‘It is time for States and other actors at the Human Rights Council to ‘get serious’ about UN80, and playing our part in building a more efficient and impactful United Nations.’

General Assembly adopts resolution guiding the review and rationalisation of mandates across the UN system

On 31 March, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on ‘Mandate creation, implementation, and review for an efficient and effective United Nations,’ a move the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres called ‘historic’ and a ‘major step’ in translating ‘the ambition of the UN80 Initiative into concrete, practical action.’

The resolution, like the UN80 initiative more broadly, has important implications for the Human Rights Council, a point recognized in the GA’s text. That said, and again in common with UN80 more broadly, it is for States, OHCHR, and other Council stakeholders to seize the opportunity presented by the resolution. The GA text offers important guidance in that regard, but it is for each part of the intergovernmental system to apply that guidance. Speaking of the adoption of the GA resolution, URG Executive Director Marc Limon said: ‘So far, Geneva’s response to the Secretary-General’s clear-sighted UN80 reform proposals has been to either complain that ‘we weren’t consulted,’ or to wait for colleagues in New York to tell us what to do. In addition to the fact that it is the same States in New York as are present in Geneva, these responses miss the point completely. Actors at the Human Rights Council, especially States and the High Commissioner, should ask not what UN80 can do for us, but what we can do to ensure the success of UN80 – an agenda vital to the future of the UN.’

‘It is time for States and other actors at the Council to ‘get serious’ about UN80 and playing our part in building a more efficient and impactful United Nations,’ he concluded.

The GA resolution reflects on the creation, implementation, and – critically – review of mandates. A key message throughout the text is that mandates, established through resolutions, have been allowed to grow and grow over the decades, with little thought given to their continued value. Instead, the resolution urges all parts of the UN system, including the Human Rights Council, to plan ahead when establishing new mandates, reflecting on the strategy to be employed and – again, crucially – the longevity of mandates (i.e., what the objective or end-goal of the initiative should be, before (and when) it should be terminated.’ To deal with the backlog of existing mandates (over 40,000 have been created since 1946), the text calls on States, including at the Human Rights Council, to undertake collective reviews – ditching mandates that have outlived their usefulness, merging those that overlap, and leaving space for the UN to address emerging issues of concern. In this, States should be guided by the secretariat, including (in the case of the Council) the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

A key theme running through the resolution is that, when establishing, implementing, and reviewing mandates, States should be guided by the need to be efficient (‘cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness’ ‘across the three pillars of the UN’) and, most importantly, impactful – ‘deliver maximum impact for Member States and the people we serve.’ In that regard, the resolution urges States to ‘exercise discipline’ when creating or reflecting on the continued relevance of mandates. For example, States should regularly review mandates ‘to assess impact, and inform decisions on the future of mandates.’

All this, according to the GA, is essential for the future credibility of the UN, with the Peoples of the United Nations increasingly demanding an organisation that is ‘coherent, fit for purpose’ and able to respond to ‘current and future global challenges’ in a timely, efficient, and effective manner.

 

Mandate creation

On the question of the creation of new mandates, the GA provides a number of steers to other intergovernmental parts of the UN system, including the Human Rights Council, such as inter alia:

1. ‘Proponents of new mandates shall provide,’ in advance of consultations and ‘for the information of member States […] a concise concept note’ presenting: ‘the context and rationale, objectives and expected impact, the [existing] [related] mandate landscape, proposed mandated activities, indicative financial implications, the secretariat focal point, a UN system implementation lead, and implementation timelines.’
2. Main sponsors shall also present shorter, ‘clearer, and more concise’ resolutions/mandates, ‘including streamlined preambular paragraphs, well-defined scopes, objectives and mandated activities, implementation roadmaps, mandate implementation review clauses and timelines and, as appropriate, [and] mandate retirement clauses.’
3. Main sponsors shall commit to ‘exercising discipline by deciding only to mandate the convening of meetings […] or the commissioning of reports or other activities required to achieve the stated objectives’ of the resolution/mandate.

As is self-evident, this vision can only be realised with the full cooperation of UN member States, including through the determined leadership of members and observers of the Human Rights Council.

 

Mandate implementation

On the question of mandate implementation, the GA’s resolution correctly states that ‘mandates shall be implemented in an efficient and effective manner to ensure maximum impact on the ground.’ However, in terms of concrete steps towards that goal, the text merely requests the Secretary-General to present shorter, timelier, and more user-orientated reports, and agrees that States shall ‘allocate the resources necessary for the implementation of mandates with clear budgetary implications that cannot be absorbed within existing resources.’

