Peacekeeping financing

Peacekeeping missions, with the exception of UNTSO and UNMOGIP (which were established before the introduction of special accounts for peacekeeping missions) are financed separately from the "regular" programme budget of the United Nations.

Peacekeeping budgets

Under resolution 49/233, the peacekeeping fiscal year spans 12 months from 1 July to 30 June the following calendar year. Each mission has a separate budget funded through a separate special account.

Unlike the "regular" programme budget, which is a monolithic budget assessed under the regular budget scale of assessments, each peacekeeping mission has a separate special account assessed under the peacekeeping scale of assessments. Two other accounts—the support account and the UN Logistics Base (UNLB)—also support peacekeeping operations but are funded through a portion of the assessed contributions to each peacekeeping mission.

Budget structure

Mission budget requirements are based on the results-based budgeting framework (RBB framework), which—in theory—translates a Security Council mandate into expected accomplishments, reflected as indicators of achievement and outputs, which form the basis for allocating resources to missions.

Budgets for peacekeeping operations are broken into three broad groups of expenditure:

• Military and Police Personnel: costs associated with military and police personnel and their equipment
• Civilian Personnel: costs associated with civilian staff, UN Volunteers, and government-provided personnel other than military and police personnel.
• Operational Requirements: all other costs, including consultants, mission support, and programmatic activities such as quick-impact projects.

These are further divided into classes of expenditure (e.g. military contingent personnel), which themselves are subdivided into objects of expenditure (e.g. troop reimbursement, contingent-owned equipment reimbursement, travel, allowances, rations, and death and disability compensation for military contingent personnel). At the mission level, the heads of the mission support component (Directors of Mission Support for large missions and Chiefs of Mission Support for small missions) have the flexibility to re-allocate requirements within groups of expenditure based on operational requirements, though transferring resources between groups requires approval from the Controller’s office at Headquarters.

The Security Council is responsible for determining the total authorized military and police strength of a mission, though the Secretary-General has the flexibility to determine how many military and police personnel are required to implement a mandate, as long as he remains within the authorized strength. As reimbursement rates for contingent personnel (and, to a lesser extent, their equipment) as well as MSA for military observers and IPOs are generally fixed, the primary cost driver is the number of military and police personnel deployed, which is generally expressed through the budgeted vacancy rate for each category of personnel. This figure represents the average percentage of authorized personnel not deployed during the financial period. Negotiation over the budgeted vacancy rate—which is used to determine the authorized appropriation—is an art, not a science, and is generally based on actual vacancy rates provided by the Secretariat as well as a deployment plan provided by DPKO.

In the case of civilian personnel, the General Assembly is responsible for approving every staff and UNV post or position. Mission staffing tables are generally accretative, and therefore do not necessarily properly reflect changes in mission mandates, the situation on the ground, or the stage in a mission’s life cycle; for example, missions generally require a larger ratio of support to substantive staff in the initial years following the establishment of a mission. Starting in 2013, the Secretary-General has initiated periodic civilian staffing reviews to address this issue. Staff costs are generally constant, though periodic revisions of local staff salaries and classifications have resulted in substantial increases in requirements for various missions over the years. As such, overall civilian personnel costs are driven by the number and type of authorized posts and the budgeted vacancy rate for each category of personnel.

The costs under each class within the operational requirements group of expenditure is primarily determined by planning assumptions that are scrutinized by the Fifth Committee. These include useful lifespan benchmarks and staff-to-equipment ratios considered in procurement plans, different models for contracting for fuel, cost-benefit analysis of brick-and-mortar construction vs. use of prefabricated structures, and consideration of whether project implementation plans (for procurement, construction, quick impact projects, etc.) are realistic given conditions on the ground.

Support account

The support account was established effective 1 January 1990 to finance posts and positions supporting peacekeeping operations at Headquarters. Previously, these posts and positions were funded through each individual mission budget and were known as “overload” posts. There was, however, a recognition that consolidating all overload posts into a single budget would facilitate better analysis of the totality of resources supporting peacekeeping operations at Headquarters, allow for more efficient use of those resources, and more easily allow for planning for potential missions.

