U.S. Cuts $285M From 3.3B U.N. Budget

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Dec. 25, 2017

The significance of this cut is being wildly overblown.

From The Hill:

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations announced Sunday that it negotiated a major reduction in the U.N.'s budget for the upcoming fiscal years.

According to a statement from the mission, the 2018-2019 U.N. budget will have a $285 million reduction from the previous two years.

"In addition to these significant cost savings, we reduced the UN's bloated management and support functions, bolstered support for key U.S. priorities throughout the world, and instilled more discipline and accountability throughout the UN system," the statement reads.

One of the Trump administration's goals has been to reduce the amount of contributions that the U.S. makes to the U.N. The U.S. currently provides for about 22 percent of the annual budget, or about $3.3 billion per year, according to PolitiFact.

The U.N. General Assembly previously approved a $5.4 billion operating budget for 2016 and 2017. The regular budget is separate from the body's budget for its sprawling peacekeeping operations, which totaled $7.8 billion for 2017 alone.

That's a cut of less than 10 percent.

It's not clear where these cuts were made, but the majority of their funding is going to train some 80,000-90,000 soldiers, which they call "peacekeepers," in Africa, Haiti and the Middle East, and that's on top of other programs providing billions in aid.

Despite these billions, the West is being inundated with "refugees" from all these countries constantly. The question is whether or not cutting the budget will increase the migrant flow outward.

According to Oxford professor Paul Collier, helping refugees locally is 135 times cheaper than helping them in the West.

Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook and Gab.