A comparison of the world-wide costs for military and peace missions

 

 

Following estimates of the International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm (SIPRI), the world-wide military expenditures in 2005 stood at 1.1 billion US $s. This contribution corresponds to 2.5% of the GDP of the world or 173 US Dollar per capita. Compared with these numbers, the costs that were incurred by the United Nations for economic social and humanitarian programmes, amount to only about 10.5 billions US Dollars per year. The costs of annually about 5 billion US Dollars for the peace missions of the UN in comparison to the immensely high military expenditures seem surprisingly small.

For peace maintenance, for which over 90000 women and men are deployed in 16 world-wide peace missions, the UN annually spends just about 5 billion US Dollar annually, which in comparison only amounts to 0.5% of the annual military expenditures. The prevention of conflicts, the creation of peace and the reduction of disputes in post-conflict societies seems to be accorded a rather less important role here.

This is while the UN, the overwhelming part of whose work is aimed at providing countries help in order to rebuild the capacities for self-help, does an important job in crisis regions. Yet the fight against disease, drugs, crime and terrorism, the encouragement of democracy and human rights, child care, help for prisoners and victims of catastrophes as well as the support for countries devastated by war and exposed to the threat by land mines, in the eyes of many countries seems to be less worthy of promotion than military rearmament and intervention.

 

Lack of payment moral leads to financial disasters

The financing of the work of the UN is being assured by way of contributions by the member states. The USA are with a sum of 3.8 billion US Dollars for the years 2006 and 2007 the largest contributor to the UN, however, smaller countries contribute to its financing with considerably higher and in part voluntary payments, measured by the number of their inhabitants. Among the latter, there is Luxemburg with $ 2.44 per citizen or Liechtenstein with $ 2.09, while Germany contributes only $ 1.51 per citizen and the US only $ 1.23 per citizen.

The main contributors to the budget of the UN peace missions in the year 2005 were the USA (27%), Japan (19%), Germany (9%), the United Kingdom, France and Italy (7%), Canada, Spain and China (3%) and the Netherlands (2%). The question of financing poses one of the greatest problems to the UN which has to do with the fact that the payment moral of many member countries is terrible and contributions are often only paid with delay or not at all. The greatest debtors in that context are the US who try to impose their interests in the world organisation by way of the “economic lever”. But also Japan, Ukraine, the Republic of Korea, Argentina, Belarus, France, and Italy by way of their financial arrears are partly responsible for the fact that the lacking contributions for UN peace missions in June 2006 summed to 1.34 billion US Dollars and the work of the UN was therefore considerably restricted.

 

Also as far as the supply of soldiers and policemen is concerned, there show themselves clear differences among the UN member states: Of the 70000 women and men, who in the year 2006 were deployed on behalf of the UN, countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Nepal, Ghana, Uruguay, Ethiopia and Nigeria supply 65% overall. The 25 EU members participate there with less than 5.7% of the troops, while the US only supply a contingent of 0.5% of the overall military and police contingent. That today poor (developing) countries supply the most troops, on the one hand has to do with the fact that the Western states since the mid- 90s engage themselves more in a unilateral framework or in the framework of NATO or of EU army structures, on the other hand, governments may demand compensation payments by the UN for the preparation of troops, by way of which they partly finance their armies.

 

The efficiency of the UN peace missions

It is a proven fact that UN peace missions cost less than other international interventions and the stationing costs, compared to those of other countries or organisations, for instance of the USA or NATO burn down  to considerably less.

A study by the US American RAND corporation in the year 2005 also confirms the efficiency of the UNO missions: a comparatively not very cost-intensive structure, a high comparative rate of success and a very high degree of international legitimacy.

Yet as long as economic interests and not the situation of the crisis countries and of the people living there stand in the foreground, it will probably stay a fact that worldwide far more is invested in military measures and operations than in peace and reconstruction missions.