Pattern of Conferences

A/RES/51/211View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 118 Pattern of conferences, published in 1997.

What else is in this group?

107 documents · 1958–2025

Newer documents in this group exist (latest: 2025).

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2025	A/RES/80/234	Pattern of conferences	5,780	–
2024	A/RES/79/248	Pattern of conferences	6,725	–
2023	A/RES/78/245	Pattern of conferences	6,396	–
2023	A/RES/77/255	Pattern of conferences	6,274	–
2021	A/RES/76/237	Pattern of conferences	6,474	–

This group bundles related documents that are not individually ordered.

What subjects does this mandate have?

11 subjects

Calendar of Meetings Conference and Meeting Services Conference Facilities Cost Effectiveness Documents Distribution Documents Limitation Holidays Language Services Meeting Records Optical Disks Technological Innovations

What’s in this document?

44 operative paragraphs

A

Notes with appreciation the work of the Committee on Conferences, and takes note of its report;

Approves the draft revised calendar of conferences and meetings of the United Nations for 1997 as submitted³ and amended⁴ by the Committee on Conferences, subject to the provisions of the present resolution;

³Ibid., Supplement No. 32 and corrigendum (A/51/32 and Corr.1), annex.

⁴Ibid., Supplement No. 32, addendum (A/51/32/Add.1).

Authorizes the Committee on Conferences to make adjustments in the calendar of conferences and meetings for 1997 that may become necessary as a result of actions and decisions taken by the General Assembly at its fifty-first session;

Requests the Secretary-General to provide all the conference services required as a result of decisions taken by the General Assembly at its fifty-first session, taking into account, as necessary, the procedures established in Assembly resolutions 41/213 of 19 December 1986 and 42/211 of 21 December 1987;

Also requests the Secretary-General to include in the list of official holidays of the United Nations Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha;

Decides that no United Nations meetings shall be held on Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha, which occur in 1997 on 10 February and 17 April, respectively, and requests the Secretary-General to make the necessary arrangements to ensure strict implementation of this decision when preparing all future draft calendars of conferences and meetings of the United Nations;

Decides also that requests for waivers to the headquarters rule contained in General Assembly resolution 40/243 shall be reviewed by the Committee on Conferences prior to consideration by the Assembly;

Invites all its subsidiary bodies that are authorized to meet away from their established headquarters to review, in the interest of improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness, the exception to the headquarters rule in the light of the current situation of their work and to make recommendations thereon, through the Committee on Conferences, to the General Assembly at its fifty-second session;

Invites the Economic and Social Council to request all its subsidiary bodies to carry out the review referred to in paragraph 8 above;

Requests the bodies that have not fully utilized their meeting entitlements, including the duration of their sessions, to review their entitlements and to report the results of their review to the General Assembly through the Committee on Conferences;

Expresses concern that the overall and average factors for the utilization of conference services have fallen further and were below the established benchmark figure of 80 per cent in 1995;

Reiterates its request to the Committee on Conferences, in consultation with the organs concerned, to examine the cases where the utilization factor is lower than the established benchmark figure for at least three sessions, with a view to reporting on problems and factors that have given rise to such a situation, and to make appropriate recommendations in order to achieve the optimum utilization of conference-servicing resources;

Expresses concern about the underutilization of conference facilities at duty stations outside Headquarters, and emphasizes the need to make the most effective use possible of such facilities;

Endorses the initiatives taken by the Chairman of the Committee on Conferences with a view to assisting bodies to achieve the optimum utilization of conference-servicing resources and, to that effect, to assess realistically their need for such resources;

Requests the Secretary-General to ensure closer cooperation between Headquarters, the United Nations Office at Geneva, the United Nations Office at Vienna and the United Nations Office at Nairobi in order to improve the coordination of conference services;

Requests the Secretariat to engage on a regular basis in an active dialogue with Member States as a permanent feature at Headquarters, as well as at the United Nations Office at Geneva, the United Nations Office at Vienna and the United Nations Office at Nairobi, in order to improve the coordination of conference services;

Expresses concern that 35 per cent of requests were denied for interpretation services for meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States, in view of the importance of these meetings for the smooth functioning of sessional bodies, while recognizing that meetings of Charter and mandated bodies must be serviced as a priority;

Urges intergovernmental bodies to spare no effort at the planning stage to take into account meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States, to make provision for such meetings in their programme of work and to notify Conference Services well in advance of any cancellations so that unutilized conference-servicing resources may, to the extent possible, be reassigned to meetings of regional and other major groupings of States;

