Last Thursday, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution reminiscent of Nazi-era laws, which calls on the UN Human Rights Chief to set up a database of companies that operate, not only in the West Bank, but in east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. As usual, this session of the UNHRC produced more resolutions condemning Israel that it produced on the rest of the world combined, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and North Korea. Obsession with Israel, however, is hardly the UN’s only problem.
Earlier this month, a long-time UN staffer blew the whistle on the “colossal mismanagement” at the UN.
If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again.
Former Assistant Secretary General Anthony Banbury cited the examples of Haiti, Mali, and the Central African Republic as illustrative of the UN’s profound inability to act as a peacekeeping force. He also discussed the UN failures in effectively fighting last year’s ebola outbreak.
These failures seem to be in stark contrast to the UN efficiency when it comes to singling out the world’s only Jewish state for condemnation. Yet, it is the US that pays a hugely disproportionate share of the bill for this behemoth.
Out of 193 UN member states, the US pays an astounding 22% of the UN’s regular budget, or $655 million. (Notably, Qatar, one of the richest nations on earth, pays only about $6M.) According to one report, the US pays an additional $2.4 billion towards a separate budget for the UN’s abysmal peacekeeping efforts, for a total of about $3 billion.
That’s not even counting the unpaid parking tickets, reported in 2014 to total $16 million.
How much longer will the US Congress keep footing the bill for this disaster of an organization?
