Mandate Creation, Implementation and Review for an Efficient and Effective United Nations

A/RES/80/251View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 123 Strengthening of the United Nations System, published in 2026.

What subjects does this mandate have?

4 subjects

Coordination Within UN System Institutional Machinery Organizational Reform Reporting Procedures

What’s in this document?

62 operative paragraphs

Agrees that the following principles shall be applied across the United Nations system throughout the mandate life cycle, that is, in respect of the creation, implementation and review of United Nations system mandates:

The function of mandates across the United Nations system is to fulfil the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and, in doing so, deliver maximum impact for Member States and the people we serve, while taking into account the needs and interests of future generations;

The diverse nature of mandates and their contexts, and of the membership, governance structures and financial and administrative arrangements across the United Nations system must be respected and preserved;

Decisions on mandates are the exclusive prerogative of Member States;

United Nations secretariats and stakeholders have an indispensable role to play in supporting Member States throughout the mandate life cycle;

Efforts to improve the creation, implementation and review of mandates shall be undertaken in a manner which upholds the balance across the three pillars of the United Nations – peace and security, human rights, and development – and no pillar shall be disadvantaged as a result;

A culture of continuous improvement, accountability, enhanced strategic coordination and cooperation, cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness across the United Nations system is essential to ensure coherent, fit-for-purpose and timely responses to current and future global challenges and efficient and effective mandate delivery;

The full and equal participation of Member States, including through the integration of multilingualism by ensuring the use of official and working languages of the United Nations enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the Organization and must be respected;

Approaches derived from best practices across the United Nations system shall be embraced throughout the mandate life cycle to maximize impact and efficiency;

Enhanced visibility and transparency of the mandate landscape across the United Nations system are required to ensure coherence and avoid unnecessary duplication;

In exercising their sovereign prerogatives, Member States shall exercise discipline and strive for enhanced clarity and brevity when creating mandates;

Member States shall employ evidence-based decision-making throughout the mandate life cycle;

Mandates shall be resourced to ensure effective implementation, in accordance with established programme planning and budgetary processes;

Member States shall fulfil their financial obligations as set out in the Charter, on time, in full and without conditions;

Mandate implementation shall be regularly reviewed to assess impact and inform decisions on the future of mandates;

Mandate creation

Agrees that proponents of new mandates shall provide, for the information of Member States and without prejudice to negotiations on the substantive merits of the proposal, a concise concept note which includes the context and rationale; objectives and expected impact; the mandate landscape; proposed mandated activities; indicative financial implications; the technical secretariat focal point; a United Nations system implementation lead; and implementation timelines, and therefore:

Requests the Secretary-General, making full use of relevant existing mechanisms and resources, to make available, upon request, enhanced administrative and technical secretariat support to proponents of mandates, including identification of the technical secretariat focal point, preliminary guidance on a United Nations system implementation lead and the provision of indicative financial implications;

Also requests the Secretary-General to develop the United Nations Mandate Registry as a critical reference tool by ensuring that it is comprehensive, updated regularly to include new mandate sources, and linked, as appropriate, to other mandate source registries across the United Nations system;

Commits to drafting and adopting clearer and more concise mandates which include streamlined preambular paragraphs, well-defined scopes, objectives and mandated activities, implementation road maps, mandate implementation review clauses and timelines and, as appropriate, mandate retirement clauses and expected funding arrangements;

Requests the Secretary-General, making full use of relevant existing mechanisms and resources, to make available to Member States, on an ongoing basis and in a centralized location, enhanced information and resources relevant to decision-making throughout the mandate life cycle, including drafting and process guidance; links to established rules and practices; an indicative cost catalogue of commonly mandated activities; and a list of designated contact points for collaboration with United Nations system entities;

Commits to exercising discipline by deciding only to mandate the convening of meetings, including high-level meetings, or the commissioning of reports or other activities required to achieve the stated objectives of the resolution or decision;

Mandate implementation

Requests the Secretary-General to enhance reporting on mandate implementation by ensuring that reports are timely, more focused and user-oriented, including by developing templates with differentiated formats and length, as determined by their purpose and the nature of the information being presented, and that they incorporate user-centred design approaches and make greater use of data, while maintaining transparency and comprehensive coverage of important issues;

Agrees that Member States shall, in accordance with established programme planning and budgetary processes, allocate the resources necessary for the implementation of mandates with clear budgetary implications that cannot be absorbed within existing resources, and welcomes efforts by Member States to reprioritize existing similar or duplicative activities, where possible;

Encourages the Secretary-General to enable more effective use of resources, including through the allocation of resources necessary for mandate implementation, by enhancing the overall effectiveness of the Organization, strengthening budget discipline, and absorbing resource implications within existing resources, where appropriate;

Requests the Secretary-General, including in her/his capacity as Chair of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination, to facilitate coordination and the assignment of implementation responsibilities among Secretariat entities and across the United Nations system, as appropriate, based on comparative and collaborative advantage, and consistent with decisions of the respective intergovernmental mandating organs;

Agrees that mandates shall be implemented in an efficient and effective manner to ensure maximum impact on the ground;

Mandate review

Agrees to include mandate implementation review clauses, which could include clear timelines, indicators, criteria and mechanisms, in all new and renewing mandates, and encourages consideration of mandate implementation review cycles of three to five years;

Commits to ensuring that mandate implementation reviews focus on outcomes and impact, rather than only activities and outputs;

Encourages the consistent allocation of resources necessary for the conduct of such mandate implementation reviews, including by utilizing existing oversight and review mechanisms;

