Functional commissions
In order to perform all the functions within the ECOSOC agenda, a number of commissions, subcommissions and committees have been established. Some of these are the functional commissions, which are deliberative bodies whose role is to consider and make recommendations on issues in their areas of responsibility and expertise.
The Functional Commissions of ECOSOC and their document symbols are:
- Statistical Commission, (E/CN.3)
- Commission for Social Development, (E/CN.5)
- Commission on the Status of Women, (E/CN.6)
- Commission on Narcotic Drugs, (E/CN.7)
- Commission on Population and Development, (E/CN.9)
- Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, (E/CN.15)
- Commission on Science and Technology for Development, (E/CN.16)
- United Nations Forum on Forests, (E/CN.18)
The Functional Commissions are required to report annually to the ECOSOC on their activities submitting draft resolutions and recommendations to the Council.
Previous functional commissions
- Commission on Human Rights, (E/CN.4) 1946-2006 replaced by the Human Rights Council.
- Commission on Sustainable Development, (E/CN.17) 1992-2013 replaced by the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
More on functional commissions
- The subsidiary bodies of the ECOSOC publish their annual reports as asupplement to the Economic and Social Council Official Records (ESCOR). These sessional reports often have a dual symbol: E/year/- and E/CN.-/year/-. Example: E/2011/29-E/CN.17/2011/20. They include information about:
- membership
- dates of meetings
- summary of discussions
- resolutions and decisions adopted by the body
- draft resolutions recommended for adoption by ECOSOC and/or the General Assembly.
- Supplements are posted as Reports at the ECOSOC website.
- Information about the documentation of the Functional Commissions by Dag Hammarskjöld library (New York).
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
- UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
- Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.
UN Documents available online
- All UN documents from 1993-.
- All resolutions of the Principal Organs from 1946-.
- All Security Council plenary documents from 1946- in English, French and Spanish.
- All supplements to the General Assembly Official Records (GAOR) from 1946-.
- All General Assembly plenary meeting records from 1946- in English, French and Spanish.
- Older documents are being scanned: Update on UN Digitization Programme.
Last modified: 2023-03-20