Nature
There is a progressively increasing number of intergovernmental and expert organs within the UN system, many with overlapping competences. This proliferation complicates the task and consumes the time of governments and delegates. With it is associated a dispersal of authority among the key units of the UN and a consequent difficulty of harmonizing their activities. In some cases geographical separation of the units compounds the coordination problems resulting from the political and administrative fragmentation.
Background
The change in the political balance in the General Assembly was mainly responsible for a great fragmentation of the UN economic machinery that occurred in the mid-1960s: namely, the establishment by the General Assembly, under strong pressure from the developing countries, of important new organizations within the UN in the fields of trade and development (UNCTAD) and industrial development (UNIDO). The form they were given (that of 'an organ of the General Assembly' (UNCTAD) or an 'autonomous' organization within the UN (UNIDO), and not of specialized agencies) was influenced by other considerations: first, the urgent search for economy on the part of the major contributors, and, secondly, doubts, largely in the same quarters, as to the efficacy of the arrangements between the UN and the specialized agencies in enabling the Council and the General Assembly to exercise their responsibilities under the [Charter for Co-ordination]. It was hoped that, under the direct authority of the General Assembly, their expenditures could be better held in check and their activities better coordinated. Given the circumstances in which they were established, considerations of good administrative order were perhaps bound to be secondary. But the then Secretary-General felt it necessary to observe that the creation of autonomous units within the Secretariat, and therefore under his jurisdiction as Chief Administrative Officer, raised serious questions of organizational authority and responsibility. Moreover, such a trend was perceived as inconsistent with the concept of a unified secretariat working as a team towards the accomplishment of the main goals of the Organization and tending to have the adverse effect of pitting one segment of the Secretariat against another in competition for the necessary financial and political support for its own work programmes.