Just the Facts from Senator Tom Coburn

Senator Coburn sets the record straight on the United Nations:

• American taxpayers provide nearly a quarter of the entire UN budget (and more than a quarter of peacekeeping operations), or about $6 billion annually. Comprehensive data on the UN spending is scarce and very difficult to obtain—even by the U.S. Congress.
  
  
• Over forty percent of all UN contracts audited in 2007 were found to include fraudulent spending. Of the $1.4 billion in contracts reviewed, $630 million of it was found to include “significant fraud and corruption schemes.”
  
  
• According to the Associated Press, last week “seven countries accused of human rights violations have won seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council in an uncontested election, including Libya, Angola and Malaysia.”
  
  
• The UN has been regularly criticized for its lack of transparency and commitment to ethics reform. For example, an American whistleblower acting as a high ranking official for the United Nations in Kosovo was fired three years ago after assisting with an internal investigation looking at corruption. The Secretary General has refused requests from agency inspectors for key documents related to this and other ethics investigations.
  
  
• The UN Environment Program, which manages the UN’s global warming initiatives, spends in excess of $1 billion annually and lacks significant transparency or oversight. According to a key task force report in 2008, it would take the program’s auditor 17 years to review identified high-risk areas. The program continues to delay efforts to bring greater transparency to its work.
  
  
• Renovations of the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City, which were originally estimated to cost $1.2 billion, are now forecast to cost $2 billion. Cost overruns continue to plague the project. U.S. taxpayers will be responsible for at least $485 million.
  
  
• Between 2004 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), along with other federal agencies, contributed over $400 million to the United Nations Office for Special Projects. Yet, when serious allegations of fraud within the program prompted the attention of U.S. investigators, the program denied the United States access to key records and limited interviews with agency managers.
  
  
• The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), whose mission focus includes global poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the promotion of democracy, receives over $200 million annually from U.S. taxpayers. Investigations by a Senate committee revealed that UNDP accounts have been used by North Korea to hide financial transactions. Worse, UNDP funds may have ended up in the hands of an entity used to sell North Korean weapons. Internal UN audits of UNDP programs have been kept from American inspectors.