US Bill ties UN funding to reform

A US congressional committee has drafted a Bill that threatens to withhold tens of millions of pounds from the United Nations unless the world body launches wide-ranging reforms, possibly setting the stage for a funding battle like the one that plunged the UN into financial crisis a decade ago.

The "United Nations Reform Act of 2005" targets a panoply of issues that for years have troubled critics of the United Nations, particularly US Republicans. Among other things, it would seek to cut funding for programmes seen as ineffective and bar human rights violators from serving on UN human rights bodies.

The 80-page Bill, from Illinois Republican Henry Hyde's House International Relations Committee, is still in an early form and has only recently been distributed to Democrats, who are likely to oppose several elements. It was sent to a few UN officials last night.

One of the Bill's most controversial proposals will be linking payments to the reforms it spells out. The document stipulates that if the reforms are not carried out, Congress will withhold 50% of the money the US pays to the UN general budget, taking the money from programmes it deems inefficient and wasteful.

"No observer, be they passionate supporter or dismissive critic, can pretend that the current structure and operations of the UN represent an acceptable standard," Hyde said in a hearing on UN reform before the document was sent to a few UN officials.

The proposed changes would shake the UN system at its foundations. The US, the biggest financial contributor to the United Nations, pays a little under 25% of the annual €1.5bn general budget. That doesn't include money for peacekeeping, international tribunals, or programmes like the UN Development Program and UNICEF, which are funded separately.

It could also put Hyde's committee on a collision course with the administration of President George W Bush, who has told UN officials in the past that he doesn't believe in withholding dues.

For many, the move could be reminiscent of the 1990s, when the US fell millions of dollars behind in its dues, throwing the UN into financial crisis. At the time, North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms and other politicians argued the payments were excessive and the world body's bureaucracy was too bloated.

That earlier crisis also strained ties with other countries opposed to the US strategy. In 1998, the United States almost lost its voting rights in the General Assembly over unpaid contributions.

Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, echoed those fears at Hyde's hearing yesterday.

"We feel very strongly that your reform ideas, what we know of them, are very good and very strong and very consistent with what other countries want," Malloch Brown said. But, he added, withholding dues "separates you from your allies because it's seen as America acting alone".

A few of the document's ideas resemble changes that Annan laid out earlier this year under his report "In Larger Freedom," which seeks some of the most sweeping reforms in the world body's 60-year history. But most of the Bill's contents are unrelated.

The lynchpin of the proposed Bill is the requirement that several UN programmes now funded under the general budget instead raise their money from voluntary contributions by governments and individual donors.

The idea is that by requiring these programmes to seek funding on their own, they would have to become more efficient and transparent, or shut down if they couldn't compete. Republican leaders point to programmes that are funded that way and now run smoothly, including the UN Development Programme, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF.

The Bill gives a list of 18 programmes that should be included under the new umbrella. They include lesser known programs such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development and the UN Human Settlements Programme. But there are well known ones as well, including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

If those programmes do not change, a portion of the dues normally meant for them would be redirected to programmes in three categories - internal oversight, human rights or humanitarian assistance. That means that the changes would not necessarily result in less US dues to the UN, just that payments would go elsewhere.

Other elements of the bill include strengthening the UN whistleblower policy and making the UN internal watchdog an independently funded agency. The Bill would put in place new ways to crack down on sex abuse by peacekeepers and require annual financial disclosure statements by senior UN officials.