The UN Undersecretary General for Management stated recently that the UN’s financial state was alarming. Member States have yet to pay more than $3 billion in dues, about two-thirds of which is owed by the United States.
Analysis: American proponents of UN reform still want changes made before the debt is paid off, and conditions to that effect have been attached to full US payment. This policy has been a lightning rod for criticism.
Opinion polls regularly show high support in the US for full payment. But even for those Americans wishing to discard the conditions, it is a bitter pill to swallow when the UN routinely serves as a forum hostile to Western values. These rage-venting sessions often come at the expense of the UN Charter.
For example, the Charter prohibits the General Assembly from making any recommendations while the Security Council is deliberating a dispute.
Yet at an Emergency Special Session on October 20, the GA made just such a recommendation concerning the crisis in the Middle East, following a particularly rhetorical and unconstructive meeting. Days earlier, a Special Session was called at the UN High Commission for Human Rights, with the end result even more frenzied and scathing. In the meantime, the same human rights forum lacks the necessary support even to examine the record of a country such as China, let alone to condemn it.
It is not unreasonable to expect the US to pay its past debts as a matter of national honor, but the UN has an obligation to give genuine consideration to reform for the sake of restoring the preeminence of its Charter. American concerns about budgetary and electoral reform, the scale of assessments, the role of civil society, and personnel evaluation are not unfounded. The UN’s structural problems will not disappear on their own. It will be up to a majority of Members to effect change.
