The United Nations is in strife. The idealism may well still there; but the realism is not. The UN will have no more cash left on December 31 and will be $A560 million in debt.
Members states are asking the United Nations to pay out and spend more than it is taking in yet those very members are not paying their dues. Only 25 states have paid up for 1996 on time, leaving 160 states in arrears. They total $A4.4 billion. The biggest debtor, the United States, owes $A1.6 billion. The US pays about a quarter of the UN’s finances.
The mood in the US Congress has been hostile the UN for quite some time. US members of Congress have objected to UN resolutions that ran counter to US foreign policy and have objected to what they see as waste at the UN headquarters in New York. But they have failed to balance that against the UN’s good works. Nor have they balanced the UN record’s against the US’s own fairly pitiful record as policeman of the world.
Administrative efficiencies or suspension of voting rights may help a little, but ultimately members can not go on asking the UN to do more than they are prepared to pay it to do. Flawed as it might be, the UN is the only body that can undertake a lot of the world’s peace-keeping and humanitarian work. It would be better for nations to find the money rather than take the more costly road in the long-term of cutting UN functions.