Special political missions

Special political missions (SPMs) are activities funded through the programme budget by which the United Nations can respond to peace and security challenges. They vary considerably with regard to their mandates, scope, institutional design and approaches. They range from special envoys and representatives carrying out good offices mandates to monitoring teams, groups and panels overseeing Security Council sanctions regimes, small field-based missions, and multidimensional operations with comprehensive mandates to support political transitions and efforts to build sustainable peace. Three United Nations regional offices serve as forward platforms for preventive diplomacy and dialogue and work very closely with their regional counterparts on transnational peace and security issues affecting the regions in which they are based.

SPMs can be (1) mandated by the Security Council, (2) established by the Secretary-General following an exchange of letters with the President of the Security Council or (3) mandated by the General Assembly.

Typology
Because of the wide range of activities described as SPMs, they are commonly grouped into three clusters, as follows:


 * 1) Cluster I: Special and personal envoys, advisers and representatives of the Secretary-General
 * 2) Cluster II: Sanctions monitoring teams, groups and panels, and other entities and mechanisms
 * 3) Cluster III: Regional offices, offices in support of political processes and other missions

Large missions that would ordinarily be grouped into cluster III, including the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), are often presented separately given the size of their budgets.

Note that the cluster system is a budgetary typology. SPMs can be field- or Headquarters-based, and they can be mandated by the General Assembly or Security Council (or established by the Secretary-General following an exchange of letters with the Security Council), but these considerations are not directly linked to the assignment of SPMs into a particular cluster.

Non-SPM activities
Although they share similarities to certain SPMs, the following entities are not SPMs as they are not funded through the SPM subsection of the programme budget and have their own subsections:
 * Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO)
 * United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU)

Similarly, some personal envoys appointed as part of the Secretary-General's good offices are funded through extrabudgetary contributions rather than through the programme budget. As such, they are not special political missions. These include:
 * Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for Bolivia (2019-present)
 * Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for Mozambique (2019-present)
 * Personal Envoy for the talks between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (1993-2019)
 * Personal Representative on the Border Controversy between Guyana and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (1990-2017)

Differences from peacekeeping operations
Financing arrangements SPMs are distinguished from peacekeeping missions by their financing mechanism; SPMs are all financed through the special political mission subsection of section 3 (Political affairs) in the programme budget, while peacekeeping missions are either financed through section 5 (Peacekeeping operations) of the programme budget or through separate special accounts established for individual missions and and assessed under the peacekeeping scale of assessments (see peacekeeping financing).

Budgeting practices Over time, different practices have been followed for the budgeting of SPM and peacekeeping missions.
 * Staffing tables: Peacekeeping mission staffing tables are based on posts, with temporary requirements requested as general temporary assistance positions. In SPMs, all staffing requirements are met through positions.
 * Programmatic activities Peacekeeping mission budgets routinely include funding for programmatic activities whereas SPMs traditionally exclude such funding and instead focus on mandate delivery through technical expertise provided by staff.

Commitment authority Because SPMs are not peacekeeping missions, they do not have access to the Peacekeeping Reserve Fund to support start-up or reconfiguration and must rely on commitment authority under the unforeseen and extraordinary expenses mechanism.

Uniformed personnel
Some SPMs include military and police contingents deployed as guard units for security purposes.

In addition, the United Kingdom deployed a 70-person military logistics support unit to support UNSOS, an arrangement that was authorized through an exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council in 2016.

Intergovernmental process
In addition to the intergovernmental actions related to the mandating of SPMs, issues related to SPMs are routinely considered by the Fourth and Fifth Committee of the General Assembly, under three subjects.

Estimates in respect of special political missions, good offices and other political initiatives
The General Assembly, through the Fifth Committee, takes action on estimates in respect of special political missions in the context of its resolutions on special subjects related to the programme budget. SPM budgets are normally considered during the main session (October through December) of the Fifth Committee, and any revised estimates that may arise are generally considered during the resumed session (either March or May).

Review of arrangements for funding and backstopping special political missions
Given the similarities between peacekeeping missions and large SPMs, including the size of their budgets, some delegations and groups have called for a review of funding and backstopping arrangements for SPMs. These efforts culminated in the issuance of a report on funding and backstopping arrangements (A/66/340) in October 2011.

Informal consultations in the Fifth Committee on this report and its accompanying ACABQ report (A/66/7/Add.21) were inconclusive during the 66th, 67th, 68th, 69th, 70th, 71st, 72nd and 73rd sessions.

Comprehensive review of special political missions
Due in large part to the lack of progress on the funding and backstopping issue in the Fifth Committee, the General Assembly, through the Fourth Committee, adopted resolution 67/123 of 18 December 2012 establishing a new "Comprehensive review of special political missions" agenda item. This effort was spearheaded by Mexico and Finland. The new agenda item was consciously modeled on the agenda item under which the Fourth Committee considers peacekeeping operations and the report of the C-34.

The Fourth Committee considers an annual report titled "Overall policy matters pertaining to special political missions" under this agenda item. The deliberations and resulting General Assembly resolutions are as follows: