UN Budget: Who's Paid Their Dues?

The United Nation’s General Assembly assessed a regular budget of some 2.5 billion US dollars for the current fiscal year. Even though member states were given a one month period to place their payment, only 48 states did pay on time with an additional 5 states paying shortly after the key date of February 9. Low payment morale is nothing new to UN budgeters. In the last ten years, roughly one fourth of the UN’s member states managed to fulfill their monetary commitment on time.

Only six of the UN’s “Big Spenders”, who account to almost 80 percent of organizations’ yearly regular budget, are on the recently released Honour Roll of on time payments. Unsurprisingly the United States of America, solely responsible for 590 million US dollars of this year’s budget, are not on this list. Lately President Donald Trump threatened to cut funds for intergovernmental institutions like the UN or NATO.

Besides its regular budget, the United Nations’ work relies on two more main monetary sources - the obligatory Peacekeeping Budget, dedicated to the organization’s peacekeeping missions and criminal courts, as well as voluntary contributions to the various sub-organizations like UNESCO or the WHO.