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TENTH ITEM ON THE AGENDA

Other financial and general questions

Regional meetings: Proposed new arrangements

1. During discussions at the 271st Session (March 1998) of the Governing Body concerning the Asian Regional Meeting held in Bangkok in December 1997, members of all three groups of the Governing Body who had attended the Meeting were in agreement that a three-day meeting had in fact proved too brief to allow for any detailed analysis of all the issues raised concerning ILO activities in the region.

2. That Meeting was intended as an experiment, and showed that it was impossible in material terms, in the space of three days and with only two meeting rooms and two teams of interpreters --

• to hold daily group meetings;
• to enable the tripartite delegations of some 40 countries to participate in the general discussion in a mere one-and-a-half days;
• to assign the work of preparing conclusions to a drafting group;
• to have the conclusions and report on the proceedings adopted in plenary sitting.

3. Proposals in response to the concerns expressed were presented to the Programme, Financial and Administrative Committee at the 273rd Session (November 1998) of the Governing Body,⁽¹⁾  which decided to defer decision on the question to its present session.⁽²⁾

4. The discussion in the Programme, Financial and Administrative Committee showed that, while there was apparently general agreement on the need to provide the Government group with a room and interpretation services comparable to those available to the other two groups, opinion was divided over the question of the Meeting's duration. The Worker members considered that five days were essential to allow for a detailed discussion and to enable all those wishing to take part in it to do so. The Employer members were in favour of a maximum of four days, decided on a case-by-case basis, which the Worker members considered discriminatory. A majority of the Government members were in favour of four-day meetings.

5. It should be noted, however, that the decision to reduce the duration of regional meetings to three days did not include provision for the drafting of conclusions -- on account of lack of time -- but only for two-and-a-half days of discussions followed by a record of the discussions submitted not to the Meeting itself, but to the Governing Body at its next session. The seriousness and urgency of the Asian crisis clearly affected the decision to submit a set of conclusions. An essential point in the conclusions was to stress the need for a meeting specifically on the Asian crisis.

6. In view of the positions of the groups in the Committee, the following options are available:

1. to retain the duration of three days for regional meetings, including the group meetings, on the understanding that the meetings would produce neither conclusions nor any in-session report and that a brief record of the discussion would be submitted to the Governing Body at its next session;
2. to increase the duration to four or five days -- including the group meetings -- and to allow participants to set up a drafting committee to prepare conclusions which would be adopted by the meeting in plenary sitting on its last day, as well as a brief report.

7. The additional cost of these proposals is as follows:

 

	Additional expenditure (dollars)
	3 days	4 days	5 days
Americas	5 000	11 250	17 500
Africa	17 000	30 000	43 000
	22 000	41 250	60 500

8. The Programme, Financial and Administrative Committee may wish to recommend to the Governing Body --

(a) that additional interpretation facilities and another meeting room be made available to the Government group at regional meetings and that the additional cost of the two meetings indicated above, estimated at $22,000, be financed by savings in Part I of the Programme and Budget for 1998-99;

(b) either --

(i) to maintain a duration of three days for regional meetings, on the understanding that neither conclusions nor any report would be produced at the meetings and that only a brief record of the discussions would be presented to the following session of the Governing Body;

or

(ii) to increase the duration of the meetings --

• to four days, or
• to five days

so as to enable the meeting to adopt conclusions and a brief report;

(c) that, if it decides to increase the duration of the Fourteenth Regional Meeting of American States Members of the ILO and the Ninth African Regional Meeting, then the additional cost, as set out in the table above, should be financed by savings in Part I of the Programme and Budget for 1998-99.

Geneva, 26 February 1999.

Point for decision: Paragraph 8.

1. GB.273/PFA/8/2.

2. GB.273/7/1, paras. 83-100.