Thoughts on the UN80 mandate review
TL;DR: it's a trap!
During his 24 June briefing to Member States on the UN80 initiative, UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy Guy Ryder demoed an impressive-looking mandate registry as the centerpiece of his presentation on progress in the second workstream of the UN80 initiative, the mandate review. Although the mandate registry provides a potentially useful reference tool, its practical value to the broader UN80 initiative remains unclear. In fact, this is a problem with the entire mandate review workstream—the likelihood that it will yield useful insights to inform reform-related decision-making is extremely slim.1 As indicated by the Secretary-General on 12 May, the objective of the mandate review is to identify “duplications, redundancies, or opportunities for greater synergy on implementation”. This exercise, however, is built on a flawed premise, as mandates are not the cause of duplication, redundancy, and inefficiency within the UN. The inflated expectations from the mandate review by its proponents stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of mandates at the United Nations.