By Brett Schaefer
Wednesday, February 06, 2019
Budget cuts at the United Nations are a bit like UFO
sightings: the claims generally fall apart when the facts come in. Between 1960
and 2016, there have only been two times when an initially approved U.N.
regular budget was lower than the preceding budget.
So, a year ago, when the United States Mission to the
United Nations touted a “historic reduction in spending” after the U.N. General
Assembly approved a $285 million (5 percent) cut in the two-year regular UN
budget for 2018-2019, U.N. watchers took notice, but cautioned that the real
challenge would be maintaining that cut over the entire budget cycle.
Why the skepticism? Because the U.N. adjusts its two-year
budget at the mid-point to account for new expenditures and expenses. That
means that claims of budget reductions are premature until these adjustments
are implemented, which occurred this past December.
So, did the U.N. maintain last year’s budget reduction
following the mid-point adjustment? Unfortunately, it did not.
Instead, the General Assembly approved a $415 million
increase from $5.396 billion to $5.812 billion. Not only did the “cut”
announced by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations a year ago disappear, but
the regular budget is actually $130 million higher than the final budget for
2016-2017.
Those who pay attention to the U.N. budget – admittedly, a pastime less popular than UFO
hunting – know that this outcome is typical. In fact, this exact situation
occurred six years ago. In 2012, the Obama administration bragged that the
agreed-upon budget was “the first U.N. regular budget since 1998 – and only the
second in the last 50 years – that has gone down in comparison to the previous
budget’s actual expense.” The 2012 budget, however, also ended up being
significantly higher than the initial budget after mid-biennium additions.
In both instances, the U.S. Mission deserves credit for
getting the initial cut. Since the U.S. abandoned its policy of zero growth in
the UN regular budget in the early 2000s, the most common result is a budget
increase at the beginning of the biennium followed by another increase at the
mid-point. The chart below shows that the UN regular budget has increased on
average $318 million at the mid-point in each of the last nine budget cycles.
Should Americans be upset by a budget increase that will
see them paying $91 million – 22 percent of the $415 million increase – more
than originally expected?
Not entirely. Some of the increase was inevitable. The
two-year structure of the budget allows the organization to tweak the budget to
account for inflation and exchange rate fluctuations – necessary flexibility
since the U.N. operates in numerous countries with different currencies. The
U.N.-budget jargon for these adjustments is “recosting.”
In addition, some of the increase addresses legitimate
security concerns by bolstering U.N. political missions in Libya, Somalia,
Yemen, and other crisis points. Obviously, the U.S. should scrutinize these
expenditures to ensure effectiveness, but giving the U.N. resources to address
unstable crises is reasonable.
However, too much of the U.N. regular budget is wasteful
or dedicated to duplicative or low-priority activities of dubious merit. For
instance:
·
There is an additional $27.7 million for UN
human rights activities, most of which is dedicated to funding the activities
of the Human Rights Council. The Council, however, (1) includes human rights
abusers like China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia among its membership, (2) has
condemned neither those countries nor Russia, Zimbabwe, or many other
repressive governments for human rights abuses, and (3) was dismissed as a
hypocritical “cesspool of political bias” by Ambassador Nikki Haley. The U.S.
withdrew last year, but American taxpayers will be charged even more for the
work of that “cesspool” after the budget adjustment.
·
Another $19 million was added for “regional
cooperation for development” that mainly goes to the UN’s regional economic
commissions. These economic commissions, including one for Europe, ostensibly
advise governments on technical cooperation and regional economic integration.
This mandate overlaps with the responsibilities of the World Bank, IMF, and
other international organizations. Nonetheless, they continue because they
employ roughly 2,000 UN staff – positions that are highly compensated and
widely desired sinecures. The economic commissions cost nearly $300 million per
year – money that would help far more people if allocated to the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees or the World Food Program.
·
An additional $9.4 million for construction and
renovation of UN facilities, including $31.8 million for the “Strategic
Heritage Plan” to renovate the UN complex in Geneva. Justified or not, these
costs are not extraordinary or emergency in nature and should have been considered
in the original budget, rather than added mid-biennium.
In a normal budget process, these funding additions would
be proposed, debated and prioritized along with other funding proposals. But
that isn’t how the U.N. budget process generally operates.
Once the General Assembly approves activities and
expenditures, the U.N. considers them current and justified. When the U.N.
approves new funding for unanticipated activities during the budget cycle,
other governments tend to resist U.S. efforts to offset the new expenses. They
argue that if the U.N. endorsed a budget, there is no need to cut or eliminate
expenditures that were considered necessary just months before.
Fortunately, due to U.S. leadership under this and the
previous administration, the U.N. regular budget will shift to an annual budget
starting in 2020. This change means that, in the future, U.N. member states
will consider funding for new mandates in the context of all U.N. expenditures.
This should help those countries seeking budget discipline and will allow them
greater opportunity to focus resources on high-priority, effective activities
rather than outdated, duplicative, or unproductive activities.
This change will help, but will not cure the fundamental
problem: the majority of U.N. member states pay a minuscule share of the
expenses of the U.N. The U.S. will pay $639 million (22 percent of the recently
adjusted UN regular budget) in 2019 — more than 178 other U.N. member states
combined and 22,000 times more than the 30 least-assessed countries, which will
pay only $29,058 each. In fact, the 129 lowest-assessed countries – that’s
two-thirds of all U.N. member states, the number necessary to adopt a new
budget – will pay 1.633 percent of the regular budget combined.
Because most member states have little skin in the game,
they have little financial incentive to fulfill their oversight role and
seriously consider budgetary restraint. This a key reason why multiple U.S.
administrations, Democratic and Republican, have struggled to get support from
other member states to rein in U.N. salaries, eliminate outdated mandates, and
enact other budgetary reforms.
Not every member state should pay the same amount; there
are legitimate differences in the capacity of smaller or developing countries
to pay for the expenses of the U.N. However, being a U.N. member state with all
of the privileges and power that status affords should cost more than a midsize
car or a year’s tuition at college.
Unless this dynamic changes, the bulk of U.N. member
states will remain more concerned with what they can get out of the U.N. budget
than with ensuring that the budget prioritizes those tasks that advance the
purposes and principles of the United Nations.
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