A fair solution to the middle east conflict unquestionably requires the true exercise by the Palestinian People of their right to build their own state within the borders existing 67. Or to 19 we support their capital being n east jeruslem. People in eastern urope. This is the result of countries in the middle east and africa. As well as poverty and und development preveiling in countries in the african continent. E u. N. Should take on should help the crisis it helped create. After 56 years in which the cuban people put up resistance diplomatic relations have been reestablished between cuba and he United States of america. Conflicts begin now his will only be achieved with our country illegally occupied by guantanamo base, and destablizing programs against the island. And when our people are competence stated for the human and economic damages they still ndure. While the blockade remains in force, we will continue viewing the draft resolution with the embargo imposed by the United States of america against uba. To the people who have sponsored our reforms, we wish to return the appreciation of the cuban people and its government for our continued support. Mr. President , cuba is celebrating with profound commitment the anniversary of he organization. We acknowledge efforts have been made throughout the years. Though not enough has been done to save present and future generations from the scourge of war and protect the right to Sustainable Development without xclusions. The United Nations should be and from unilateralism closer reforms to democratize it and bring it closer to the people. , the historic leader of the cuban revolution, stated in this hall, 50 years ago, and i quote, in anyone understands the fundamental obligation of the United Nations is to save the world not only from war but also from under development, hunger, diseases, poverty and the destruction of the National Resources indispensible to human existence. And he added, and they should do it soon before it is too late. Nd of quote. The International Community can always depend on cuba to rise its honest voice against injustice, inequality, under development, discrimination, and manipulation and for the establishment of a more fair and equityable order that really focuses on the human being, his dignity, and well being. Thank you. [applause] were talking about fund ling of the United Nations. Adams, se Global Policy forum. Guest good morning. Host what is it that you do . We are a policy watchdog, we are a think tank, we undertake a number of Research Policies projects and we produce a number of reports. We are involved in a number of policy engagements, mainly with governments, but also supporting some of the work with the nongovernment community. Host we want to talk about the funding of the United States, not only for the the funding of the United Nations, not only for the United States. Funding for the indicted nations is varied. On one hand there is a mandatory contribution that members have to make to be a member. This is called an assessed contribution. The budget of the that applies to the peacekeeping arrangements. Work ofr part of the the United Nations, most of the work of the United Nations is funded by involuntary contributions, mainly from governments. That covers a whole range of emergency, developing relief, food and support to refugees. The split is 60 to the voluntary contributions and 40 to the assessed contributions, which is more or less half and half between the peacekeeping on the one hand and the mandatory standards of the work of the United Nations undertakes. Host if you look at breakdowns of the contributions, the United States is on top of that list with over 600 million. As well as japan, germany and france. The figures that you are looking at there, they are related to a formula. The formula is more or less related to the worth of a gross tos related to messick product. Corrects the percentage, it would be a higher percentage that the United States pays, but it is important that no one country should pay over 25 , so the top level was ,educed and at the bottom level so the countries at the bottom, it ended up being that they should pay much less than they should pay. There is a ceiling and a floor. As far as the voluntary contributions, how are other countries doing, including the United States, as far as meeting their commitments . Voluntary,use it is it is up to the government. If you look at the patterns with the United States, you might see Something Like a similar average across the whole of the system. Terms of, 20 from contributions. But if you take a closer look, you may see that some issues receive 30 , because those issues are considered a priority for the United States. And maybe less where the United States feels there is something they dont want to be involved in or contribute to. It is more of the assessed contributions where you have people not meeting what they are obliged to contribute to. There is an honor roll. The honor roll is those governments that pay up in time, in full, at the beginning of the year, because obviously this is the money that the u. N. Needs to meet its budget, and there are currently 25 countries on that honor roll that have done that this year, and the United States is not one of those countries. Host we are talking about the funding of the United Nations. Barbara adams from the Global Policy forum is joining us for this discussion. Talk to us about the