Requests the Secretary-General to review the full portfolio of mandated reports of the Secretary-General to identify candidates for combination or change in periodicity, for presentation to Member States by the end of June 2026, for their consideration;

Agrees that Member States shall explore options to undertake collective mandate implementation reviews across intergovernmental organs and clustered mandate implementation reviews of similar or related mandates;

Requests the Secretary-General to provide advice on possible mechanisms to undertake collective mandate implementation reviews and clustered mandate implementation reviews, for presentation to Member States by the end of September 2026, for their consideration;

Also requests the Secretary-General to strengthen and harmonize management for results mechanisms across the United Nations system, including how results are measured and communicated, based on system-wide reporting standards;

Reaffirms that, once adopted, mandates remain valid until fully implemented or expired as provided for in their original or renewing resolution or decision, unless otherwise renewed, adapted, merged, replaced or retired by a decision of Member States;

Decides to develop measurable, clear and objective criteria to guide decisions on the renewal, adaptation, merger, replacement or retirement of General Assembly mandates, while reaffirming that such decisions shall be informed by accurate data and impartial expertise and analysis;

Agrees to undertake a review of the existing stock of mandates from General Assembly resolutions, without duplicating any existing mandate review processes, with a view to taking decisions on their renewal, adaptation, merger, replacement or retirement, and to develop modalities to guide this review;

Calls upon other intergovernmental organs across the United Nations system to review their existing stock of mandates in accordance with their respective intergovernmental decision-making processes;

Requests the Secretary-General to review mandates to identify those that are inactive, duplicative or fully implemented, for presentation to Member States by the end of December 2026, for their consideration;

Agrees that mandates that are in the Charter, norm-setting of universal character, institution-creating, or relate to ongoing political situations which have implications for international peace and security shall not be subject to the reviews referred to in paragraphs 22, 23 and 24, unless otherwise agreed by Member States;

Also agrees that Member States shall review the frequency with which agenda items, resolutions and decisions are considered by intergovernmental organs for the purpose of taking a more strategic and streamlined approach to their periodicity based on their nature and purpose; this may include biennializing resolutions and decisions which are traditionally considered annually, and triennializing resolutions and decisions which are traditionally considered biennially, as appropriate;

System-wide coordination and coherence

Agrees that Member States shall improve their intergovernmental coordination and oversight mechanisms to enhance strategic coordination and coherence across the United Nations system;

Requests the Secretary-General, in her/his capacity as Chair of the Chief Executives Board, to regularly review mechanisms that coordinate across the United Nations system to foster a culture of continuous improvement and to enhance strategic coordination and coherence;

Also requests the Secretary-General, including in her/his capacity as Chair of the Chief Executives Board, to provide tools and reference materials to support Member States’ decision-making throughout the mandate life cycle, including by further developing practical, interoperable digital tools including, where feasible, the development of digital tools and portals, in addition to the Mandate Registry, that provide consolidated, timely and comparable information on mandates, resources, activities and results, using common definitions and reporting standards to the extent possible, in order to support a system-wide perspective and enhance coherence across the United Nations system, noting that any tools that use artificial intelligence shall have appropriate safeguards and effective human oversight;

Further requests the Secretary-General to remain responsive to requests from Member States for enhanced functionality of the Mandate Registry and other digital tools to support decision-making throughout the mandate life cycle and to provide Member States with ongoing guidance and training to enable them to make full use of these tools;

Calls upon presiding officers and bureaux of intergovernmental organs across the United Nations system to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their working methods, share best practice where relevant, and strive for harmonization, through enhanced collaboration;

Calls upon all intergovernmental organs across the United Nations system to take a consistent approach to mandate creation, implementation and review, by applying the principles and actions outlined in the present resolution;

Next steps

Decides to continue the work of the informal ad hoc working group on mandate implementation review as the Ad Hoc Working Group on Mandate Implementation Review (the Working Group) to complete the tasks outlined in the present resolution, on the following basis:

The Working Group will be open to all Member States and observers;

The President of the General Assembly will appoint two Co-Chairs of the Working Group;

The Working Group will resume its work by 1 May 2026 and conclude its work no later than 30 April 2027;

The Working Group will:

Develop a concept note template, resolution and decision templates, model mandate implementation review clauses and model mandate retirement clauses, by the end of May 2026;

Receive and consider the Secretary-General’s review of mandated reports of the Secretary-General, as outlined in paragraph 16, by the end of July 2026;

iii

Develop clear and objective criteria to guide decisions on the renewal, adaptation, merger, replacement or retirement of General Assembly mandates, as outlined in paragraph 21, by the end of August 2026;

Develop modalities to guide the review of the existing stock of General Assembly mandates, as referred to in paragraphs 22 and 25, by the end of August 2026;

Receive the Secretary-General’s advice, as set out in paragraph 18, and explore options for collective mandate implementation reviews and clustered mandate implementation reviews, by mid-December 2026;

Facilitate engagement between Member States and the Secretariat to support the ongoing development of the Mandate Registry and other tools and reference materials, as outlined in paragraphs 6, 29 and 30, by mid-‍February 2027;

vii

Receive and consider the Secretary-General’s review of inactive, duplicative or fully implemented mandates, as outlined in paragraph 24, by the end of March 2027;

The Co-Chairs of the Working Group will provide a more detailed road map to Working Group members to support their participation in the deliberations of the Working Group;

The Co-Chairs of the Working Group will provide the General Assembly with an update on the progress of the Working Group by the end of the eightieth session of the Assembly;

Member States will strive for consensus in the deliberations of the Working Group;

The Secretary-General will provide substantive support to the Working Group as needed for the effective discharge of its mandate.