UNITED NATIONS: 35 Nations Lose Voting Rights at U.N.

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 1996 (IPS) - Thirty-five of the 185 countries at the United Nations have lost their voting rights at the world body because they have failed to pay their dues.

Some countries owe relatively small amounts, while others have run up millions of dollars in arrears.

While Cape Verde owes 480 dollars, Tanzania owes 4,080 dollars. On the other hand, Yugoslavia has to pay about 9.8 million dollars before it can regain its voting rights, while Georgia has to produce 3.5 million dollars.

“Some countries don’t realise how far behind they are.” said U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa. “When they see their names on the list or don’t get their ballot papers, they say, ‘Oh, my God’, and quickly the cheque is sent along.”

Jolted by a cash crisis, the United Nations is even thinking of taking plastic money from member states.

“Right now, we are thinking of taking credit cards,” Foa said. “It just might help.”

Of the 35 countries that have lost their voting rights, 17 are from Africa: Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone and Somalia.

Other defaulters include Afghanistan, Bolivia, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Latvia, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekestan, Vanuatu, Yemen and Yugoslavia.

Foa said that the U.N. Committee on Contributions was holding a special session to look at the appeals of countries that point to circumstances beyond their control.

“And they’re looking at these and turning a sympathetic ear to those countries that are having serious problems,” she said.

Aside from Yugoslavia and Georgia, the biggest defaulters are Iraq (2.7 million dollars), Latvia (1.5 million dollars) and Tajikistan (1.0 million dollars).

Foa said that in 1995, 22 countries lost their voting rights in the General Assembly, the United Nations’ highest policy-making body.

Article 19 of the U.N. Charter says that a member of the United Nations which is in arrears will have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount equals or exceeds the contributions due from the country for the preceding two years.

The biggest single defaulter is currently the United States, which owes 1.5 billion dollars. But Foa said the United States had not lost its voting rights because it had made payments towards 1994.

As of Mar. 1, countries owed the United Nations 3.1 billion dollars — 1.3 billion dollars for the regular budget and 1.8 billion dollars for peacekeeping operations. And as of last week, only 33 of the 185 member-states had paid their dues in full to the regular budget for 1996.

Seeking a solution to the organisation’s ongoing financial crisis, the Secretary-General told delegates last month that there should be a change in the scale of assessments which stipulates how much each of the 185 member-states pay to the regular budget.

For 1996, the United States is to pay 25 percent of the regular budget, followed by Japan (15.4 percent), Germany (9.0), France (6.4) Britain (5.3), Italy (5.1), Canada (3.1), Spain (2.3), Russia (4.4), and Brazil (1.6).

The scale of assessments is based is the “real capacity” of member-states to pay. The General Assembly has fixed a maximum of 25 percent of the budget for any one contributor and a minimum of 0.001 percent for most developing nations.

“The realities of international relations today differ from those which pertained at the time of the United Nations’ founding,” Boutros-Ghali said. “The scale of assessments should reflect current political and economic realities,” he said.

Boutros-Ghali also told delegates that the financial crisis has “brought the United Nations to the edge of insolvency.” “The Organisation is totally dependent on cash inflows from member states’s assessments to provide liquidity.”

The non-payment of dues has exacerbated the cash crisis.

Boutros-Ghali said he plans to appeal to heads of government of those countries in arrears. “I will also ask each of those countries which are in arrears now to provide me with their proposed payment plan to make up those arrears.”

The Secretary-General has also proposed a special session of the General Assembly to discuss the financial crisis. Thirty-five of the member-states would have no decision-making role at such a session because of the loss of their voting rights.