Most condemned UN country among top UN donors

The Heritage Foundation has just published a report detailing who will fund the United Nations annual budget for 2015 (Brett D. Schaefer, “Key Issues of U.S. Concern at the United Nations”, May 6, 2015). Its findings are revealing.

Traditionally, the US is the UN’s top annual funder. For 2015, it’s scheduled to give the UN just over 3 billion dollars.

This is no surprise. The US has a commitment to the UN. What does surprise, however, is the extent to which the rest of the world doesn’t support the UN. For example, US support for the UN’s 2015 ‘regular budget’ is nearly 4 times more than the UN’s second biggest donor, France (ibid).

To give you a sense of how outsized US support is for the UN, the ‘Russian Federation’ is the UN’s fifth biggest donor. US support is 9 times greater than Russia’s (ibid).

The extent to which the world refuses to support the UN looks increasingly shocking the deeper into the numbers you get. For example, of 193 total Member States in the UN, 176 (91 per cent) of them, combined, give to the UN less than the US. Specifically, for 2015, the US covers 22 per cent of the UN’s ‘regular budget’ and 28.36 per cent of the UN’s ‘peacekeeping budget’. By contrast, those 176 countries together combine to cover only 21.685 per cent of the ‘regular budget’ and just 10.013 per cent of the ‘peacekeeping budget’.

Most appalling of all, the lowest paying 35 countries will contribute less than $28,300 USD each to the UN’s ‘regular budget’ in 2015 and less than $8,500 USD each to the UN’s ‘peacekeeping budget’ in 2015(ibid).

Quite literally, the US carries the UN. Some countries couldn’t care less.

Of the top 20 wealthiest countries in the world, only 13 are among the UN’s top 15 donors (World Bank, List of Countries by GDP, 2013, Current Prices). South Korea, Mexico, Spain, Indonesia, Turkey, Netherlands and Switzerland—while among the top 20 wealthiest nations-- are nowhere to be found among the top 15 UN donors.

Among the top 15 UN contributors, only one Arab country is listed, Saudi Arabia. It’s the 12^th biggest UN donor for 2015.

Two countries which are not included in the ‘top-20 wealthiest nations list’ are listed on the top-15 UN list. One country is Iran. It ranks 28^th among the world’s wealthiest nations. It’s 15^th of the UN’s 15 top donor.

Among the top UN donors, one country, ranked 14^th, seems out of place. It’s not one of the top-20 world’s wealthiest nations. It’s the ‘poorest’ nation on the top-15 UN list. It ranks 37^th on the world’s wealthiest nations list.

No other nation on the UN top-15 list shows such a gap between world-wealth rank and UN donor rank. Nevertheless, this ‘poorest’ of the 15 top-UN donors will contribute more than 44 million USD to the UN in 2015. This amount is more than 1,200 times the amount contributed by each of the lowest-contributing 35 nations.

Compared to the 56 Islamic members of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries), this 14^th top UN donor contributes almost 4 times more to the UN ‘regular budget’ than the average OIC country, and 9 times more to the UN ‘peacekeeping budget’.

This 14^th top UN donor is also, arguably, the most condemned nation in the world at the UN. It is vilified and demonized at the UN more than any other nation.

Do you know the name of the country which is the 14^th biggest donor to the UN? It’s Israel, the Jewish state.