Twenty years ago, a committee led by former Chair of the US Federal Reserve Paul Volcker released its report. The committee had investigated what had been known as the “oil-for-food” program, which began in 1996 as a humanitarian effort to feed the Iraqi people. It was the first United Nations humanitarian program to be financed by the resources of those it was serving: the sale of Iraqi oil.
In his Senate briefing that year on the committee’s work, Volcker had told the Committee on Foreign Relations about “spreading reports of maladministration, ethical lapses, and growing corruption reaching even into the UN itself have eroded confidence in UN competence and have heavily damaged its credibility.” Eventually, the immense scale of the graft had led to a single “inescapable conclusion from the committee’s work,” which was that the UN “needs thorough reform, and it needs it urgently.” That was in 2005.
Between then and now, the UN has hardly redeemed itself. There have been bribery allegations over UN peacekeeping contracts in Africa, fraud in procurements, and sex abuse allegations against UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. For all these, the UN’s internal oversight mechanisms were deemed to have competence and independence enough to adjudge.
My affiliation with UN agencies, as a consultant in several subjects* for just over 20 years, has led me to see the merits of a UN, but not this one.
That familiarity, both with the potential of a UN and the quite obvious and depressingly long series of lapses has often led me to posit two possibilities: that the UN be reformed and continue or that the UN be drastically pared down — and either option will need decisive action by the USA.
Mohamad Ali Khadra is therefore correct, in my view, to write that the UN and its agencies are perceived to weaken sovereignty while leeching countries of their monies. In his commentary, he mentioned the UN Security Council as being a compelling reason the US should stay within the UN system.
But there are other ways to look at the matter. A calibrated US withdrawal from the UN system could be just the medicine required. From the American point of view, there is good enough reason to acknowledge two truths:
a) the US has contributed to the UN an average of $11.64 billion every year, a portion that has been 22-27.5 percent of its budget, and twice the contribution of the next-largest donor, Germany ($5.4 billion).
b) for funding just over a quarter of the UN’s work and expenses the US government has negligible control over how that money is spent and why.
This patently inequitable burden is made more inequitable by the complexity of the system through which the US contribution is spread. Just as worrying are the many interests that exploit our generosity because of the UN system’s apparent inability and clear unwillingness to address gross inefficiencies.
In contrast to the gravy train running from the USA to the UN, a majority of UN member states (105 in 2023) are assessed at less than $10 million per year for both the regular and peacekeeping budgets (82 under $5 million). The US, however, has a huge financial interest in efficiency and the prudent use of resources, as was stated in a Congressional testimony on ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Advancing US Interests in the United Nations System’ in November 2019.
It has taken six years more for the USA to act. This July 2025, the US Congress approved a $9 billion ‘rescissions package’ which includes directly cutting about $1 billion to the UN and its agencies (the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East of great recent notoriety, UN peacekeeping, UN Interim Force in Lebanon, UN Children’s Fund, UN Development Program, the Montreal Protocol, and the UN Population Fund are named).
The Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, explained in its letter (PDF) accompanying the proposed set rescissions:
These rescissions would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests, such as funding the World Health Organization, LGBTQI+ activities, ‘equity’ programs, radical Green New Deal-type policies, and color revolutions in hostile places around the world.
The underlying subtext of the explanation has to do with accountability and the setting of agendas. The government of the USA is entirely justified in expecting a rational and detailed answer to its question: How have you decided to use our money and how did you arrive at those decisions?
Getting a clear answer is difficult, however, because of how the UN works.
In the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, and the general assemblies of the major UN agencies, one country has one vote. Matters are decided either by a simple majority or a two-thirds majority. For years, efforts have been made to instill proportion in what a UN vote represents, for very good reasons, one of them being population. To put that in perspective, the population of the 25 smallest UN member nations combined is about 1.8 million — about the same as the population of Nebraska. Each of those 25 has a UN vote. The USA, whose national population is more than 200 Nebraskas, has one UN vote.
Complicating matters is the strong tendency of UN representatives to vote in blocs, whether regional or ideological. The largest of these blocs is the Group of 77 (established in 1964 as representing the interests of developing countries). A second large bloc is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57 countries). Currently, 51 G-77 member countries are also OIC member countries.
Most UN General Assembly resolutions are passed with a simple majority; 97 votes out of 193 member states and where a two-thirds majority is required (such as for budget decisions) it is 129 votes. The arithmetic makes it easy to see how bloc power is used. Countries that have little interest in the substance of a resolution comply with a group position in order to seek future favors, whether in the General Assembly or in a major UN agency.
Financial imbalances and the voting system continue as core UN reforms that should have been attended to at least 20 years ago. A third is the same remedy UN agencies routinely advise: monitoring and evaluation. The UN does not apply these standards to its own system. In 2005, the General Assembly instructed the Secretary-General (PDF) to review — for relevance and effectiveness — its current programs. The review was allowed to quietly become inactive.
These are contributing reasons for the American Enterprise Institute to have very recently announced its UN Organizations Assessment Project, which determines how the UN and 39 of its agencies and affiliated organizations contribute to US security, foreign policy, and economic interests. This assessment project frames in policy terms what the US State Department is already implementing.
Where the UN has failed most profoundly is to fulfill the very first line of the UN Charter, which dates to 1945, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The roster of organizations (like The Geneva Academy, the Council on Foreign Relations, International Crisis Group) that track conflicts around the world has only grown over the last 25 years, and the lists of current conflicts range from 30 to over 100. Some have lasted over fifty years.
This failure sets a backdrop for the US decision to cease funding the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a thoroughly odious UN agency that has been shown (most consistently by UN Watch) to run institutions that serve as centers of anti-Israel subversion, to run schools that indoctrinate children into Jew hatred and violence while serving as weapons depots and command posts for the terrorist group Hamas.
But not only UNRWA. Last month, the US Department of State withdrew from UNESCO, citing continued involvement with the UN cultural agency as being “not in the national interest of the United States” because “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes” and also because of this UN agency’s admission of the State of Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The US resetting of its UN membership reveals a sovereign intent that has been long, if not altogether, missing from countries’ assessments of what the UN holds for them. Smaller countries especially (used as vote banks by the big blocs), both in population and in the available monies they have for multilateral institutions, should read from the US stance an imperative for the next generation: UN review and reform.
This work lies not in the hands of some high-powered committee but in each UN member state’s external affairs administration. For the majority of UN member states, their assessed contributions to the UN and to each UN agency they attend through an ambassador are but part of the costs. Add to that the costs of personnel and maintaining representation, the costs of administering the country’s UN-related work, and the costs of attending the numerous UN annual conferences. It is an unnecessary burden. The trained personnel and monies can be better spent on constructive bilateral activities.
The US action has shown what is immediately possible. Sovereign interest may not forever be held hostage to a global club with little on the line.
*Disclosure: The author is a UNESCO expert on intangible cultural heritage in the Asia region, and has worked on development programs with UNDP and FAO.
