And the debate continues....

• Position: United Nations Economic and Social Council

Some of the ideas put forward in various position papers considered by the Assembly found their way to the adopted resolution. Others will continue to feed the debate on restructuring, which will be taken up in the Assembly later this year. Some highlights follow:

Nordic Countries: In their joint discussion paper (A/45/1001), Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden suggest that in specific cases the General Assembly may authorize the Economic and Social Council to make final decisions on reports from subsidiary bodies. They also advise that the Council concentrate on one or two major issues per year.

Frequently, the Nordic countries note, the "same United Nations delegates participate in all bodies dealing with the same issues feeding few new ideas into the deliberative process". To put an end to that, they suggest that policy discussions and political debates be limited to the Council, with the subsidiary bodies playing a more technical or expert role.

They target four Council subsidiary bodies in particular for merger or "expertization": the Committee on the Development and Utilization of New and Renewable Sources of Energy; the High-level Committee on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries; the Committee on Natural Resources; and the Inter-governmental Committee on Science and Technology for Development.

With regard to the Assembly's Second (Economic and Financial) and Third (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) Committees, the Nordic countries want to replace, whenever possible, the present system of resolutions with a chairman's summary and, to simplify their agendas, remove items which are no longer useful. They also ask for a more efficient division of labour between those Committees and the Council.

European Community: The twelve member States of the European Community (EC) want the merging, abolition, modification or 'expertization' of some...