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IN what has become a depressingly regular annual occurrence, the United Nations has once again informed its staff and member-countries that it is facing a severe cash shortage, and will have to take drastic cost-saving measures. Much of this can be blamed on withdrawn or overdue funding from the United States, but unfortunately, the Philippines is also among the countries that have been delinquent in paying their dues to the world body.
News that the UN is facing financial stress is not exactly surprising. The organization has, for decades, struggled to collect dues from member-states, with the richest ones generally being the biggest deadbeats. UN contributions are determined according to a complicated scale based on per-capita gross domestic product for each country. In 2023, the UN collected only 82.3 percent of the year’s assessment from member-states, the lowest in five years, causing its yearend deficit to balloon to $859 million from $330 million at the end of 2022.
The situation was even worse in 2024, with the organization’s unpaid contribution deficit (as of Sept. 30) hitting $1.5 billion, up from $1.3 billion the previous year. The UN began 2024 with only $67 million in cash — it had $700 million at the start of 2023 — and had to borrow from its Working Capital Fund to pay salaries and basic operating expenses.
A view of the United Nations’ headquarters in New York on June 7, 2022. EPA FILE PHOTO
In 2025, it seems that things have gone from bad to worse to even worse, and this is largely due to the hostile attitude taken by the Trump administration toward the UN. The US is the biggest contributor to the UN, accounting for about 22 percent of the UN’s regular budget and 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. As of now (through March 5), according to a report by Inter Press Service (IPS), the US owes $1.5 billion to the UN’s regular budget; between the regular budget, the peacekeeping budget and international tribunals, the total amount the US owes is $2.8 billion. Trump has already threatened to withdraw the US from the UN, as the latter “is not aligned with American values,” so there is little chance these arrears will be paid.
That is not all. Apart from those regular contributions, the US also provides a substantial amount of funding for individual UN agencies — or at least it did, until the Trump administration ordered the cancellation of almost all foreign aid. Just one example provided by the IPS report was the abrupt termination of $377 million worth of funding through the US Agency for International Development (USAid) to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the reproductive and sexual health agency.
In a statement, UNFPA said 48 grants from USAid and the US State Department were terminated on Feb. 26. “This decision will have devastating impacts on women and girls, and the health and aid workers who serve them in the world’s worst humanitarian crises,” the agency said.
To try to manage the cash crisis, the UN administration announced this week that all departments’ budgets would be reduced to 80 percent of what had been planned for 2025; a hiring freeze has been imposed until at least August; and other cost-cutting measures are being implemented.
Now while the UN has been criticized, and deservedly so, for a great deal of administrative inefficiency and uneconomical spending habits, it has implemented a number of reforms in the past few years to improve its performance. But the bottom line is, the UN cannot spend what it does not collect from its 193 member nations, and as of March 5, only 72 of them have paid their dues in full for this fiscal year.
The Philippines is not among those contributors in good standing. This is an unnecessary discredit to our national reputation, and rather inconsiderate in light of the Philippines’ intentions to bring matters such as the West Philippine Sea dispute to the UN. Our obligation for this year amounts to $7.63 million for the regular UN budget, and about $2.3 million for the peacekeeping budget, or about P570 million altogether. That’s not an insubstantial sum, but it is within the government’s capacity to pay. For the protection and support that we enjoy from the UN and its attached agencies, it is only right that we pay our bill.
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Credit belongs to : www.manilatimes.net
