UN, Explained

The UN Budget

As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. has been an essential financial contributor to the UN since the organization’s founding. The UN’s regular and peacekeeping budgets are approved by the General Assembly. In 2024, the U.S. share of the UN regular budget was $707 million. This amount is one-tenth of the Delaware state budget.

The UN regular budget funds core bodies and activities that include the following.

Special political missions operating in Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and other countries undergoing or emerging from conflict
Efforts to ensure international implementation and compliance with sanctions adopted by the Security Council against terrorist organizations such as ISIS and rogue states like North Korea
Many core human rights monitoring and advocacy work, as more than 40% of funding for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights comes from the regular budget

Funding from Member States comes from two broad sources: assessed and voluntary contributions.

Assessed Contributions

Assessed contributions are payments that all Member States are required to make under the UN Charter. Assessments provide a reliable source of funding to core functions of the Secretariat through the UN regular and peacekeeping budgets. UN specialized agencies have their own assessed budgets.

Voluntary Contributions

Voluntary contributions are made at the discretion of Member States and vital to the work of the UN’s humanitarian and development agencies that do not have assessed budgets, like UNICEF, UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and World Food Programme (WFP).

Reassessments

Member State assessment rates are determined by the General Assembly, with renegotiations every three years. During the latest assessments in December 2024, the U.S. maintained a ceiling of 22% on regular budget dues (the only developed country in the world with such a cap on payments to the UN regular budget). The U.S. now pays 26.15% of UN peacekeeping costs, lower than the previous 27%. With the current 2024-2025 peacekeeping budget of $5.59 billion, the lower contribution rate would result in annual cost savings of roughly $44.5 million for American taxpayers. This stands in contrast to China’s peacekeeping rate of 23.78% (up from 15% in 2019-2021), costing them an additional $306 million annually.

U.S. Arrears: “China’s Favorite Talking Point“

Due to late or missed payments and the cap on U.S. contributions to the peacekeeping budget, the U.S. has accrued roughly $1.1 billion in arrears. U.S. debt impacts the UN’s ability to reimburse troop-contributing countries. China has referred to the U.S. as the UN’s “largest debtor,” undermining perceptions of the U.S. abroad.