More bad news for the United Nations.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has confirmed that going forward, the U.S. will pay no more than 25 percent of its peacekeeping costs.
Associated Press reported she told a Security Council meeting this week, “Peacekeeping is a shared responsibility. All of us have a role to play, and all of us must step up.”
The international group assessed the United States 28.5 percent of the $7.3 billion spending this year.
But that broke the 25 percent limit established in U.S. law and Haley informed the government officials in the U.N. that’s the cap, starting with this year’s peacekeeping budget.
But still, the second largest contributor, China, is told to pay only a bit over 10 percent.
In response, AP reported, spokesmen for Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted the 193 U.N. member states will decide the budget.
Currently, the U.N. peacekeeping operations involve some 105,000 troops and police in places ranging from Haiti to India and Pakistan.
There are 15 missions.
The administration earlier cited the cost, and this year’s budget is set at $570 million below last year’s.
“We’re only getting started,” Haley said at that time.
But she said the U.S. will work to make sure cuts in its portion are done fairly, and in a way that protects the peacekeeping projects, which have come under criticism.
“In Mali, where 13,000 peacekeepers have been deployed since 2013, residents in a northern region still ‘don’t feel safe and secure,’ Malian women’s rights activist Fatimata Toure told the Security Council on Wednesday,” according to AP.
Violence remains pervasive, there.
There also have been scandals involving sexual abuse and exploitation involving the U.N. The AP said its own investigation in 2017 found 2,000 claims of inappropriate conduct by U.N. personnel.
There were 59 peacekeepers killed by “malicious acts” in 2017 and a U.N. report just months ago said a part of the problem was “a deficit of leadership” at the U.N.
WND reported a year ago that Trump’s unhappiness with the U.N. was reflected in large ways across the nation.
Besides a petition to protest American money going to the far-left activism of the U.N., which has voted more times to condemn Israel than all the other nations of the world combined, Congress reviewed a bill to remove the U.S. from the U.N. – and even eliminate the diplomatic immunity its officials now are granted on U.S. shores.
Among the supporters of the ideas at the time was David Horowitz, author of “Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America,” who said, “I actually hope he [Trump] eventually pulls out of the U.N. and forms an organization that’s a true democratic alliance.
“Amen. I love that idea, by the way,” added commentator Stephen Moore. “And I think we should withdraw from a lot of these international organizations – the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, the World Bank. All of these institutions have been highly anti-American over the years. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Donald Trump didn’t do that! He’s contemptuous of things like the Paris climate change treaty, and so on. And look, who says we have to live by these rules that these politicians have established for years and years? There’s a new sheriff …”
“Good for you, Steve Moore! You’re a bomb-thrower, I mean, you have shed the shackles of orthodoxy! I’m so proud of you!” talk show host Lou Dobbs said.
Objectionable U.N. practices are its moves to override national law in its advocacy for abortion and the appointment to the Security Council of nations that abuse human rights, such as Angola and Senegal. It also threatens Americans’ constitutional rights through its Arms Trade Treaty and even parental rights through its Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Check out the Big List of leaders calling for the U.S. to defund the United Nations.
At the time, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, now named National Security Advisor, voiced opposition to the U.N. agenda.