Notwithstanding, one intriguing paragraph from the resolution could and perhaps should have significant implications for the Human Rights Council, and secretariat support thereto. At present, OHCHR prepares all reports to the Council, whether the body requests them of the High Commissioner or the Secretary-General, and upon whichever issue they are supposed to focus. This situation, which has presumably arisen for financial reasons (so OHCHR can absorb all the mandate PBIs), is highly inefficient. It would make far more sense, for example, if – in cooperation with OHCHR, of course – UN Women prepared draft reports on gender equality and women’s rights, UNFPA prepared draft reports on sexual and reproductive health and rights, UNICEF prepared reports on children’s rights, and UNEP prepared reports on human rights and environment, or human rights and climate change. In a clear nod to the more efficient allocation of resources this would bring about, the GA’s resolution ‘requests  the Secretary-General, including in her/his capacity as Chair of the Chief Executives Board, to facilitate coordination and the assignment of implementation responsibilities among Secretariat entities and across the UN system, as appropriate, based on comparative and collaborative advantage, and consistent with decisions of the respective intergovernmental mandating organs.’

 

Mandate reviews

Undoubtedly the most important part of the resolution, for the immediate health and future prosperity of the United Nations, is the section on mandate reviews.

As is well known, the ‘review, rationalisation, and improvement (RRI) of mandates’ was one of the few areas of failure during the Human Rights Council’s institution-building process. Since then, the Council has continued to add mandates at an alarming rate: more resolutions, more Special Procedures mandates, more reports, more meetings, more panels. Indeed, the scale of the Council’s RRI failure is such that, whereas for most of its life the body met for ten weeks each year (in regular session), today its annual programme of work regularly takes up 13, 14 or even 15 weeks – such are the number of mandates it must address.

Although the Council’s efficiency drive, begun by the German Presidency and the Universal Rights Group in 2015, has scored some notable successes, such as the biennialisation of resolutions, the creation of a multiyear calendar of initiatives, and the merger of two Special Procedures mandates in 2025, the body has never undertaken a collective review of mandates, to identify overlap, duplication, or redundancy, and nor (as noted above) has it introduced mandate sunset clauses into its resolutions.

Hence, again, the importance of the GA’s new resolution, and the wider UN80 reform agenda, as well as the importance of Council delegations, OHCHR, and civil society engaging meaningfully with the UN80 process. Specifically on the question of mandate reviews, States at the GA:

1. Agreed to include mandate review clauses, which could include clear timelines, indicators, criteria, and mechanisms, in all new and renewing mandates.
2. Encouraged the consideration of mandate implementation review cycles of 3-5 years.
3. Committed to ensuring mandate implementation reviews and mandate reviews more generally focus on outcomes and impact, rather than only activities and outputs.
4. Agreed that member States shall explore options to undertake collective mandate reviews across intergovernmental organs and clustered mandate implementation reviews of similar or related mandates.
5. Requested the Secretary-General to provide advice on possible mechanisms to undertake collective mandate reviews and clustered mandate implementation reviews for presentation to member States by end of September 2026.

 

Most crucially, however, States at the GA decided to ‘develop measurable, clear and objective criteria to guide decisions on the renewal, adaptation, merger, replacement or retirement of General Assembly mandates,’ as well as to undertake a review of its own ‘existing stock of mandates […] with a view to taking decisions on their renewal, adaptation, merger, replacement or retirement,’ and called upon ‘other intergovernmental organs across the United Nations system to review their existing stock of mandates in accordance with their respective intergovernmental decision-making processes.’

To aid in this process of rationalisation, the GA requested ‘the Secretary-General to review mandates to identify those which are inactive, duplicative, or fully implemented, for presentation to Member States by end of December 2026, for their consideration.’

It is manifestly the responsibility of member and observer States of the Human Rights Council to follow the GA’s lead, and undertake, itself, based on analyses provided by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a similar collective review of its ‘existing stock of mandates […] with a view to taking decisions on their renewal, adaptation, merger, replacement or retirement.’

Speaking after the adoption of the resolution, the President of the General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, said that the text marks an important step in a much broader reform effort and invited member States to continue engaging in the next phase of the work. ’Today, she said, ‘we took an important step to make the UN more agile, more efficient, more effective, and fit for the future, so it can better deliver for the people we serve.’

 

 

 

Featured image: United Nations at 80 Commemoration

Annalena Baerbock (at podium and on screens), President of the eightieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, addresses the United Nations at 80 Commemoration “A living legacy” in the General Assembly Hall.

UN Photo/Mark Garten

19 September 2025

New York, United States of America

Photo # UN71116982