Countries Embarrassingly Lose UN Membership Over Nonpaid Dues
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Roshan Amiri
- . January 13, 2022
- . Update: January 13, 2022 8:41 pm
In the recent developments, eight countries have lost their UN voting rights, in the UN assembly, including Iran, Venezuela and Sudan, due to dues not paid, where as 11 more countries are behind on paying up their membership dues.
Iran blames US sanctions for the lack of funds, saying that the dues are unpaid due to the ‘oppressive and illegal US sanctions.’ Iran has to pay more than $18 million. After losing its right to vote in January 2021, Iran has negotiated for months before getting back his voting rights in June. Other countries which have lost their right to vote in UN assembly are Antigua and Barbuda, Congo, Guinea, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu.
The main reason for losing the right to vote is unpaid dues. As per the UN charter, a member can lose it voting rights, if their arrears equal or exceed the amount that should have been paid over the preceding two full years. As per the Article 19 of UN, it can suspend the right to vote in the General Assembly for the countries whose arrears are equal to or greater than the contributions it has paid in the last two years.
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Countries like the Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe and Somalia, have not yet paid the dues in 2022, but they still they do not lose their voting rights, as the outstanding debt is deemed to be “due to conditions beyond their control.” As Shared by the Secretary-General the outstanding dues to restore voting rights for Venezuela is around €35 million, for Sudan it is €262,000 and Iran has to pay €15.8 million.
The 5 other countries are supposed to pay a minimum payment of €65,550 to get the voting rights. The total approved operating budget of UN is around €2.6 billion, this is in addition to the separate peacekeeping budget approved in of €5.7 billion, approved in June.