Reiterates its request to the Secretary-General to provide, within the resources requested for conference services for the biennium 1998-1999, interpretation services for meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States upon request by those groupings, taking into account the priority due to meetings included in the calendar of conferences and meetings, and to submit a report on the implementation of this decision to the General Assembly at its fifty-second session through the Committee on Conferences;

Reaffirms that, in the use of conference rooms, priority should be given to meetings of Member States;

Decides that bodies which accept invitations to convene conferences and meetings in host countries should be kept informed, as appropriate, of the progress made in negotiating the host country agreement in the course of preparations for such a conference or meeting, with a view to encouraging the timely conclusion of such an agreement before the conference or meeting takes place.

B

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;⁵

⁵A/51/268.

Requests the Secretary-General to continue to invite Member States to review their document requirements in order to identify and, where possible, reduce the number and types of documents requested;

Also requests the Secretary-General to review the internal requirements of the Secretariat in order to avoid a surplus of documents provided in the Secretariat;

Notes that only two intergovernmental bodies have taken positive action in response to paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 of resolution 50/206 C;

Reiterates its recommendations on the control and limitation of documentation made to intergovernmental bodies in its resolution 50/206 C, and requests these bodies to report to it, through the Committee on Conferences, on measures taken to implement that resolution;

Requests the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to continue to keep it informed, through the Committee on Conferences, of its experience with the use of unedited transcripts;

Takes note of the decision of the Committee on Conferences contained in paragraph 89 of its report,⁶ and requests the Committee to report on the implementation of that decision to the General Assembly at its fifty-second session;

⁶Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-first Session, Supplement No. 32 and corrigendum (A/51/32 and Corr.1).

Stresses once again the need for strict compliance with the existing limits of twenty-four pages for documents originating in the Secretariat and thirty-two pages for reports of subsidiary bodies;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit every two years, through the Committee on Conferences, updated information on the number and length of documents;

Also requests the Secretary-General, to the extent possible, to inform bodies, at the time they request reports, whether the documents can be produced within established page limits;

Further requests the Secretary-General to pursue his efforts to improve the quality in the substance and presentation of documentation, applying new publishing techniques to enhance readability and reduce consumption of paper;

Reiterates its request to the Secretary-General to ensure that documentation is available in accordance with the six-week rule for the distribution of documents, simultaneously in each of the six official languages of the United Nations;

Reaffirms its decision that, should a report be issued late, the reasons for the delay should be indicated when the report is introduced;

Reiterates its request to the Joint Inspection Unit to conduct a comprehensive survey of the role publications play in implementing mandates of intergovernmental bodies and the extent to which recurrent publications could be made more cost-effective in this regard, and to submit a report on this matter no later than the end of the fifty-first session.

C

Strongly urges the Secretary-General, as a matter of priority, having recourse to voluntary and internal expertise within the United Nations system, to develop the cost-accounting system for conference services no later than the next substantive session of the Committee on Conferences;

Requests the Secretary-General to report, through the Committee on Conferences, to each subsidiary organ of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council on the cost of conference services it utilized in the year concluded in order to enable those organs to plan more effectively;

Decides that, in the absence of a General Assembly decision to the contrary, the use of such technologies as the optical disk system and the Internet shall not constitute an alternative to traditional documents;

Strongly urges the Secretary-General, as a matter of priority, to provide proposals to the Fifth Committee at the first part of the resumed fifty-first session, in accordance with paragraph 3 of General Assembly resolution 50/206 D, on facilitating access by developing countries to the optical disk system in all six official languages, taking into account the possible savings from reduced reproduction and distribution costs;

Requests the Secretary-General to ensure that the texts of all new public documents, in all six official languages, and information materials of the United Nations are made available through the United Nations Web site daily and are accessible to Member States without delay;

Also requests the Secretary-General to complete the task of uploading all important older United Nations documents on the United Nations Web site on a priority basis, so that these archives are also available to Member States through that medium.

D

Notes the efforts made by the translation services to improve the quality of translation of documents in all six official languages of the United Nations, and encourages those services to continue to spare no effort to that end and to continue to report to the Committee on Conferences on additional efforts made in this regard;

Requests the Secretary-General to pay due attention to the rules of management in translation-related matters.

E

Expresses its appreciation once again to the Secretary-General and the Secretariat for the proper and timely implementation of resolutions 49/221 D and 50/206 F.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What else is in this group?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

A

B

C

D

E

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