(United Nations) Eight states, including Iran, Sudan and Venezuela, have lost their right to vote at the UN because of too much debt to the organization, the organization announced on Tuesday evening. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the members of the General Assembly.
Posted at 10:02 a.m.
In total, “11 member states are currently in arrears in the payment of their contributions within the meaning of Article 19 of the United Nations Charter”, specifies the head of the UN in his letter obtained Wednesday by AFP.
This article provides for a suspension of the right to vote at the General Assembly for any country whose amount of arrears is equal to or greater than the contribution due by it for the past two full years.
If the failure is due “to circumstances beyond its control”, a State referred to in Article 19 may however retain its right to vote and this is the case in 2022 for the Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe and Somalia, specifies Antonio Guterres.
Besides Iran, Sudan and Venezuela, the other five countries that have lost their voting rights are Antigua and Barbuda, Congo, Guinea, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, he adds.
The secretary general specifies the minimum amount that each of these countries must pay to recover their voting rights: Iran will have to spend a little more than $ 18 million, Sudan nearly $ 300,000 and Venezuela about $ 40 million. dollars.
Last year, Iran had already lost its right to vote due to bad debts. Tehran had said it could not meet the minimum required for its debts at the UN because of economic and financial sanctions imposed by Washington.
After several months of negotiations, an exemption had been granted to Tehran allowing it to pay its due and recover its voting rights in June, just before the election of new members to the UN Security Council.
The UN’s annual operating budget, approved in December, is around $ 3 billion. The peace operations budget, separated and approved in June, amounts to some $ 6.5 billion.