The UN General Assembly (UNGA) approved a proposed budget for the UN Secretariat’s 2023 operations, following deliberations in the UNGA’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) that concluded on 30 December 2022. Ending the three-year trial period that began in 2020, it also moved the Organization from a biennial to an annual budget cycle.

The regular budget for 2023 will be USD 3.4 billion – nearly USD 200 million more than the USD 3.22 billion figure unveiled by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in mid-October 2022. The budget was adopted without a vote as part of the Fifth Committee’s report to the plenary (A/77/672), on 30 December. 

During the UNGA plenary meeting on 3 January 2023, several Member States, including the Russian Federation, China, Syria, Cuba, and Iran, decried the decision to include financing for the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes committed in Syria. Speakers from Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were among those who dissociated themselves from budgetary estimates of the Human Rights Council.

The Assembly also adopted, without a vote, a resolution (A/77/673) shifting the UN management paradigm from a biennial to an annual cycle – a move that Guterres said would improve the accuracy of resource estimates, enable the Organization to adapt more quickly to mandate changes, and allow for planning adjustments based on programme performance.

According to the UN’s summary of the Fifth Committee meeting on 30 December, Pakistan, for the Group of 77 and China (G-77/China), said the 2023 programme budget “could not receive the proper time and attention it demanded due to the Committee’s diverted attention on the reform of the annual budget.” He indicated that the G-77/China “had to let go of many important items in the 2023 budget out of the commitment to engage constructively and in the spirit of concluding the agenda item.”

A representative of the EU lamented the Fifth Committee’s “inability to rally together on common priorities,” noting that this was only the second time in more than 50 years the Fifth Committee had negotiated “beyond Christmas.”

In his remarks to the Assembly on the report of the Fifth Committee, UNGA President Csaba Kőrösi thanked delegates for preventing a shutdown of the UN. He congratulated Member States on prioritizing the needs of the Organization and ensuring adequate financing to respond to the world’s “many interlocking crises.” [UNGA Meeting Coverage, 3 January 2023]