No money for peace

 

 

As per the UN obligation under assessed contributions, member countries are legally liable to pay their due which is decided while signing UN treaties based on their share of global economy. This, with voluntary contributions, has been the common source of the UN peacekeeping operations. Unfortunately, while peacekeeping missions have become imperative to stabilise hostile situations and bring progress in conflict driven countries, the unexpected dearth of funds has emerged a serious stumbling block to carry out operations, which calls for an urgent need of thorough revision of the financing procedure. Peacekeeping operations witnessed rapid expansion after the 90s. The UN has tackled some of the hardest challenges in Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia since the last decade. But with US preferring to fund its own foreign operations more at the cost of contributions to UN Peacekeeping forces, UN is literally struggling to carry out its recent operations in Darfur, Haiti, Chad, East Timor et al. Though the US remains the biggest contributor with 26% of the entire funding, it became the biggest debtor too. Debt has reached to $1.5 billion this year. Moreover, the US, with UK, Japan, China and 15 other countries decide new UN missions with their unique veto power from UN charter, but with its thorough reluctance in paying its due, disinterest is growing among other countries. The last two decades have witnessed US’s growing apathy towards the UN. Also, its failure to use the UN for its global projection of national power, emergence of NATO and passion for unilateral way of aiding for allies have fuelled it. This vindicates the requirement of reforms initiation to maintain its global position and credibility and also find new source of funding by imposing tax on arm-trade, currency exchange and environment? It is not too late for the UN to reconsider members' position and unique power to work towards making peacekeeping an effective tool for global interest based on the principles of multilateralism and emergence of global leadership rather than national power projection.