overall budget for the u. N. What is the figure . And what gets done with the money . The overall figure is just over 40 billion, that cost that covers all of the activities of the United Nations. The full range that you could imagine, it is a figure that is smaller than the budget of the sitting,hich i am now new york city, it is a figure two sense ofover the world expenditure on military. While on one hand, we can talk about how much gets done with the money, it is important to put it in the context that in fact, it given what is going on with global challenges, it is clearly not enough. It averages out to be about six dollars per person per year. Terms of what gets done, anything you can imagine in of peacekeeping, negotiations and delegate , support tos refugees, advocacy for womens writes womens rights. Of access to water, givenng you can imagine, by governments to a mandates to the system in terms of what it needs to do. In terms of the programs that are funded, i believe they refugeentary, assistance, poverty and inequality. How many programs overall are supported . Of the agencies, there are about 33. You can make an analogy at the National LeverNational Level with various industries ministries. Thewill see that at interNational Level, there is a counterpart. View of thent of different agencies, you have a large number. In terms of the number of individual programs, that has to be running into the thousands. Because the programs themselves will be translated into a whole range from looking at the u. S. Specifically as a bureaucracy, i guess, are there too many programs . Are there efforts to consolidate or perform some of the aspects of the United Nations . Guest yes, there are. As with any structure, you get a. Ot of interagency work certainly, there is a lot of discussion. There has been since the u. N. Was founded about whether or not it could be structured to be more efficient. There are a lot of ideas about how to measure efficiency. For some people, you would measure efficiency by making sure that the same agency does not seem to be running the same program. Parte other hand, a large of the United Nations is actually deal with really difficult issues, and keep governments together, and keep them talking. That is kind of a difficult thing to measure, depending on how you are looking at result. Host Barbara Adams of the Global Policy forum talking about the United Nations. 202 7488001 for republicans. 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7458002 for independents. Lets start with darren in washington, d. C. , independent line. Caller good morning. We love cspan. I have two questions for you. One is could you explain the process a little better about how the head of the u. N. Is. Lected i know currently it is ban kimoon. Secondly, what is the u. N. Doing to combat irruption . There was a story recently, i believe with the indian government, they found weapons and drugs on a ship do you know anything about that . If you could touch on that, that would be good. Thank you again for coming on. Guest thank you. Thank you for your questions. Certainly, your first question is very very topical right now. We willetarygeneral, be having a new secretarygeneral chosen next year by the governments. The full process for doing it, the established way of doing it, is that the General Assembly of the United Nations, which contains all of the members, actually of points, and makes the final decision. They make the decision based on a slate or recommendations that are brought from the Security Council. It has been the case in the past that the Security Council has only put forward one name. It has also been the case that the Security Council has essentially been through a lot of negotiations amongst itself to choose the leader. Hat has not always been smooth in the Security Council, we have five permanent members who have a veto and can say no to any particular decision coming out council. Curity this has been exercised by different governments over time will beho secretarygeneral. Right this minute, there is a campaign being launched to make the whole process more transparent, to basically make sure that there are qualifications that are required. They put a very funny ad in the ,conomist not long ago pointing out how it works and saying, it should not work like this. The momentum is building behind idea that the Security Council would actually send some real. Hoice to the General Assembly the General Assembly would be able, with all the members, to actually do a proper job of choosing who the next secretarygeneral will be. Host conroe, texas, george, you are up next. Caller i have a question of the ministry of overhead for the u. N. Budget isntage of the spent on administrative overhead as opposed to funding actually programs . Guest for program funding, there is a formula. I believe that the current figure is 7 . Hat is from the Member States also, we are beginning to see the beginnings that was a silly sentence, wasnt it . We are beginning to see more private funding contributed to the United Nations. That, in some cases, follows either the same formula, or it would have a different kind of formula. Areof those arrangements done individually. We are facing at the moment a little bit of a mess of fragmentation of different initiatives driven because of the need for the u. N. To raise more money to do what it is doing. Unfortunately, meaning that you have hundreds of different initiatives, which