Concerned taxpayers have long kept watchful and weary eyes on the activities of the United Nations. Thanks to a recently-released documentary, “UN Me,” their eyes will have reason to shed some more tears.
The film focuses primarily on the UN’s failures as an organization chartered to promote world peace, by critically examining election monitoring in Cambodia, peacekeeping operations in Cote d’Ivoire, and nuclear non-proliferation efforts, to name a few. Yet, the movie also demonstrates how the UN’s institutional corruption and dysfunction have fostered the misuse of American taxpayer dollars. According to the Narrator and Producer, Ami Horowitz, the United States spent $8 billion on the UN and its programs in 2010, a 21 percent increase from the year before. What has happened to money like this over the years? According to the film:
- UN vehicles, underwritten by member country contributions, have actually been used by terrorists to commit crimes;
- The International Atomic Energy Agency, funded at $380 million, devoted major resources on countries like Germany, Japan, and Canada instead of concentrating on countries posing a greater security threat; and
- Several multilateral institutions, including the UN, were providing aid to Rwanda during its internal turmoil that the country’s military forces were able to spend for ammunition purchases.
It seems evident that if the UN is plagued with corruption and difficulty in peacekeeping management, then its fiscal management of taxpayer funds is most likely handled poorly as well. To learn more regarding the use of US tax dollars in the UN, visit the “UN Me” website at: https://unmemovie.com/ (also available on iTunes)