12 January 2025
By Katja Hemmerich

As we begin 2025, many of our readers in the United Nations are likely bracing themselves for the new year with trepidation. In 2024, major donors like Germany and France reduced their funding for development and humanitarian aid, and further cuts are expected in 2025. Right-wing politicians, such as the Netherlands' Development Minister Reinette Klever, have called for completely halting overseas development assistance. Additionally, in just over a week, President Trump will be inaugurated in the US, likely bringing with him demands for all kinds of UN reform and further funding cuts. In a recent opinion piece, former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton provocatively stated:
“The new administration should prove to U.N. members that its goal of reform isn’t merely rhetorical. Washington’s most important weapon will be its wallet—decisions about how much it financially contributes, or doesn’t contribute, to the U.N.” — John Bolton, Wall Street Journal, 26 Dec. 2024.
The UN is therefore facing both the specter of significant funding cuts and political disruption. Many may conclude that making concessions to the US and other wealthy countries is necessary to ensure the UN’s survival, both in the short and long term. This month’s spotlight explores this question, drawing on recent research to offer guidance for UN staff and delegates on how to navigate these turbulent times without fundamentally weakening the organization in the long run.
Does the United Nations survive by making concessions to Trump and wealth states?
Recent research on the evolution of UN funding indicates that pragmatic solutions to budget crises have often had unintended consequences for the organization’s effectiveness, even undermining multilateralism in some cases. Prof. Erin R. Graham has shown, for example, that the political compromises made to resolve the UN’s financial crises in the 1960s have contributed to the current dysfunction within the UN system. At the time, various UN entities, including the Secretariat, were funded exclusively through assessed contributions, meaning that any increase in the budget would result in higher payments from all member states. To resolve political disagreements over budget increases, the financial rules were changed to allow states willing and able to pay more to contribute extra-budgetary or voluntary funding.
While this solution worked in the short and medium term, it has led to the currently common practice of donors earmarking their contributions for specific issues. Zero growth in assessed funding and a general lack of core, unearmarked funding has made it harder to manage UN organizations effectively, reduced their ability to respond quickly to emerging crises, and, most importantly, created a disconnect between the UN’s collective priorities and its actual activities. This disconnect has weakened the UN and contributed to current multilateral tensions. (Erin R. Graham, Transforming International Institutions: How Money Quietly Sidelined Multilateralism at the United Nations, 2023).
Ironically, these political compromises are often driven by a desire to prevent the withdrawal of wealthy member states like the US and thereby ensure long term survival of the organization. The assumption has long been that if wealthy, powerful states leave the UN, the organization will follow the League of Nations’ path to irrelevance and dissolution. However, researchers have demonstrated that the League of Nations was an exceptional case among international organizations.
In their study of 532 international organizations from 1909 to 2020, Drs. Inken von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas showed that the withdrawal of one or more member states generally does not lead to the decline or death of an international organization. The response of remaining states is a more important factor in determining whether the organization is fundamentally weakened or not. If a state withdraws because its policy preferences no longer align with those of the organization, it can actually make it easier for remaining states to agree on clear policies and priorities, as they no longer need to accommodate dissenting positions. However, if a withdrawing state is a founding member with a history of providing leadership, its departure can create a leadership vacuum that weakens the organization, much like in the League of Nations. So withdrawal is not without risk. But this consideration should be balanced by the researchers’ more interesting finding that when an economically powerful state withdraws, it can often strengthen an international organization. This occurs because the withdrawal tends to force effective change and reform, driven both by funding shortfalls as well as greater political support and consensus amongst remaining member states on the direction and priorities of the organizations. The US withdrawal from UNIDO in the 1990s is a notable case:
“The United States' withdrawal in late 1996 deprived UNIDO of a quarter of its budget, prompting significant budgetary and institutional reforms, including staff reductions and restructuring. After reforms, the UK and Germany decided to remain in the organization specifically because of the changes. Denmark and Switzerland also pledged substantial voluntary contributions, lending ‘their complete support to the revitalized organization.’” — I. von Borzyskowski & F. Vabulas, 'When do member state withdrawals lead to the death of international organizations?' (2024).
