The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and US Funding
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) remains to be totally reliant on US funding despite US budgetary restrictions. A branch of the UN that deals with the jurisdiction of cases involving international justice is the international Court of Justice, a court created in accordance with UN statutes. The budgetary proposal made by the ICJ's financial controller must be approved by the General Assembly.
The US funds roughly $6.5 billion of the UN's regular budget, which is about $30 billion, with a budget proposal of about 55 million US dollars. This totals to 22% of the US funding to the UN and thus, this provides a critical brainstorm session over the voters and members of the US congress’s view towards the cutting back of the US support to the UN.
The Importance of the ICJ
The establishment of the International Court of Justice has bored more fruits than demerits. The fruits have been evidenced throughout the world more so the settlement of severe disagreements amongst the nations such as the current case being handled by the ICJ between India and Pakistan. The ICJ has been able to handle several inter-boundary issues that if it were not for the ICJ, another world war could have been possible.
The United States’ financial support through its $6 billion indicates a huge dependency of the UN and thus the cut back of about 22% will imply that most of the activities of the ICJ will automatically stagnate. With the mandate of the ICJ and the large volume of the pending cases to be handled and also, being that most of the budget of the ICJ are recurrent, the reduction in the budgetary allocation will directly affect the salary allocation of the ICJ judges.
Stable Budgetary Allocation for the ICJ
Therefore, with the usefulness of the ICJ in handling the justice cases amongst the countries and the critical role it plays in promoting peaceful coexistence amongst nations, it deserves a stable budgetary allocation and thus, the US should reconsider withdrawing the view of cutting back their budget allocation to UN.
