SEA/1522

ASSEMBLY OF INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY CONSIDERS DRAFT REPORT ON AUTHORITY'S FUNCTIONS AND BUDGET

KINGSTON, 7 August -- The Assembly of the International Seabed Authority this morning began preliminary discussions on two draft reports on the functions and budget of the Authority during its early stages of operations. The Convention on the Law of the Sea set up the Authority to administer the resources of the deep seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. The two main organs of the Authority are the Assembly, whose membership consists of all paries to the Convention, as well as all those States which have agreed to the provisional application of the 1994 Agreement on the implementation of the deep seabed mining provisions of the Convention. The other main organ is the Council, which consists of 36 members elected by the Assembly. Introducing the reports, the Authority's Secretary-General, Satya Nandan (Fiji), described the draft on the Authority's functions as essentially a background document for the purposes of preparing a budget. He said it was premature to discuss the budget, which would have to be taken up by the yet to be constituted Finance Committee of the Authority. The report on the Authority's substantive functions covers activities to be carried out by the secretariat relating to the elaboration of rules, regulations and procedures on activities in the international seabed area, regulations on the protection and preservation of the marine environment, legal services required by the secretariat and administrative functions. Mr. Nandan said, in addition to its substantive functions, the secretariat was also responsible for providing services for the work of the Assembly, the Council and other bodies of the Authority. Until now, the Authority's legal work had been carried out by the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in New York. He hoped that by the third session next year, the Authority would handle its own legal services. It would be responsible for rules, regulations and procedures for processing applications to mine the deep seabed and also for developing mechanisms to monitor compliance.

In the short term, he continued, there was a need to finalize a Headquarters Agreement between the Authority and the Jamaican Government and the Relationship Agreement between the Authority and the United Nations.

- 2 - Press Release SEA/1522 8 August 1996

Considerable work had been done in the fields of environmental monitoring, but more guidance was needed on applicable standards for environmental monitoring of the seabed. By 1 January 1998, the Authority would need to function independently in several critical areas where it presently had no capability, Mr. Nandan said. The United Nations Secretariat carried out many services for which it charged a 13 per cent overhead fee. A reasonable and pragmatic approach as to how the secretariat would be organized was possible and should be discussed in terms of the budget, he added. While merit would be a primary concern in staff recruitment, efforts would be made to reflect the international nature of the Authority, he said. In time, the Authority, which currently followed United Nations staff rules and procedures, would develop its own and, hopefully, remove some of the cobwebs by simplifying them.

Commenting on the report, the President of the Assembly, Hasjim Djalal (Indonesia), said that a clarification of the Authority's functions would have a significant impact on how the budget was determined, which, in turn, would depend a great deal on the Authority's plans. Its substantive functions were more important that the administrative and protocol ones.

He said four offices were being created to carry out the Authority's functions. They are the office of the Secretary-General; the office of legal services and implementation affairs; the office of resources and environmental monitoring; and the office of administration and management. The Assembly might want to discuss whether the four offices were satisfactory or whether more work was needed. It was essential for member States to study the reports on the Authority's budget and functions together.

During the follow-up discussion, several representatives emphasized the importance of ensuring that the Authority's secretariat was run efficiently, with emphasis given to cost-effective, modern management techniques. It should not become another bloated bureaucracy. As a regulatory body, the Authority must be adequately financed and staffed, they stressed. The principle of equitable geographic representation should be observed, but only highly competent staff should be recruited. Some speakers called for the rules on deep seabed mining to be elaborated before there was "a mad scramble" for resources. Others described the report as a comprehensive inventory paper. It was not a description of what would take place in 1997, but more a projection of what would occur in the early stages, much of which would depend on the pace of commercial operations. The representatives of Senegal, Chile, Nigeria, China, France, India, Cameroon, United Kingdom, Philippines, Uruguay, and the United States took part in the discussion.

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