This research suggests that prioritizing compromise with wealthy countries for short term financial reasons may not always be in the long-term interest of an international organization. While it is a legitimate negotiation tactic for wealthy states to link their financial contributions to demands for reform, UN leaders together with the remaining member states must carefully assess the long-term impact of these reforms. Furthermore, focusing solely on the concerns of a member state threatening to withdraw at the expense of engaging with the concerns of remaining member states is actually extremely dangerous for the organization. As Drs. von Borzyskowski and Vabulas point out:
“This research may therefore serve as a cautionary note for practitioners and policymakers: who leaves, and how the remaining member states respond, could be crucial for keeping an international organization alive.” — I. von Borzyskowski & F. Vabulas, 'When do member state withdrawals lead to the death of international organizations?' (2024).
Remaining stuck in the past, won’t help navigate the future
Historically, wealthy, Western states have been the primary donors and functioned as a relatively unified group with a shared vision of the overall aims of the UN. European states have often found ways to address gaps or find compromise solutions to previous UN financial crises arising from the actions of different US administrations or congressional actions. But with right-wing parties taking on a stronger role in many European governments, Europe is less likely to be a facilitator of such solutions in the near future. If so, how will solutions to the impending crises be found?
While pundits may make predictions in this regard, researchers do not. But a growing number of them are highlighting that holding onto our traditional paradigms and assumptions make it more difficult to find solutions that will enhance the resilience and sustainability of the UN and the multilateral system.
One of these confining paradigms is that of a wealthy, benign Global North which funds the UN to help the Global South to follow and ‘catch up’ to their levels of development. This type of view of the Global North clearly no longer holds. And as Comfort Ero of the International Crisis Group recently pointed out in a Foreign Affairs: “the term “global South” may offer a compelling but misleading simplicity (as can its counterpart, “the West”). Treating countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a geopolitical bloc, however, will not help solve the problems they face.”
Nor will it help the UN find solutions to the problems it faces. This is because when we look at the Global North and Global South as unified blocs, we fail to appreciate the different internal political dynamics and pressures they are under as well as the different challenges they face with respect to collective global problems like climate change or inequality, among others. Opportunities to find agreement and alignment amongst like-minded member states of the UN will be missed if we remain confined to historical groupings and assumptions about those groups.
One particularly salient example where the traditional North-South paradigm is undermining collective action and results is in the implementation of the SDGs. Drs. Max-Otto Baumann and Sebastian Haug of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) have compiled considerable evidence that our binary approach to development, which assumes that the North is ‘developed’ and the South needs to ‘catch up’, impedes genuinely collective action and results.
"A central implication of these (ongoing) challenges to the traditional rationale for development cooperation is that Northern countries – which were previously considered the ones supposed to address or solve development issues elsewhere – are now identified as an inherent part of the problems that need addressing. Data on SDG implementation suggests that industrialised countries are furthest behind on a number of SDG indicators, in particular on responsible production and consumption patterns. These, and domestic practices such as agricultural subsidies, create externalities, or “spill-overs”, that affect development prospects elsewhere. Other domestic challenges in high-income countries – such as inequalities and polarisation – highlight that many Western societies are perhaps much further removed from sustainability goals than was often assumed.” - M. Baumann & S. Haug, "Universality in action: Why and how United Nations development work should engage with high-income countries" (2024)
Yet UN interventions, including varying levels of political advice, sometimes perceived as an encroachment on sovereignty, exist only in countries of the Global South. Supposedly global fora like the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development intended to monitor all countries’ SDG implementation do not hold countries in the North accountable for their lack of progress, nor are their societies generally offered any kind of political support, guidance or collaboration from the UN. Shedding our traditional concept of a binary North-South approach to development and moving the UN toward a more egalitarian form of multilateralism in which agreed standards and goals apply equally to all member states is more likely to get better results and therefore demonstrate the value of the UN to a global public.
The oversimplified assumption of a benign Global North has also had negative impacts on the governance and management of the UN. The failure to actively engage with different member states within both the WEOG and G77 groups who prioritize gender parity in the UN, meant the Secretary General did not get the Fifth Committee’s endorsement of changes to human resources rules needed for his Gender Parity Strategy in 2018-19. It seems likely that at least some of those in the SG’s negotiating team were either ignorant that many of the Latin American members of the G77 were allies, as suggested by Comfort Ero, or they assumed that WEOG would use its budgetary influence to force agreement from the rest of the Committee.
The latter assumption that the wealthy countries of the WEOG group have undue influence in the Fifth Committee is not false, nor is it just based on the fact that they are significant contributors to the UN’s regular budget. Historically, Western democracies have been strong supporters of the role of the UN in the multilateral system. Political shifts in numerous Western countries are demonstrating that we can no longer hold onto these assumptions either.
