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The United Nations General Assembly (GA) is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations. It is the main deliberative organ of the United Nations. It is made up of all United Nations member states and meets in regular yearly sessions under a president elected from among the representatives. As the only UN organ in which all members are represented, the Assembly serves as a forum for members to discuss issues of international law and to make decisions regarding the functioning of the organization.
Overview
Voting in the General Assembly on important questions – recommendations on peace and security; election of members to organs; admission, suspension, and expulsion of members; budgetary matters – is by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting. Other questions are decided by majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from approval of budgetary matters, including adoption of a scale of assessment, Assembly resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security under Security Council consideration. The one state, one vote power structure theoretically allows states comprising just eight percent of the world population to pass a resolution by a two-thirds vote. Membership For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:
Special SessionsSpecial sessions may be convened at the request of the UN Security Council, or a majority of UN members, or, if the majority concurs, of a single member. A special session was held in October 1995 at the head of government level to commemorate the UN's 50th anniversary. Another special session was held in September 2000 to celebrate the millennium; it put forward the Millennium Development Goals. A further special session (2005 World Summit) was held in September 2005 to commemorate the UN's 60th anniversary; it assessed progress on the Millennium Development Goals, and discussed Kofi Annan's In Larger Freedom proposals. General Assembly ResolutionsThe General Assembly votes on many resolutions brought forth by sponsoring states. These are generally symbolic statements covering an array of world issues. Most General Assembly resolutions, while symbolic of the sense of the international community, are not enforceable as a legal or practical matter as the General Assembly lacks enforcement powers with respect to most issues. However, in some areas, such as the United Nations budget, the General Assembly does have authority to make final decisions. From the First to the Thirtieth General Assembly sessions, all General Assembly resolutions were numbered consecutively, with the resolution number followed by the session number in Roman numbers (for example, Resolution 1514 (XV), which was the 1514th numbered resolution adopted by the Assembly, and was adopted at the Fifteenth Regular Session (1960)). Beginning with the Thirty-First Session, resolutions are numbered by individual session (for example Resolution 41/10 represents the 10th resolution adopted at the Forty-First Session). Emergency Special SessionsThe General Assembly may take action on maintaining international peace and security if the UN Security Council is unable, usually due to disagreement among the permanent members, to exercise its primary responsibility. If not in session at the time, the General Assembly may meet in emergency special session within twenty-four hours of the request therefor. Such emergency special session shall be called if requested by the Security Council on the vote of any seven members, or by a majority of the Members of the United Nations. The "Uniting for Peace" resolutions, adopted in 1950, empower the Assembly to convene in emergency special session to recommend collective measures – including the use of armed force – in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression. Two-thirds of the members must approve any such recommendation. Emergency special sessions under this procedure have been held on ten occasions. The two most recent, in 1982 and 1997 through 2003 respectively, have both been convened in response to actions by Israel. The ninth considered the situation in the occupied Arab territories following Israel's unilateral extension of its laws, jurisdiction, and administration to the Golan Heights. The tenth was triggered by the occupation of East Jerusalem and dealt with the issue of Palestine. Subsidiary organsThe General Assembly subsidiary organs are divided into five categories: Committees (30 total, six main), Commissions (seven), Boards (six), Councils and Panels (five), Working Groups and Other. CommitteesMain CommitteesThe Main Committees are ordinally numbered, 1-6:
The roles of some of the Main Committees have changed over time. Until the late 1970s, the First Committee was the Political and Security Committee (POLISEC) and there was also a sufficient number of additional "Political" matters that an additional, unnumbered main committee, called the Special Political Committee, also sat. The Fourth Committee formerly handled Trusteeship and Decolonization matters. With the decreasing number of such matters to be addressed as the trust territories attained independence and the decolonization movement progressed, the functions of the Special Political Committee were merged into the Fourth Committee during the 1990s. Each Main Committee consists of all the members of the General Assembly. Each elects a Chairman, three Vice Chairmen, and a Rapporteur at the outset of each regular General Assembly session. Other CommitteesThese are not numbered. According to the General Assembly website, the most important are:
Other committees of the General Assembly are enumerated in this list. CommissionsThere are seven commissions:
Despite its name, the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) was actually a subsidiary body of ECOSOC. BoardsThere are six boards. Councils and PanelsThe most important (as well as the newest) council is the United Nations Human Rights Council, which replaced the aforementioned UNCHR in March 2006. There is a total of four Councils and one Panel. Working Groups and OtherThere is a varied group of Working Groups and other subsidary bodies. General Assembly reform
On 21 March 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a report, In Larger Freedom, that criticized the General Assembly for focusing so much on consensus that it was passing watered-down resolutions reflecting "the lowest common denominator of widely different opinions." He also criticized the Assembly for trying to address too broad an agenda, instead of focusing on "the major substantive issues of the day, such as international migration and the long-debated comprehensive convention on terrorism." Annan recommended streamlining the General Assembly's agenda, committee structure, and procedures; strengthening the role and authority of its President; enhancing the role of civil society; and establishing a mechanism to review the decisions of its committees, in order to minimize unfunded mandates and micromanagement of the UN Secretariat. Annan reminded UN members of their responsibility to implement reforms, if they expect to realize improvements in UN effectiveness [1]: See also
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