could be arranged, or reported about, in different ways. This essentially contributing to u. N. Staff having to do multiple s to a variety of different initiatives, and from my point of view, contributing to the inefficiency that people talk about. Host there is a viewer on twitter saying that millions of , again,flow overseas what does the u. N. Do, and are they just a figurehead . And terms of the amount of money that flows directly to developing countries, or emergency situations, the amount that goes from the u. N. Is not, by any means, a major percentage of that figure. The role that the u. N. Plays is basically to bring together the different donors organ to contributors to make sure there is some sort of cohesion, and make sure that people are not tripping over each other. I do not think that is quite a figurehead, from the point of view of what you said. I think it is also important that what the u. N. Was set up to do, and what the u. N. Can do very well in a number situations , is actually to bring together parties that find it difficult to come together otherwise, that would not talk to each other otherwise. It is the impartial, if you like, role of the United Nations , according to what it was set up for, in terms of addressing human rights, protecting civilians in times of conflict. Host from virginia, heres paul, republican line. My phone is about to die. Hang on. Host are you there . We will put you on hold, paul. Lets go to tony in national, tennessee, independent line. Caller my question is this. Number one, you were talking about private funds coming into the union. When you elect the different officers, and elect to do things, it is done by how they countries are and who has the most votes, etc. There is no is way you can do it fairly. The unitedhing is states contributes the majority of the funds to the u. N. , which is astion question, why does the United States need the u. N. When we contribute to all these other countries anyway . That would be my question. Why do we even need the United Nations . Thank you. That the fact that the u. S. Contributes to the 60 the i mentioned that is voluntary contributions, not required, is one of the ways that the u. S. Is answering the questions of whether or not it needs to be involved, or whether the u. N. Is helpful. There are some racing technical things that you will get with regard to radio waves, and postments with regards to systems. Those are technical questions that need to be sorted out, and you need Something International to do it. I dont know if you saw the speech there was a speech yesterday from president obama to the United Nations in regards to sustainability goals. President obama was pretty straightforward that development should be seen as an investment for everybodys security. It is directly connected, if you like, particularly in todays world, where so much of what is happening that affects us all is not happening only inside our. Ountries in terms of your comment about the percentages and how much the u. S. Contributes, while the u. S. Is the largest contributor, it is also because, as we hear often, the u. S. Is the largest economy. There is a formula that is related to that. In fact, if you take a closer look, we are seeing how much is contributed, but you dont see how much is actually reimbursed. It is not just a oneway contribution. Totalcekeeping, the peacekeeping budget, that is actually paid back to the individual governments that make the contribution. The money that comes and goes right back to the governments. On the amount that the United States needs to contribute the 22 confirmation to the regular budget the u. N. Is consistently behind on the payment. The Barbara Adams with Global Policy forum joining us to talk about funding and the u. N. , especially as it meets today. This question,d who is responsible for auditing the money given to the u. N. By member countries . Guest one is that governments themselves. They each other some difficult questions. There is an independent group that looks at the u. N. Budget. I will not spell out the acronym because then you will think i just do u. N. Acronyms. It is a particular group that is the expertise on the financial side that examines the u. N. Budget before it goes for adoption. There is an office of internal oversight. There is an independent evaluation office. There are a variety of different mechanisms. ,ome of them of the governments and some of them independently, they are monitoring the payments of the United Nations. Host from alabama, charles is up next. Caller good morning. It is good to talk to you this morning. Those calling independent and government institutions that oversee each other, acting as our government does, is great. Ist could my question what could a disabled american civilian contribute . How could i contribute as a disabled american, in light of reports that some jobs, lots of jobs, were mishandled, and given to people who were supposed to be given to disabled americans . What can i do as a disabled american with a psychiatric, yet treated and controlled, disorder do to help the United Nations in my own community . I will take my answer off the air. What i did not mention in the previous question, would you have given me a wonderful opportunity to comment on, is the work of the independent Nongovernmental OrganizationCivil Society groups that actually monitor the work of the United Nations. We have just released a report on