We pay more and fight more

What is the UN missing?

At the end of last year, the UN General Assembly approved the organisation’s budget for 2024. Compared to 2023, it has grown by $190 million. But that’s it for now. How much more expensive the UN 2024 will cost will only be clear at the end of the year. Because they asked for 3.1 billion dollars for 2023, but spent 3.4. In any case, the UN is not going to limit its spending. And we are talking only about the regular budget of the organisation. All other UN budgets, programmes and other black holes that absorb billions of dollars annually are financed separately. One might assume that the United Nations needs more money to tackle global problems, which have increased in the world in 2023. But no. The budget increase is due to the need to hire new employees. And these are by no means the employees who will decide anything. The UN Secretariat employs about 40 thousand people — one Secretary General has more than 20 deputies, and each deputy has the same number of his own deputies, and so on down the chain. In fact, the organisation’s regular budget is mainly spent on ‘feeding’ them. So what staff is the world’s most powerful bureaucracy missing in 2024? It turned out to be interpreters. There are no other problems in the world other than translating yet another empty UN chatter into all the official languages of the organisation...

From 22 to 0.001 percent

UN budgets are formed from contributions from member countries. How much each country pays is decided by a special Committee on Contributions, which closely monitors the economic performance of member states to determine how much they are able to pay into UN budgets.

The maximum contribution to the UN regular budget is currently limited to 22 percent, and the minimum is 0.001 percent of the budget. Based on the $3.59 billion requested for 2024, the maximum contribution this year will be $789,800,000 and the minimum will be $35,900. The United States pays the maximum rate to the UN budget; states such as Lesotho, Liberia, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Vanuatu pay the minimum rate.

But there are problems with replenishing UN budgets. At the end of 2023, the Secretary General of the organisation called on all countries to make their mandatory contributions on time and in full. Because in 2021 the UN collected only 82.7 percent of the regular budget, and in 2022 even less — 71.9 percent.
The United States has the largest debt to the UN (about $1 billion). And the States are not alone in the list of debtors, although all other defaulters together have a debt amount that is significantly less than the US one. Regarding punishment, the UN Charter has Article 19, which deprives debtors of the right to vote in the General Assembly if the amount of debt equals or exceeds the amount of contributions due for the previous two full years. 

As of August 31st, 2023, the debt described in Article 19 of the UN Charter is owed by four member states: Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Venezuela.

But the UN always provides for loopholes, and the same Article 19 of the Charter specifies that the General Assembly may allow debtors to vote if the payment is late due to circumstances beyond their control. Therefore, the Comoros Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia continue to vote until the end of the 78th session (until September 10th, 2024). But Venezuela was deprived of voting rights for this period, apparently, the circumstances of the formation of its debt did not suit the UN.  

How much does Belarus pay?

In 1945, when the UN was created, the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR, together with the USSR, became the founders of the UN. Accordingly, they also had obligations to the organisation. And first of all, these are, of course, contributions to the UN budget, which only grow larger from year to year.

In 1946, the Byelorussian SSR paid $44,597 (0.23 percent of the UN regular budget). In 1951, the amount increased to $117,421 (0.24 percent). 

In 1962, the payment amounted to almost half a million dollars — 446,255. And in 1972, the BSSR crossed the $1 million mark. By the early 1980s, the BSSR’s contributions to the UN budget exceeded $2 million.
Independent Belarus, which after the collapse of the USSR became the successor of the Belarusian SSR at the UN, in 1992 had to pay $3,737,676 (0.31 percent) to the organisation’s budget. And in 1994 it was already $4,080,275 (0.31 percent). In 1995, the contribution for Belarus soared to $4,870,005 (0.37 percent). And this despite the fact that after the collapse of the USSR and several years of nationalist rule, the economy of our country was not in the best condition. In this regard, the activities of the UN Committee on Contributions, which in such a strange way assessed the solvency of a country teetering on the brink of economic disaster, raises many questions. Since 1995, Belarus began a gradual reduction in the amount of its contribution as a percentage of payments to the UN regular budget. By 2004 it was 0.018 percent, or $329,022.

But the UN’s appetite continues to grow. And again we pay millions. In 2020, the annual contribution to the UN for Belarus amounted to $1,374,614 (0.045 percent), in 2021 — $1,417,354 (0.044 percent), in 2022 — $1,177,795 (0.037 percent), in 2023 — $1,666,000 (0.049 percent). In 2024, Belarus will have to pay $1,471,900 (0.041 percent of the UN regular budget) to the UN regular budget. 

Another billion in five years?

It is clear that the ever-increasing amounts that the UN demands from countries are associated with the growth of the regular budget itself. Moreover, this growth recently can be called rapid.
The first regular budget was adopted by the General Assembly in December 1946 and amounted to only $19,300,000. The following year, 1947, the UN already needed $28,618,568. And starting in 1948, the UN realised that it was possible to plan one amount, spend another and then simply report on the overspending. There were, of course, years when planned expenses decreased rather than increased, but there were not many of them.
Since 1974, UN budgets began to be requested for two years: they were motivated that it would be better to plan expenses this way. But improved planning did not stop the growth of budgets, quite the contrary.
The UN was able to increase its regular expenses to a billion dollars a year already in 1990–1991. Initially, $1,974,634,000 was planned for this period, but in 1991 it turned out that $2,167,974,500 had been spent.

And if the UN ‘grew’ to the first billion a year for 45 years, then the UN’s appetites grew to two billion in 2006–2007, that is, in 16 years.

In 2010–2011, the regular UN budget was already more than two and a half billion a year.
When eight years later it became clear that the annual budget was about to grow to $3 billion a year, the UN decided not to scare its members and return to planning annual budgets. 

For 2024, the UN asked member states to chip in in the amount of $3,590,000,000. Following the logic of the organisation’s expenses, if not this year, then in 2025, expenses could grow to $4 billion per year. 

And what do we get in the whole world for that kind of money? Well, we have nothing. There are more and more wars on the planet, children still die from hunger and disease, education and medical care remain an unattainable luxury in many regions of the world. And the organisation that was created to combat all this is only engaged in the distribution of humanitarian aid.
True, sometimes humanitarian actions look more like major economic scams under the guise of the UN. Suffice it to recall the Black Sea Initiative, which was presented to the world as a ‘Feed the hungry in Africa and Asia’ operation, but turned into an outright resale of Ukrainian grain to wealthy European reseller countries... 

Isn’t the hub for distributing humanitarian aid too expensive? And in general, does the world need a bureaucratic monster that annually devours the budget of a small country and ceased to perform its functions several decades ago? Isn’t it time to think about these questions? 

By Alena Krasovskaya