Aside from losing their relevance, these assumptions and the related undue influence that Western countries have enjoyed at the UN have created significant governance challenges that are only now becoming evident. Western countries ability to assert control over leadership positions and staffing, as well as budgetary and technical committees has allowed them to push their own agendas and contributed to perceptions of hypocrisy and double standards amongst member states, and sometimes UN staff. WEOG’s resistance to any post increases for the Secretariat means that the Young Professionals Programme (YPP) only places about 50 candidates from under-represented countries each year. Meanwhile most WEOG countries who claim they can’t afford an increase in the regular budget are able to find extra-budgetary funding each year for around 150 Junior Professional Officers almost exclusively from their own countries.
Not only does this create a credibility issue for the UN, but it has also provided lessons for illiberal regimes about how to manipulate the system.
“Advanced industrial democracies historically enjoyed a variety of organizational advantages, allowing them to exercise significant influence, if not outright control, of agendas. However, new research highlights how illiberal regimes have sought to challenge norms, sway votes, and influence procedures, ultimately affecting what these organizations can achieve.” — C. Cottiero, E.M. Hafner-Burton, S. Haggard, et al., 'Illiberal Regimes and International Organizations' (2024).
Such tactics have been most evident in the Fifth Committee where a growing number of member states have used their position to undermine funding allocations to human rights mechanisms to which they are opposed, such as the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for serious crimes in Syria (IIIM) or other Commissions of Inquiry approved by the Human Rights Council.
Trying to call out such tactics by illiberal regimes while continuing to allow Western countries to maintain their advantages, such as the ring-fencing of the leadership of UNICEF and OCHA for the US and UK, respectively, will only heighten perceptions of UN hypocrisy. Regardless of who is using these tactics, they undermine the spirit of the UN Charter and UN governance. The current disruptive political context provides an opportunity to shed the confines of past assumptions and initiate a new era of applying UN norms and standards consistently and transparently to all member states - something that many, often less powerful, member states have been asking for.
A way forward for those who want the UN to survive
All of this research reinforces that giving wealthy countries a 'pass' on any type of issue, simply because they give more money to the UN is not in the long term interest of the UN. It also highlights that funding decisions are not just short term operational issues but they are fundamental to the governance and long-term effectiveness of the organization. Leaders who delegate funding and managerial issues to subordinates without considering or understanding both the short and long-term impact on the UN’s ability to operate and its credibility across multiple stakeholder groups put the organization at risk.
Now more than ever, the UN needs to uphold collective norms and standards in substantive and managerial areas with impartiality and demonstrate its ability to facilitate collective problem-solving. This is not just something for the SG, but requires engagement at all levels of UN staff as well as member state delegates. Specifically, the research we have highlighted in this spotlight points to four practical approaches that can be applied at multiple levels across the UN:
Understand that funding and staffing are not peripheral issues but fundamental to organizational governance and effectiveness. Stay informed of the new research and evidence and plan resourcing strategies and budgetary negotiations accordingly.
Make decisions based not just on the basis of maintaining short term funding levels, but also to maintain long-term relevance and effectiveness of the organization. This means understanding the concerns and priorities of all member states, not just wealthy countries.
Build issue-based coalitions and alliances that work across policy and budgetary bodies. Do not be confined by assumptions based on historical patterns of behavior, traditional conceptual paradigms or established voting groups. This is a time of change and disruption, which can also be used to strengthen collective problem-solving.
Apply and enforce norms and standards as consistently as possible, both with respect to substantive policies as well as management and governance procedures. Before making an exception that may offer short term solutions, weigh the long term organizational risks using data and evidence rather than just ‘political judgement’.
None of this will be easy. But to end on a positive note, history has also shown that turbulence and disruption has not always been a bad thing for the UN. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, emerged stronger after the COVID-19 pandemic, despite facing massive criticism, loss of funding and US withdrawal from the organization. The crisis exposed structural problems caused by stagnant assessed funding and over-reliance on extra-budgetary contributions, and brought member states and staff together to find solutions that have strengthened the organization. In 2022, WHO member states committed to increasing assessed funding, which had previously made up only 16% of its budget, to 50% by 2030. They also introduced an innovative model of integrated budgeting so that voluntary funding from member states or private sector donors does not undermine the collectively agreed priorities. And most importantly, WHO therefore provides a tangible example for others to learn from as well as some hope for the future of the UN.
To stay optimistic and keep up to date with similar examples and research, sign up for our newsletter. 😀