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operations. It owes $255 million for peacekeeping missions that have been closed and $2 billion for active peacekeeping missions.” Israel, Brazil, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, among others, are also in arrears.
The immediate impact, unless the defaulting members pay up, is that funds for payment of salaries for UN Secretariat personnel, numbering around 37,000 worldwide, will be unavailable by next month. The UN said further that conferences and meetings might have to be either postponed or canceled.
But probably of greater concern is how the UN can keep maintaining its peacekeeping operations. Countries like the Philippines that send peacekeeping troops to troubled areas are supposed to be reimbursed by the UN for their expenses, but lately these payments have become problematic.
This is not the first time that contentious issues have marred the UN’s budgeting process, especially where the US is concerned. US President Donald Trump complains that the US pays an unfairly large amount of dues, in relation to other countries, that is. Many Americans, then and now, share his views.
In the 1980s, the Clinton administration enacted a law that capped US share of the UN peacekeeping budget at 25 percent. Because the assessed rate for the US was higher than the unilaterally set limit, arrears in hundreds of millions of dollars accumulated. The cap was eventually raised by the Bush and Obama administrations.
Even then, in 2006, the US demanded a vote on the approval of the UN budget. Up to that point, this has not happened at the General Assembly. Approval of the budget used to go through a more diplomatic process of consensus.
Trump’s position reverts to the Clinton formula. He told the General Assembly in 2018: “The United States is committed to making the United Nations more
of member states can be addressed, the standoff appears to rationalize non-payment, or at least delays in payment, of dues altogether. It may not only be about assessment of dues, however. The likes of Trump have questioned the mandate of the world body and the way it is carrying out that mandate. He has withdrawn from the UN Arms Treaty and UN Human Rights Council over resolutions antagonizing Israel. Irked by threats of investigation over allegations of human rights violations in his government’s deadly drug war, President Rodrigo Duterte has responded by withdrawing from the UN International Criminal Court.
As disputes reach to a point where lives depend on cash, people have come forward to express their views with their wallets.
on how the UN came into being in
lost their collective wits, driving their respective countries to a global con
War 2 — that claimed the lives of an estimated 85 million combatants and civilians. Indirect casualties from ensuing genocides and various diseases of pandemic proportions numbered up to 100 million more.
In 1942, with the world still reeling from the devastation brought about by the war, the “victorious” countries led by the Big Four ( the US, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China), established the UN. Their aim was, primarily, to arrest madness — endemic among humans — and prevent another global war.
In a way, this was a replay of what happened in 1919. The victorious Big Four (Britain, France, the US and Italy), established the League of Nations, aiming to prevent the recurrence of World War 1. The invasion of Machuria (in China) by Japan in 1931 and of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935 exposed the League’s impotence. Another global war, ignited by Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, killed the League for good.
In a world where another war may leave nothing to kill or die for, one hopes the peacekeeping efforts of the UN will grind it out, imperfect its steps may be. The moral suasion of peace may not move sovereign states and principalities, but individuals with the means can step in when their governments are unwilling to foot the bill.