Global Service Centre

The UNLB budget funds the Global Service Center (GSC), which consists of the UNLB itself, which is located in Brindisi, Italy, as well as the UN Support Base in Valencia, Spain. Under the Global Field Support Strategy, the GSC is responsible for handling global operational support to peacekeeping missions in areas such as information and communications technology and logistics. UNLB also manages the UN strategic deployment stocks and UN reserve of equipment that can be rapidly-deployed to support new or expanding field missions.

Regional Service Centre, Entebbe

A similar financing arrangement applies to the Regional Service Center in Entebbe (RSCE) which primarily services missions in Africa, but which could take on some global back-office human resources and financial tasks.

Budget Process

The Secretary-General submits full-year budget requests for each peacekeeping mission on the basis of the mandate and planning assumptions applicable at the time of submission, with the assumption that any mission whose mandate expires during the financial period will be renewed with the same mandate to avoid prejudging any decision by the Security Council to change or terminate a mandate.

Mission budget formulation begins a year in advance of the financial period in question, with the compiling of requirements at the mission level. In the fall, missions submit their budget requests to Headquarters. Mission budget requests are supposed to be finalized by January, after which they are edited, translated, and submitted to the ACABQ for its consideration. The Secretary-General’s requests and the associated ACABQ reports are then presented to the Fifth Committee for its consideration in May.

Intergovernmental consideration

The Fifth Committee is scheduled to meet for four weeks in May during the second part of its resumed session to consider the Secretary-General’s peacekeeping budget requests, though in practice the Committee regularly meets until the end of June. If budgets are not adopted by the end of the fiscal year, peacekeeping missions must liquidate, as they have no legal basis for incurring expenses. In addition, the Fifth Committee also reviews budget performance reports from the previous fiscal year, the report of the Board of Auditors on peacekeeping operations , a report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services summarizing its activities with regards to peacekeeping from the previous year, an annual report by the Secretary-General on special measures against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. Additional reports are issued based on the program of work, and have included reports on the Global Field Support Strategy (2009-2014), the work of the triennial Working Group on Contingent-Owned Equipment (most recently in 2014), and implementation of the recommendations of the Senior Advisory Group on troop reimbursement and related issues.

Appropriation and Assessment

Draft peacekeeping financing resolutions for each mission can only be drafted after agreement has been reached on the requirements of the individual missions, the support account, and the GSC. Peacekeeping financial resolutions fundamentally accomplish the following:

1. Establish the authorized appropriation for the mission.
2. Determine the assessment under the peacekeeping scale of assessments.
3. Determine how much of the assessment should go to the Tax Equalization Fund.
4. Place the financing of the mission on the agenda for the next session of the General Assembly.

The appropriation for the mission, which determines the amount that the Secretary-General is authorized to spend consists of three components: (1) the requirements of the mission as determined by the Fifth Committee based on its consideration of the Secretary-General’s request and ACABQ recommendations; (2) the mission’s share of the support account budget; and (3) the mission’s share of the GSC budget, which is still referred to as the UNLB budget in financing resolutions.

The assessment authorizes the Secretary-General to charge (or “apportion amongst”) Member States to finance an appropriation. Most missions are assessed twice; the first assessment authorizes the Secretary-General to bill Member States for the proportion of the appropriation corresponding to the part of the fiscal year covered by a mission’s active mandate. The second assessment authorizes the Secretary-General to bill Member States for the remaining amount of the appropriation subject to a decision of the Security Council to extend the mandate.

Commitment authority with assessment

In certain circumstances, the General Assembly may authorize commitment authority in lieu of a budget and appropriation. Commitment authority allows the Secretary-General to incur obligations up to an authorized amount, and is generally used when there is significant uncertainty about the actual requirements which either preclude the submission of a budget request by the Secretary-General or approval of a budget by the General Assembly. Commitment authorities sometimes are accompanied by an assessment to provide missions with cash. In circumstances where no assessment is authorized at the time the commitment authority is provided, the Secretary-General generally submits a financing note after the fact detailing the actual requirements, which are then assessed. New or expanding missions for which the Secretary-General has been provided with commitment authority can draw upon the peacekeeping reserve fund in lieu of or to supplement assessment, depending on cash requirements.