Due for paring down

US President Donald Trump said that he intended to cut down the US contribution to the UN agenda, which stands at $650,693,000. If he does, the UN must hurry to put its house in order before the US cuts its share of the UN budget.

To be sure, the UN regular budget is huge, and once the political will is found, there are indeed many areas where the international organisation can ration its expenditures.

For starters, there are simply too many UN human rights bodies that do essentially the same thing: promote and try to protect human rights.

Since human rights are indivisible and interrelated, what reason is there for 10 treaty bodies to deal with various dimensions of human rights when in fact they should not be dealt with separately, in isolation from each other?

Why are there so many, and their number keeps growing, special human rights rapporteurs?

Former UN high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour, who was a Canadian supreme court judge before joining the UN system, advised and advocated the unification of the human rights treaty bodies.

Arbour’s rational proposition was faced with stiff resistance by traditional forces that want to keep things as they are.

True, consolidation of human rights treaty bodies would have required amendments to the relevant international human rights conventions, but once the political will exists, such amendments can be done.

If treaty bodies could be united or consolidated into three groups with a shared agenda, state parties would be spared having to prepare so many periodic reports every five years or so for examination and consideration by the too many treaty bodies.

There are simply too many overlapping functions and mandates treaty bodies have. The ultimate objective should be to create a UN human rights court.

But expenditure should be rationed not only on the human rights front, but also in the case of the UN regional commissions on economic and social matters.

As is, there are now five such regional commissions, namely, UNECE for Europe, UESCAP for Asia and the Pacific, ECLAC for Latin America, ECA for Africa and ESCWA for Western Asia.

Of course, these cumbersome bureaucracies have work to do, but are they really cost effective?

Do these five commissions make a big difference to the various regions they aim to serve? Are they cost effective?

The list where expenditure at the UN can be reduced is long. It includes the UN Conference on Trade and Development whose agenda, to my surprise, was almost identical to the one I had seen when a junior diplomat in New York, some 40 years ago.

Is there, then, need for UNCTAD or can the UN do with other existing agencies?

The same goes for UNDP. This UN agency a relic of the past and no longer cost effective.

Would not the world be able to get by without it, by relying, for example, more international agencies such as IMF or World Bank to achieve basically the same results?

These are only samples of where the fat from the UN budget can be cut without compromising its effectiveness.

A small group of experts could examine in depth where closing down some UN agencies or machineries is warranted without jeopardising the goals of the UN before Trump implements his decision to slash his country’s contribution to the UN.