Headquarters

The current United Nations headquarters building was constructed in New York City between 1949 and 1950 beside the East River. This office project land was bought for 8.5 million dollars by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., using his son Nelson as a crucial negotiator with the developer, in December 1946. JDR Jr. then donated the land to the UN.

It was designed by an international team of architects that included Le Corbusier (Switzerland), Oscar Niemeyer (Brazil), and representatives of numerous other nations. Wallace K. Harrison headed the team. There is disagreement among scholars as to attribution. UN headquarters officially opened on 9 January 1951. While the principal headquarters of the UN are in New York, there are major agencies located in Geneva, The Hague, Vienna, Montreal, Copenhagen, Bonn, and elsewhere. The street address of the UN headquarters is 760 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA. Due to security concerns, all mail sent to that address is sterilized.

The UN buildings are not considered separate political jurisdictions, but do have certain aspects of sovereignty. For example, under agreements with their host countries the United Nations Postal Administration is allowed to issue postage stamps for local mailing. Since 1951 the New York office, since 1969 the Geneva office, and since 1979 the Vienna office, have had their own issues. UN organizations also use their own telecommunications ITU prefix, 4U, and unofficially the New York, Geneva, and Vienna sites are considered separate entities for amateur radio purposes.

As the UN main building is aging, the UN is in the process of building a temporary headquarters designed by Fumihiko Maki on First Avenue between 41st and 42nd Streets for use while the current building is being expanded.

The United Nations Office at Geneva is the United Nations European headquarters. Prior to 1949, the United Nations used a variety of venues in London and New York State.

Financing

UN offices occupy the majority of this complex, the Vienna International Centre.

The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The regular two-year budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies are funded by assessments. The General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by national income statistics, along with other factors.

The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be overly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a 'ceiling' rate, setting the maximum amount any member is assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly revised the scale of assessments to reflect current global circumstances. As part of that revision, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25% to 20%. The U.S. is the only member that meets that ceiling, but it is in arrears with hundreds of millions of dollars (see United States and the United Nations). Under the scale of assessments adopted in 2000, other major contributors to the regular UN budget for 2001 are Japan (19.63%), Germany (9.82%), France (6.50%), the UK (5.57%), Italy (5.09%), Canada (2.57%), Spain (2.53%), and Brazil (2.39%).

Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF and UNDP) are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments. Some of this is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations, but the majority is financial contributions.  

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