Recently, Iran and six other countries namely, Niger, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Congo Brazzaville, Central African Republic and Libya, have lost their voting rights in the United Nations General Assembly. The voting rights were lost because they had not paid their dues in accordance with the Article 19of the UN charter. Further, it was decided that three other countries namely, the Comoros, Somalia, Sao Tome and Principe will be allowed to vote despite having missing dues.
Why Iran has been banned from voting?
Iran has outstanding dues of 16.2 million USD with the United Nation (UN). Iran has raised the concern that the sanction by the United States is troubling it in paying the dues to the UN.
Article 19 of UN Charter
The Article 19 of the UN charter prohibits a member from voting if it has dues in the payment of its financial contributions to the UN. The charter also provides two years of grace period. But if the payments are pending for more than two years, then the voting rights of the member are suspended.
United Nations Funding
- The UN is financed through the assessed and voluntary contributions by the member states.
- The regular budget is approved by the General Assembly which then determines the assessment for each member.
- The assessment of the budget for the members is based on the relative capacity of each country to pay.
- The capacity of the country to pay is measured by its gross national income (GNI), by adjusting the external debt and low per capita income.
- For the period of 2019-2021, the largest contributors for the UN peacekeeping financial operations are:
- the United States having 27.89% contribution
- China has 15.21%.
- Japan contributes 8.56%.
- Germany 6.09%.
- United Kingdom 5.78%.
- France 5.61%.
- Italy 3.30%
- While Russian Federation contributes 3.04%.
- India is also the one among the thirty-four United Nations members who pay the budget dues on time. Recently, in January 2020, India contributed 23396496 USD to the United Nations.
How the UN Budget is determined?
The UN Members collectively determine the contributions from the individual members based on the formula called Scales of Assessment. It is revised every three years. This formula is based on the Gross National Income of the country.
