The Agenda

© United Nations

The General Assembly may discuss any question or matters within the scope of
the Charter. However, the power to discuss does not automatically carry with it the power to recommend. The Assembly may discuss a dispute or a situation with which the Security Council is concerned, but it may not make recommendations. 

The General Assembly addresses a broad agenda covering practically all UN activities. At the beginning of every session the agenda is presented to the General Assembly by the Secretary-General.  

The agenda of the Assembly has grown year by year and nowadays it contains more than 200 items. Some of them are procedural questions such as the appointment of the Secretary General, elections of non-permanent members of the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and the International Court of Justice, approval of the UN budget, consideration of reports from other UN bodies and administrative questions. 

Other issues cover a vast range of subjects areas including regional conflicts, peacekeeping operations, human rights, economic and social questions, the human environment and sustainable development and more.  

Once an item appears on the agenda it is likely to reappear, but apart from that the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council, the Secretary General and any member of the United Nations can propose additional matters for inclusion into the agenda.

Different versions of the Agenda: 

The agenda will appear in different versions before it is finally approved: 

First it is issued early in the year (usually in February) as Preliminary list of items to be included in the provisional agenda of the General Assembly. This particular document is only a draft and some issues may be deleted from the list of items. 

It is succeeded by The annotated version of the preliminary list, which is published several months later with background information about each item on the list. 

The provisional agenda, issued at least sixty days before the opening of the session, gives a more concrete definition to the shape the final agenda. 

Just before the opening of the session The report of the General Committee will appear. This report recommends the items to be included in the definitive version of the agenda which the Assembly will adopt, and then assigns the items, on the basis of topic, to either the plenary or one of the six Main Committees. 

The Agenda is usually adopted during the third plenary meeting of the General Assembly and the items are given their final numbers. 

The allocation of agenda items finalizes the recommendations made by the General Committee regarding the allocation of items and definitively decides whether the plenary or one of the Main Committees will assume primary responsibility for a thorough review of the item.   

Documentation

The Agenda in its different versions has the following documentary symbols: 

The preliminary list of items 

A/session number/50

The annotated version of the preliminary list

A/session number/100

The provisional agenda

A/session number/150

The report of the General Committee

A/session number/250

The agenda as adopted by the plenary

A/session number/251

The allocation of agenda items

A/session number/252

For more information about the documentation of the Agenda, see United Nations Documentation: Research Guide. General Assembly. Agenda

There is a full text version of the Agenda published on the Official Web Site of the General Assembly, Sessions under the section Agenda

There are printed versions of the Agenda in the UN Archives of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at Uppsala University covering the period 1946-1992 and in the UN collection of the United Nations Libraries at New York and Geneva.    

Databases and Indexes

The Agenda is published from 1993 in the UN electronic archives ODS. Search by Documentary Symbol. 

The Agenda is included in the UN online catalogue UNBISnet beginning in 1979 with links to full texts in all official
UN languages for the most recent years. 

 

Text: Gunnel Torén | Dag Hammarskjöld Library | Latest update: 24/04/2012