Israel will cut $2 million from its UN dues in response to “anti-Israel” resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the Foreign Ministry confirmed Thursday.
The funds will be diverted to development projects in “friendly” countries, announced spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon late Wednesday.
The decision comes after the UNHRC last week passed five resolutions condemning Israeli settlement activity and human rights violations in the Golan Heights.
The General Assembly requires all 193 U.N. member states to pay a percentage of the United Nations’ regular budget, based on their GDP. According to the U.N. Secretariat, Israel is expected to pay about $11 million this year, or 0.43 percent of the regular budget.
Under Article 19 of the U.N. Charter, any country in arrears of its dues payments in an amount that equals or exceeds the contributions due for two preceding years can lose its vote in the General Assembly. As of March 15, three countries were banned from voting because of arrears — Libya, Sudan and Venezuela.
Israel’s refusal to pay $2 million of its dues will put the country in arrears, but it won’t immediately lose its vote in the world body.
Israel and the United States decry what they see as an entrenched U.N. bias against the Jewish state and an obsession with the Palestinian issue at the expense of other crises and human rights issues around the globe. But Israel is especially critical of the makeup of the Human Rights Council whose members include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Cuba.
The highest percentage that a country can pay to the U.N. regular budget was cut from 25 percent to 22 percent in response to demands by the United States, the world organization’s largest contributor. It pays 22 percent of the $2.6 billion regular budget, with Japan second at about 9.7 percent.
The United States is seeking unspecified cuts in payments to the United Nations, especially for the 16 far-flung U.N. peacekeeping operations that are financed through a separate budget.
