Saturday, March 5, 2011

Great Britain Defunds U.N. Agencies


The United Nations just got smacked around by one of their biggest supporters. Great Britain defunded four U.N. agencies and put three others on notice. They like many western countries are having budgetary problems, and with that comes a result oriented fiscal policy. The United Nations with its corrupt, sprawling bureaucracies fails to meet that standard.


This new attitude by the Brits should give encouragement to the House Republicans. They too are sharpening their knives and will hopefully take a hard line on this corrupt organization. Fox News reports the following:

Such an attitude is “long overdue,” in the opinion of Brett Schaefer, an expert on U.S. funding of the U.N. at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and a longstanding critic of unquestioning American support for the institution. “The taxpayers in developed countries and the poor in developing countries both deserve better than they have been receiving from the U.N.”


The U.S. pays 22 percent of the so-called”core” budget of the U.N. Secretariat, and 27 percent of peacekeeping expenses, but its so-called voluntary spending on U.N. agencies and programs goes far beyond that, to an estimated $6.3 billion overall.


Even that number is likely a significant under-estimation, since many U.N. bodes operate as “implementing agencies”—program managers—for U.S. funds that are channeled through non-U.N. institutions, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), where the U.S. has donated $5.1 billion since 2002, and pledged an additional $4.4 billion. The implementing agencies typically charge a percentage for their service.

The Brits have delivered a huge body blow; now it’s time for the Americans to deliver a knockout punch.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/03/uk-pulls-plug-united-nations-spending-opposition/

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