Sixty-second session Item 33 of the preliminary list* United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Letter dated 29 January 2007 from the Chairman of the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East addressed to the President of the General Assembly * A/62/50. As you may know, the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), established in 1949, was revitalized and expanded by the General Assembly on 1 December 2005. After adopting its rules of procedure, the Advisory Commission began substantive work with the aim of providing advice and assistance to the UNRWA Commissioner-General, as foreseen in the Agency’s founding resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. I am writing to you today as a result of the enhancement of the role of the Advisory Commission. In one of the first substantive manifestations of United Nations reform, UNRWA has embarked on a comprehensive programme of internal management enhancement, through the initial implementation of it Organizational Development Plan. The Plan was extensively discussed with all the Agency’s major stakeholders at various stages of its design, and formally presented to the Advisory Commission during its regular session in September 2006. In the ensuing discussion, the Advisory Commission warmly welcomed the Plan and commended the leadership of UNRWA for its efforts to further improve the delivery of its services to the Palestinian refugees under its mandate. Given the extent of the proposals and the significant funding needed for its implementation (approximately $30 million over a three-year period), the Advisory Commission made a pressing call on all the Agency’s stakeholders to provide additional resources to UNRWA towards that end. Initial implementation of those reform initiatives will require the hiring of additional international staff. However, to maintain newly developed capacities over a longer term, the Agency has included in its submission for the regular budget of the United Nations for the biennium 2008-2009 (from where all the Agency’s international staffing posts are funded) a request to establish an additional 20 posts. The posts in question are specifically aimed at providing UNRWA with hitherto largely inexistent capacity in the areas of strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, central management, resource mobilization and support to its intergovernmental governance instruments, all of which are crucial to the realization of the Plan and hence to the improvement of the Agency’s functioning. The approval of the additional posts will enable the Agency to remove those costs from the Plan budget and increase the effectiveness of existing contributions. As Chairman of the Advisory Commission, I should like to emphasize that these proposals enjoy the full support of the membership of the Commission, which as you know includes representatives of both the Agency’s major donors and all its host countries. We look forward to these proposals being included in the Secretary-General’s draft budget submission for the coming biennium. This will effectively constitute a significant contribution of the international community as a whole to the efforts of UNRWA in this area. I would be most grateful if you were to inform all Member States, for the benefit in particular of their delegates on the Fifth Committee and the Special Political and Decolonization Committee, of the endorsement by the Advisory Commission of the Agency’s staffing proposals described above. (Signed) Frans Makken Chairman of the UNRWA Advisory Commission   sss1 \* MERGEFORMAT A/62/64 sss1 \* MERGEFORMAT A/62/64 FooterJN \* MERGEFORMAT 07-24845 \* MERGEFORMAT 2 \* MERGEFORMAT 1 FooterJN \* MERGEFORMAT 07-24845 United Nations A/62/64 General Assembly Distr.: General 23 February 2007 Original: English jobn \* MERGEFORMAT 07-24845 (E) 260207 Barcode \* MERGEFORMAT *0724845*