{"id":6421,"date":"2019-11-07T08:15:54","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T05:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6421"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:40","slug":"why-the-uns-financial-crisis-will-hurt-africans-more-than-anyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/07\/why-the-uns-financial-crisis-will-hurt-africans-more-than-anyone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The UN\u2019s Financial Crisis Will Hurt Africans More Than Anyone Else"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Gary Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The United Nations might&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/un-running-out-money-finance-guterres-secretary-general-united-nations-a9148601.html\">run\nout of cash<\/a>&nbsp;to meet its commitments by November. The organisation is\nfacing a US$1.7 billion shortfall because a third of its member states are in\narrears with their annual contributions to the UN budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a consequence, it has been unable to fill some of its\nvacant positions. It faces the prospect of having to make cuts to its\nexpenditure and scale back on the activities it is currently involved in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These financial problems are not new. The challenge of\nadequately funding the UN has been a long-running saga which can be traced back\nto its early years. The term \u2018financial crisis\u2019 has been applied to the UN\nin&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/2009456?read-now=1&amp;seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents\">discussions\ndating back to the 1960s<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the financial crisis became\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/004711789201100204?journalCode=ireb\">particularly dire in the 1990s<\/a>. This period coincided with a huge expansion in UN peacekeeping activities, necessitated by the explosion of internal conflicts around the world at that time. The activities were made possible by new-found cooperation between the major powers. This saw a decline in their use of vetoes within the Security Council. The increase in peacekeeping placed a greater financial strain on the UN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Its debts reached US$2.3 billion as America\u2019s arrears\nmounted. At the time, the United States (US) was the biggest budget contributor\nto the UN despite the fact that its contribution was a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalpolicy.org\/component\/content\/article\/224\/27206.html\">tiny\nshare<\/a>&nbsp;of its federal domestic spending. While the situation improved\nsomewhat into the millennium, the financial well-being of the organisation has\nremained heavily contingent upon the US\u2019 compliance with its budgetary\nobligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The US has remained the biggest contributor to the UN,\ncurrently carrying 22% of the general budget, and has continuously sought to\nuse that as leverage to extract concessions from the world body. It has managed\nto negotiate a reduction in its contribution, while at the same time pushing\nfor&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.refworld.org\/pdfid\/4e3907c72.pdf\">efficiency\nreforms and cost-cutting measures<\/a>&nbsp;within the organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/why-the-uns-financial-crisis-will-hurt-africans-more-than-anyone-else-126034\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Gary Wilson The United Nations might&nbsp;run out of cash&nbsp;to meet its commitments by November. The organisation is facing a US$1.7 billion shortfall because a third of its member states&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}