
it is of particular relevance that this Committee adds its own perspective to the GA's work on the Redesign Panel Report.
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