Reform of the United Nations and the US-Japan cooperation
- Q.
- What is Japan's position on the financial reform of the United Nations?
Table: Major Contributors to the U.N. Budget
Under the chronic financial difficulties of the UN, the mission of the WG is to arrive at an arrangement that will solve the UN financial problems and that can be accepted as fair and equitable.
The Member States will have to address the problem of finance as one - though essential - ingredient of an overall plan for the reform of the Organization in all its aspects. Reform of the Organization has many aspects, and the ultimate solution to the financial problems will have to be sought within the frameework of a well-ballanced and comprehensive package, which should inculide reform proposals not only in the financial area, but also in the social and economic areas as well as the political area.
Member States must pay their assessed contributions in full, on time, and without conditions. In order to achieve the purpose, the UN should introduce specific measurs that will promote payment, including incentives for encouraging Member States to pay early and disincentives for discouraging them from falling into arrears.
Regarding the scale of contributions, a clearer understanding should be established on the linkage that exists between the responsibility that a Member State is expected to carry out in the responsibility that a Member State is expected to carry out in the Organizaztion and the apportionment of its financial burden. For this purpose, it would be useful for example to introduce, into the current system based essentially on the principle of "the capacity to pay", a concept that might be called "the responsibilities that individual Member States shoulder. To that end, consideration should be given to the following possible measures.
- The Permanent Members of the Security Council should shoulder a substantial surcharge for the cost of peace-keeping operations in line with their special responsibilities in this field. One concrete way of implementing the surcharge would be to introduce a collective levy upon all the Permanent Memboers at a fixed percentage of the expenses of each peace-keeoing operation.
- A certain minimum level of assessment could be introduced for each Permanent Member in light of the special responsibilities and privileges that the Permanent Members bear, especially in areas relating to peace-keeping activities of the United Nations.
With regard to the scale of assessment for the regular budget, we should aim at establishing an overall framework of agreement among Member States, based on a comprehensive review of all the pertiinent factors, including the base period, the scheme of limits, and percapia income adjustment. The rates of apportionment of peace-keeping expenses for Member States other than Permanent Members should also be reviewed in such a way as to ensure fair and equitable burden-sharing, rather than the current method of artificially divideing Members into different categories.
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