Defund The U.N.

sent a dramatic letter to” member states to warn them “about the ‘imminent financial collapse’” of the organization, says the Global Policy Forum of Europe. “The letter followed earlier warnings” that the U.N. might be forced to cut its budget by 15% in 2026, meaning a reduction in the workforce by roughly 2,600.

Which would be a start, but with 37,000 employees, only a modest one.

Media reports further tell us that the U.S. is pressuring the U.N. to pare down its staff. Given the Trump administration’s warranted enmity toward the U.N., that isn’t surprising, but the fact that other nations “are also warming to the idea” is. It’s an encouraging sign that maybe the previously myopic have come to see the United Nations for what it is: A true basket of deplorables who cling to their false narratives and wholly unearned but media-burnished reputations to justify the organization’s existence.

When we made a similar argument against the U.N. last year, we listed irrefutable evidence that it is neither peacemaker nor protector but is in reality one part charade and three parts corruption. We present those points again:

• The U.N.’s peacekeeping operations have not only failed, they’ve often undermined efforts to establish peace, allowed terrorist camps to thrive, and indoctrinated “second and third generations into genocidal hatred.”
• “More than six decades of financial transfers” to the U.N., running in the trillions of dollars to alleviate poverty, have failed, says the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow.
• The makeup of the Human Rights Council is a farce, with only 30% of the member countries “classified as ‘free’ by the U.S. think tank Freedom House,” says German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
• “At least 12 UNRWA staffers were directly involved” in Hamas’ unprovoked October 2023 massacre. The U.N. even had the gall to “overwhelmingly” pass “a disgraceful antisemitic resolution to demand that Israel surrender to barbaric terrorists who seek the destruction of both Israel and America,” says New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik.
• Since 2015, there have been 170 U.N. resolutions condemning Israel. Russia has been condemned a mere 25 times, North Korea 10, and Iran only nine. It is, on its face, an “irrational obsession with one nation.”
• In 1988, the Heritage Foundation noted that despite more than “$8 billion in outlays,” the “sad fact is that the” U.N.’s Food And Agriculture Organization “has become essentially irrelevant in combating hunger.” Can anyone point out when and where the U.N. prevented or stopped a famine? If so, let us know, because we know of no instance in which either has happened.
• As many as 50 million are living across the world today as slaves, and human trafficking has gone far beyond crisis levels. Again, if anyone can show us where the U.N. has made significant progress, or any progress at all, in addressing these blights, please share that information.
• The United Nations Population Fund has been credibly accused of “complicity in coercive abortion practices.”
• “Regrettably,” says UN Watch Database, “a Geneva-based non-governmental organization accredited in special consultative status with the United Nations,” “millions of human rights victims around the world are routinely ignored by the U.N. Instead of condemning their oppressors, all too often the U.N. awards powerful dictatorships, such as China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia, with positions of honor.”
• More from the UN Watch Database: The “corruption of the United Nations’ founding principles and ideals should be a matter of grave concern for all who value democracy, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. Regrettably, instead of using their power to challenge and improve the system, most Western democracies enable moral corruption at the United Nations by simply going along to get along.”
• The U.N. has “allowed some of the greatest crimes against humanity to occur on its watch” and “cannot stop genocide.”
• The U.N. admits that in 2023 alone it “received 758 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by staff.” This has been an ongoing problem.
• The U.N. General Assembly actually held a moment of silence to honor North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il after he died in 2011. No institution that would do such a thing should be allowed to continue in a sane world.

Maybe initial intentions were sincere. But the U.N. has become an anti-American, anti-semitic talk shop, where entitled foreign diplomats enjoy cushy sinecures at Western expense. If it were of any use at all, the U.S. and Israel would not now be eliminating the terrorist regime in Tehran — the mullahs would have never seized power in the first place.

If the administration can’t lead a coalition to break the U.N., at least it needs to end funding from the U.S., which generously provides 70% of the U.N.’s budget, and kick the thoroughly rotten institution out of the country. The taxpayer-financed ride needs to end.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board