Runaway conflicts, widening inequalities, the intensifying climate crisis and the unchecked rise of technology were among the pressing global challenges highlighted by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as he presented the Organization’s priorities for 2025 to the General Assembly today.
Concluding the main part of its seventy-ninth session today, the General Assembly adopted a 10-year action programme to address the unique challenges faced by landlocked developing countries, a historic cybercrime convention and the $3.72 billion United Nations budget for 2025.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) wrapped up the main part of its seventy-ninth session today by sending the General Assembly a 2025 regular budget of $3.72 billion, about $100 million more than the $3.6 billion budget laid out by the Secretary-General in October. In a year of ongoing fiscal constraints, delegates completed the crucial step of approving new scales of assessment — the complex financial mechanism the Secretariat uses to establish the annual contributions of each Member State — for both the regular and peacekeeping budgets.
Acting on the recommendations of its Second Committee (Economic and Financial), the General Assembly today adopted 39 resolutions — eight by recorded vote — and two decisions on topics ranging from Palestinian natural resources, entrepreneurship and small island States to international trade, adverse climate impacts and global tax cooperation.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today considered the Secretariat’s request to lay out $8.5 million in 2025 to take tangible steps to carry out the Pact for the Future, a landmark declaration approved by Member States during a high-level session in September.
The General Assembly adopted 47 draft resolutions and one decision recommended by its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, covering a wide range of issues, from countering violence against children and combating the glorification of Nazism to protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and ensuring the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
Delegates at the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved a draft decision that would provide nearly $300,000 in 2025 to support a General Assembly text that, if adopted, would request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on Israel’s obligations as an occupying Power and UN Member State in relation to the presence and activities of the UN, other international organizations and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Barely two weeks before the start of the Organization’s 2025 budget year, General Assembly President Philemon Yang (Cameroon) urged Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) delegates today to remain flexible and collaborate so as to close their regular session before Christmas.
Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today considered the 2025 budget implications of five outputs of the First Committee’s (Disarmament and International Security) 2024 session that — if adopted by the General Assembly — would deliver nearly $800,000 to help verify nuclear disarmament, study nuclear-weapon-free zones and explore how the military’s use of artificial intelligence will impact peace and security. These First Committee actions would also establish a 21-member independent Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War and boost the progress of a group studying security and the use of communications technologies.
Delegates at the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today considered the Secretary-General’s request to appropriate $102.8 million in 2025 for the UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia as it moves through a two-year transition period that will eventually end the Organization’s peacekeeping mandate in that country in October 2026.
