ROMA – Workers who work in the world of solidarity and cooperation – which involves around 30 thousand people in Italy alone – often ask themselves questions about how their function could change if the UN, i.e. the highest supranational institution in existence today, were to function differently and had real power of interdiction and control to intervene on the international scene, torn by wars, food and climate crises and growing inequalities. The Organism, born on 24 October 1945 in San Francisco, suffers, and not today, accusations of weakness and ineffectiveness, effectively having zero room for maneuver in seeing resolutions applied that can really have an impact on changing things. About that, it goes listened to Massimo Giannini’s podcast on Repubblica from a few days ago.
The main obstacle that causes you to lose credibility. The main obstacle preventing the body, which represents 193 nations of the world, has always been the veto power assigned to the five permanent members of the Security Council who can impose on any decision of the UN General Assembly, and i.e. China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States.
The principles and objectives of the origin. They were to pit the alliance countries against Nazi Germany, defeated in the Second World War. That intent also contained universalists capable of bringing together all the nations of the world that had established free democratic institutions after the Second World War. An objective that the UN has only partially achieved, while leaving intact the contradiction represented by the fact of not being able to make decisions which then in any case have to pass under the scrutiny of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Decisions that often have to do with peace and war.
Those powers that aren’t there. The General Assembly, therefore, is effectively devoid of any substantial power, becoming only a propaganda tool, as when during the sessions that take place every year, even the smallest countries in the world can make their voices heard, without their appeals, requests, analyzes can give rise to concrete decisions that are never binding in any way. At most, generic resolutions are voted by majority which often do not produce any concrete facts. All this does nothing but produce debilitating consequences for the prestige of the supranational institution, with a progressive, inevitable loss of credibility and power, especially in moments of serious international crises and conflicts.
Yet the presence of the UN remains fundamental. And its financing remains a key issue precisely for the reform process. The United Nations – we read above Info-Cooperation – the portal for Italian humanitarian workers – rely on funding from Member States to carry out their functions and the ways in which contributions are made have a profound impact on the way in which the Organization operates. However, institutional fragmentation and the evolution of financing methods make it difficult, even for those who work within the United Nations, to keep track of the resources available and the complex dynamics that underlie them.
This is how the UN is funded. And recent study by title “Financing the United Nations: Status quo, challenges and reform options”, makes accessible an in-depth analysis of how the UN is financed and the financial challenges affecting multilateralism in a crucial period in which various options for reforming the UN system are under discussion. The study finds that recent trends in UN funding undermine the foundations of inclusive and effective multilateralism.
The bilateralization of the system. The decreasing importance of mandatory contributions and the increase in voluntary funding have contributed to a dynamic of “bilateralization” in the United Nations system, where major donors, especially Western ones, have a disproportionate influence on how multilateral cooperation takes place . At the same time, resources provided through channels outside of Member States’ contributions remained marginal.
Funding no longer corresponds to real needs. The level of funding provided by Member States no longer corresponds to the real needs of UN entities in addressing the global challenges of their mission and the modalities used by Member States often determine how the UN operates, not the other way around .
The procedures for allocating appropriations. They have been particularly influential in shaping funding and implementation rationales, as many UN entities focus more on responding to (Western) donor preferences than on addressing needs from the field. Across the UN system, the complexity of funding structures – with separate budgets and a multitude of trust funds – reflects geopolitical and bureaucratic logics, but undermines the effective functioning of the UN bodies themselves, since member states they can easily prioritize their own interests and neglect their responsibilities elsewhere. Ultimately, this skewed funding base reflects not only a deeply unequal international distribution of resources, but also the marginalization of developing country member states in the organization’s processes.
Only China and the USA give more than 10%. Only two countries – the United States (22%) and China (15%) – currently contribute more than 10% of the UN’s regular budget. In the 2022-2024 cycle, 16 countries contributed between 1 and 10%, while 175 Member States contributed less than 1%. Of the latter, 29 states were assigned the minimum contribution rate (i.e. the minimum threshold) equal to 0.001% of the regular budget, which amounts to $31,509 each.
The dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance. Over the past decade, the growth of resources allocated to the United Nations development system has also been driven by a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian aid tends to take the form of earmarked contributions, as donors wish to target their funding at specific crises.
Possible avenues for reform. The study highlights possible avenues for reforming the funding mechanism, ranging from a revision of the formula and the use of mandatory contributions to the regulation of funding from taxes, levies and donations as sources of UN income outside of contributions of the Member States.
Unfortunately, however, the prospects appear bleak. However, the prospects for implementing these reform proposals look bleak, probably now more than ever. The geo-politicisation of the UN negotiation processes has increased significantly over the past three years, from the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic to Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the current hostilities between Israel and Hamas.
But financing remains crucial for the future. But financial issues are and will be a central dimension of how UN entities and member states (re)negotiate the contours of multilateral cooperation. Therefore, a better understanding of the status quo and the challenges posed by UN financing remain one of the tools for critical, but constructive, engagement with the future of multilateralism.
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– 2024-04-28 01:47:55
