UNICEF

In one line

The United Nations Children's Fund is not a specialized agency but a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly, funded by voluntary contributions rather than assessed dues, and it is the only fund named in the operative provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What kind of body it is

A subsidiary organ, not a specialized agency. The distinction runs through the whole of 3.3 and it is worth setting out in full.

Charter article 7(2) provides that such subsidiary organs as may be found necessary may be established in accordance with the present Charter, and article 22 empowers the General Assembly to establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions. UNICEF was established by the Assembly under that power, by a resolution of 11 December 1946, originally as the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, to relieve children in the countries devastated by the Second World War. Its emergency character was later dropped and its mandate made permanent and general, and it kept the acronym.

A specialized agency, by contrast, is defined in Charter article 57: an organisation established by intergovernmental agreement, having wide international responsibilities in economic, social, cultural, educational, health and related fields as defined in its own basic instrument, brought into relationship with the United Nations under article 63. [The International Labour Organisation], [UNESCO] and [The World Health Organization] are specialized agencies. UNICEF is not.

Six consequences follow, and they are what an examiner is testing.

No constituent treaty. UNICEF was created by a resolution, not by a convention, so there is no instrument for States to ratify.

No separate membership. There are no member States of UNICEF; it belongs to the whole membership of the United Nations through the Assembly.

No separate legal personality of its own. It acts as an organ of the United Nations, whose personality Reparation for Injuries established, and the privileges and immunities it enjoys are those of the Organization under Charter articles 104 and 105.

No assessed contributions. It is financed wholly by voluntary contributions, from governments, from inter-governmental bodies and from private donors, and not from the budget apportioned under Charter article 17(2).

It can be altered or abolished by resolution. What the Assembly created under article 22 the Assembly may restructure, which is not true of an agency constituted by treaty.

It reports through the system. Its Executive Board, whose members are elected by the Economic and Social Council, reports through that Council to the General Assembly.

The voluntary funding is the fact that shapes everything else. An organisation that must raise its budget each year from willing donors is responsive to donors, is vulnerable to their priorities, and cannot plan as an agency with assessed contributions can. It is also the reason UNICEF developed national committees and public fundraising, which no specialized agency does.