Saturday, December 5, 2009

The One That Caught My Attention Today

Most people would be interested in the latest or hottest news on the particular day such who fought with who today. Will BTN policy be abolished or even who is the hottest celebrity in Hollywood right now but the one that caught my eyes today is something new to me. This is some kind of a new discovery for me. For the last few days, I've been going online and looking for issues due to my new participation in debate that requires one to know all the global knowledge. Not to be brag but I have been doing this since before only then I need to get even more smart in searching the information. Back to the main thing that I want to share with everyone.. is this.

WORLD MILITARY SPENDING vs SPENDINGS BY UNITED NATION FOR PEACE
Source of information (http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending)

Expenditures on Military purposes has been rising since 2005. In 2005, the expenditure on military has been estimated as $1.2 billon and it has been rising since then. In 2008, $1.464 trillion. What a shock, right? That is a huge amount of money to be spent in the period of 3 years. The country with the most amount of spending towards this is for sure and not surprisingly United States which spent under half of the world total, at 41.5% of the world total. That is no shock. The 15 countries with the highest spending account for over 81% of the total;The USA is responsible for 41.5 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by the China (5.8% of world share), France (4.5%), UK (4.5%), and Russia (4%). If you click on the link you can see the pie chart that is given. I can't copy it to my blog cause it is copyright reserved.

SIPRI also adds the factors on the increasing expenditure in military stuff, there are:-
  • Foreign policy objectives
  • Real or perceived threats
  • Armed conflict and policies to contribute to multilateral peacekeeping operations
  • Availability of economic resources
* More information on the military expenditure please click on the link.

Let's focus back to our main topic which is the expenditure on military stuff vs the spendings by UN for peace.

If you read further on the article you would know that the UN's entire budget is much much lesser than the military spending. Even it is lesser than the spending by the US alone.

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The United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $27 billion each year, or about $4 for each of the world’s inhabitants. This is a very small sum compared to most government budgets and it is just a tiny fraction of the world’s military spending. Yet for nearly two decades, the UN has faced a financial difficulties and it has been forced to cut back on important programs in all areas. Many member states have not paid their full dues and have cut their donations to the UN’s voluntary funds. As of May 31, 2009, members’ arrears to the Regular Budget topped $1282 million, of which the United States alone owed $857 million (67% of the regular budget arrears).

UN Financial Crisis, Global Policy Forum (accessed September 13, 2009)

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OK! Let's think together. The spending for military stuff is much higher compared to the entire budget of the United Nation that need to consider all sorts of disaster in the world to spend it on. so how does this goes? How can UN coped with the whole war thing. UN was set up to be commited to preserving peace through international coorperation and collective security. At the current level of spending (2008) it would take just a handful of years for the world’s donor countries to cover their entire aid shortfall, of over $3.6 trillion in promised official aid since 1970, more than 35 years ago.

Lets just think over this for awhile, aite! Why is this happening in our world? Not to mention who is the starter of this. This doesn't reflect that we are in the age of civilisation. The billions and trillions of money spent is for what? Disasterous? WAR? The money that is spent for military purposes should be the kind of money that should be used by UN to preserve the peacefulness of the world and not to just copped up with all the WAR mess that was left by some parties. That is not cool! Not just WAR, we all know that the climate of the world now are very very unexpected. We cannot expect the weather. There were many natural disaster that has happened for the past few years yet we are still spending our money for WAR? We are still thinking about WAR? huh? We should keep that money in case our country need them. This goes to all the countries in the world.

Extra information:-
(The top ranking nations on the global peace index were, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Austria, Sweden, Japan, Canada, Finland, and Slovenia. It is worth looking at the report for the full list of indicators used, which cover a mixture of internal and external factors, weighted in various ways.)


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