The cash-strapped United Nations has issued an unprecedented global appeal for funds, claiming Wednesday it needs an immediate injection of $29 billion of global taxpayer money as “climate change” and global conflicts pressure existing budgets.
The world body’s Global Humanitarian Overview estimated some 168 million people worldwide will need emergency assistance in 2020, with demand a direct product of “more extreme weather events, notably drought and flooding, which trigger humanitarian emergencies,” U.N. emergency relief coordinator Mark Lowcock said.
His plea for cash comes just two months after a series of cutbacks began at the U.N.’s New York headquarters, starting with the heating being turned down, the diplomats’ bar shuttering early at 5pm and meetings canceled along with diminished first class global travel budgets.
As Breitbart News reported, the globalist organization is currently running a deficit of $230 million at the same time it has invited 25,000 delegates to fly into a two-week conference on climate in Madrid, Spain.
Lowcock said the latest appeal for more money followed a continued rise in global conflicts that “are becoming more protracted and intense” which meant more money was needed by the U.N. if it was to play its part in global peace.
“Combatants display total disregard for humanitarian law,” with the result that civilians caught up in conflict are increasingly likely to be displaced or traumatised psychologically, he said, adding the number of attacks on schools and health facilities continues to rise.
In addition, climate change has unleashed more extreme weather events, notably drought and flooding, which trigger humanitarian emergencies, he claimed.
“The brutal truth is that 2020 will be difficult for millions of people,” Lowcock said, echoing U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and his recent announcement of renewed financial pressures:
Of the 168 million people who are expected to require assistance next year, the $28.8 billion (26 billion euro) U.N. appeal is targeting the 109 million who are most in need and whom U.N. agencies are in a position to help.
The U.N. is seeking more than $3 billion to address humanitarian crises in Yemen and Syria, the countries most in need, with Venezuela nominated as the country where needs have increased the most in the past year.
The U.N. sought nearly $740 million for Venezuela for 2019, but as the country’s devastating economic and political crisis has intensified, that figure has risen to $1.35 billion.
U.N. funding has been a vexed issue in the past few years, with U.S. President Donald Trump being particularly outspoken in his demands for the globalist organization to be more accountable for its spending.
The United States is by far the U.N.’s biggest financial contributor, stumping up 22 percent of its operating budget and funding 28 percent of peacekeeping missions, which currently cost $8 billion annually. The UK and Germany are the next two major backers.
Trump has cautioned the “future does not belong to globalists” in a warning to the organization’s leaders, adding, “the future belongs to patriots, the future belongs to sovereign and independent nations.”
Responding to reports of deep U.N. budget deficits, Trump showed little sympathy for its inability to manage its own bloated budget, the bulk of which is provided by U.S. taxpayers:
“So make all Member Countries pay, not just the United States!” he wrote when the news first broke:
“The United States is the world’s largest giver in the world, by far, of foreign aid. But few give anything to us,” Trump said in September last year.
“Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends. And we expect other countries to pay their fair share for the cost of their defense.”
In December 2017 Nikki Haley, the then United States Ambassador to the organization, announced the federal government had reduced its contribution to the U.N.’s annual budget by $285 million, as Breitbart News reported.