Posted on 10/25/2007 8:18:04 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Secretary-General proposed a two-year budget of $4.2 billion on Thursday, saying the small increase isn't much in light of the growing demands on the United Nations to address a range of diplomatic and security challenges.
While the proposed budget represents a 5 percent increase over the $3.8 billion budget for the 2006-2007, Ban Ki-Moon said it represents only $23 million in real growth, or half a percentage point.
"That is not much, considering the demands upon us," he said, naming conflicts and potential crisis areas as well as longer-term challenges of alleviating poverty, providing humanitarian aid and fighting climate change and HIV/AIDS.
Later, U.N. management chief Alicia Barcena told reporters that because of inflation and exchange rates by the time the money is actually used the budget is expected to rise to $4.4 billion.
The budget covers the U.N.'s daily operations, not its far-flung peacekeeping operations or tribunals which are financed from separate budgets.
Ban called for $18 million to strengthen the Department of Political Affairs so it can beef up its mediation and crisis diplomacy efforts to try to prevent conflicts before they break out and become costlier in lives and money.
"Dealing with the aftermath of war is costly," Ban said. "Too many lives are needlessly lost, often as a result of the international community's inability to act early enough. ... Strengthening the U.N.'s capacity to step in — to resolve conflicts earlier rather than later — is among the smartest investments we can make."
Pakistan's deputy U.N. ambassador Farukh Amil, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China, criticized the budget for lacking sufficient funds for development and called for transparency as the two-year program is fine tuned.
>Strengthening the U.N.’s capacity to step in — to resolve conflicts earlier rather than later — is among the smartest investments we can make.”
LOL! and it could possibly do that, how?
What capacity? Asking for more things?
Send them to Montreal & let them figure things out from there.
http://www.aim.org/aim_column/5275_0_3_0/
U.S. contributions to the U.N. system are over $5.3 billion
OMB, for the first time ever, reveals how much the taxpayers fund the U.N.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a report yesterday to Dr. Coburn on contributions of U.S. taxpayers to the United Nations. Before this report, no one in the federal government had ever developed a public compilation of the total U.S. contributions, including non-monetary, to the entire U.N. system.
According to the report, in 2005, the United States gave $5.3 billion to the U.N—a 30% increase from 2004 funding level of $4.1 billion. Almost every Department of the U.S. government plus several independent agencies fund the U.N. Although the U.N. does not track this information or at least does not make such information public, most experts say the total U.N. budget is between $15-20 billion. The U.S. funded portion is between 25% and 30%.
The release of this report is a small first step towards transparency for the U.S. government. The taxpayers donate a considerable amount of cash and in-kind contributions to the U.N., but without knowing where the money is going and exactly how much, it is impossible to judge whether or not this is money well spent.
mORE DOWN THE RAT HOLE.
That’s a phenomenal number of NYC parking tickets.
Does anybody else wonder why we still support the UN?
It tries to undermine the Constitution of the USA and would love to cripple our Constitutional Republic.
In over 60 years No major politician has ever tried to get the USA out of the UN.
16 out of 17 of the AMERICANS that were involved in creating the U . N. were later identified, in sworn testimony, as secret communist agents.
The first Secretary General was the AMERICAN Alger Hiss. Alger Hiss served time in prison pursuant to his involvement in a Communist spy ring.
Many of the other AMERICANS that were involved in creating the U . N. fled the country, to avoid prosecution.
The ONE AMERICAN, that was involved in creating the U . N. ; and was NOT later identified, in sworn testimony, as a secret communist agent, was Dean Acheson. Dean Acheson’s law firm was the legal representative of the Soviet Union, in U. S. courts.
If the AMERICANS that were involved in creating the U . N. were Communists, what do you think we got from the rest of the world?
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