The UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday adopted a resolution to draft a new international convention to fight cybercrime.
Xinhua reports that the resolution, adopted by a vote of 79-60 with 33 abstentions, decided to establish an open-ended ad hoc intergovernmental committee of experts to elaborate a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes.
The ad hoc committee shall convene a three-day organisational session in August 2020 in New York, in order to agree on an outline and modalities for its further activities, to be submitted to the General Assembly for its consideration and approval.
The resolution requests the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, to allocate the necessary resources in order to organise and support the work of the ad hoc committee within the UN regular budget.
Meanwhile, UNGA has adopted the UN budget of 3.07 billion dollars for 2020.
It followed the consideration of the report of the Assembly’s Fifth Committee, which handles administrative and budgetary matters.
This is the first annual budget of the organisation in 45 years, according to the UN, which had been operating a two-year budget cycle since 1974.
The 2020 figure is 23 million dollar higher than the 2.849 billion budgeted by the organisation in the outgoing year.
It is also an increase of eight million dollar over the 3.06 billion dollar proposal requested by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Speaking after the adoption, President of the General Assembly, Amb. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, said: “The proposed programme budget for 2020 provides necessary resources to the UN Secretariat to implement its various tasks.
“It also prepares us well for entry into the Decade of Action for SDG implementation,” he said.