World leaders gathered last week for the general debate and other high-level events to kick off the substantive work of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly. This high-level week comes at a time of unprecedented uncertainty about the future of the UN and the multilateral system. This is in large part because the United States—the member state most responsible for the creation of the UN and historically its largest financial contributor—has signaled, in both words and actions, that it is no longer committed to the multilateral system.

Given this situation, the UN cannot afford to continue with business as usual. But to meet the moment requires articulation of a clear vision for the role of the UN in the new geopolitical environment. Secretary-General António Guterres has not articulated such a vision. But even if he had a vision for the role of the UN, he lacks the credibility with either member states or UN staff to be able to see it through. Time is also against him, given that his remaining time in office is not enough to see through another major reform agenda.

Of course, the secretary-general can’t afford to do nothing. His response has been to launch the UN80 initiative, an attempt to win the confidence of member states with a show of reform and cost-cutting across three workstreams. The most recent products of this initiatives are a report on structural change under “Workstream 3,” released on September 18th and revised budget estimates aimed at cost-cutting under “Workstream 1,” released on September 15th.

The problem, however, is that the manner in which the UN80 initiative is being rolled out is more likely to handicap the organization than to help it weather the storm. It risks exacerbating the liquidity crisis, precipitating a loss of talent, and undermining the ability of his successor to define a path forward for multilateralism. A more responsible way forward would be for the secretary-general to focus his remaining time in office on keeping the Secretariat afloat, including by addressing the liquidity crisis, and allow the next secretary-general to advance reforms that support a new vision for the role of the UN.

The Counterproductive Logic of Preemptive Cuts

The UN80 initiative was conceived in February 2025 in the wake of President Donald Trump’s issuance of Executive Order 14169 initiating a 90-day pause on foreign aid programs and funding to international organizations and Executive Order 14199 launching a review of continued US participation in international organizations, as well as the beginning of the systematic dismantling of USAID. The UN80 initiative was premised on the logic that a clear commitment to cost-cutting and reform on the part of the secretary-general would spare the UN from the most draconian cuts. This clearly was not the case.

The Trump administration has not paid any of its assessed contributions since entering office. In May, the White House issued its budget request for fiscal year 2026, which included no funding for assessed contributions to the UN regular budget, peacekeeping budgets, or UN support to the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia. And at the beginning of June, the White House sent a rescission package canceling funds previously approved by Congress for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, including for UN assessed contributions, with additional cancellations announced in August as part of a “pocket rescission package.”

Even though it could not be more clear that the United States will not pay up, the secretary-general has doubled down on his budget reductions. The problem is that budget reductions cannot solve a cash shortfall caused by a member state refusing to pay its assessed contributions. The United States is responsible for 22% of the regular budget. No matter how much the secretary-general reduces the budget, there will still be a 22% hole—and possibly a larger one if China (the second-largest contributor, at 20%) continues to pay late. When faced with this massive cash shortfall, the secretary-general’s response is essentially to ask all other member states to give him 15% less cash to implement the same range of mandates.

A budget reduction might make sense in response to a liquidity crisis if accompanied by a supplemental assessment corresponding to the expected funding shortfall, therefore allowing the UN to continue operating without any other member state having to pay more. But the secretary-general has not done this. All he has done in response to the liquidity crisis is to repeat old proposals that the General Assembly has not been able to agree on and to call for member states to pay in full and on time.

This is not business as usual. The current situation calls for a secretary-general who focuses less on assigning blame and more on demonstrating leadership. He could do well to follow the example of his predecessors. For example, when the UN was in the midst of a financial crisis in the 1960s prompted by the nonpayment of assessed contributions by several member states, including France and the Soviet Union, Secretary-General U Thant championed exceptional measures, including the issuance of bonds to cover the costs of peacekeeping operations, to maintain the solvency of the organization.

The Limits of a Siloed Approach

A major issue with the revised estimates as a whole is the fact that each Secretariat entity was responsible for identifying its own cuts in isolation. The same instructions on post and budget cuts were sent to all entities, regardless of size and function.[1] Cuts of this nature are a blunt instrument and not a catalyst for reform. The result has been defensive retrenchment at the entity level rather than a strategic repositioning at the Secretariat level.

The UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) and Department of Peace Operations (DPO) jointly developed a proposal for cuts because of their shared structures, but the revised estimates fail to examine synergies with other entities within the Secretariat that are also engaged in peace and security activities. The most obvious candidates include the other departments in the peace and security Standing Principals Group—the Office of Counter-Terrorism (OCT) and the Office for Disarmament Affairs—which could similar work in areas such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration (PRR); prevention of violent extremism; small arms and light weapons; and mine action.[2] There is also considerable opportunity for alignment with the work of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (ODC) on areas such as police, justice, rule of law, and transnational organized crime. The creation of an additional reporting line for ODC’s Terrorism Prevention Branch to OCT, as proposed in the Workstream 3 report, is a tacit acknowledgement of the overlap that stops short of actually remedying it.

Of course, problems of coherence are not limited to individual pillars. To his credit, in his Workstream 3 report the secretary-general recognizes the persistent challenge of working across the pillars of the UN’s work. However, the revised estimates report does not propose the necessary structural adjustments. One practical obstacle to greater coherence is the fact that all of the regional divisions of DPPA and DPO are in New York, while the regional divisions of the Development Cooperation Office (DCO) are located in their respective regions. DPPA and DPO insist that the nature of their work requires that they remain at headquarters. Having a presence in New York is, of course, required to liaise with member states and engage with intergovernmental bodies. But that is a weak justification for retaining the entirety of the departments in New York.

The Workstream 3 report says that that new coordination mechanisms will be put in place to facilitate cross-pillar collaboration. This, however, is not enough; coordination mechanisms already exist, and UN80 does not examine the reasons why they have fallen short. A more useful proposal would examine the fundamental disincentives that undermine programmatic coherence. At the entity level, these disincentives include competition for funding and influence, and at the individual level, they include career considerations that reward loyal turf warriors. A more ambitious proposal would also attempt to address the structural obstacles to greater coherence, looking at how to reorganize the existing capacities at the regional level with the regional divisions of DPPA and DPO to better serve missions and UN country teams, thus allowing the Secretariat to have greater impact through improved analysis, planning, and programmatic coherence.

Impact on Staff

The secretary-general has repeatedly insisted that the UN80 initiative is intended to better position the UN to respond to 21st-century demands. The revised estimates, however, are more likely to rob the Secretariat of the talent required to remain relevant and effective in the face of rapidly changing threats. This is because the brunt of the staff cuts that will result from the revised estimates will disproportionately fall upon the younger and more dynamic part of the workforce.

The staffing table in the revised estimates reflects a decrease of 2,681 posts (18.1%) compared to the current approved staffing, with a further reduction of 206 posts in the support account for peacekeeping operations (13.5%). Although many of these posts are vacant, the Secretariat estimates that 2,494 staff will be separated if the proposal is approved by the General Assembly.[3] The reduction in force will be managed using the 2023 downsizing policy, which outlines how each entity is to manage the termination of appointments and the retention of staff members during the downsizing or restructuring of an entity. This policy, which was originally established to more predictably and consistently guide staffing decisions during the drawdown and closure of peace operations, was not developed with Secretariat-wide staffing reductions in mind.

Under the downsizing policy, heads of entity are to prioritize nonrenewal of temporary contracts before proceeding to a comparative review exercise “to determine the order of preference in which staff members will be considered for retention.” The comparative review groups staff into retention categories based on their performance evaluations, disciplinary record, and length of continuous service, then prioritizes within each category by contract type. The practical effect of this is that the staffing reductions will disproportionately impact younger staff. This is not only because younger staff generally have worked in the Secretariat for a shorter period of time but also because staff members holding temporary appointments are on average younger than those holding fixed-term, continuing, or permanent appointments. These are also the staff who are more likely to have expertise in the areas of data analysis, digital technologies, innovation, foresight, and behavioral science, which the Secretariat has recently sought to build as part of the “UN 2.0” effort.

Another shortcoming of the application of the downsizing policy is the fact that decision-making is left at the level of entities. There are no procedures or processes in place to facilitate decision-making on retention or prioritization of specific functions or expertise across entities. If member states decide to proceed with staffing reductions as proposed by the secretary-general, they should request the secretary-general to define a framework separate from the downsizing policy to manage the reductions in force. This could allow a more strategic view of staffing requirements across the Secretariat to ensure that decisions on staff separation and retention take into account considerations such as functional overlap across entities and the need to retain dynamic talent and critical skill sets.

A Performative Reform Process

The UN80 initiative should be understood for what it is: an example of performative reform launched by a lame-duck secretary-general in an attempt to appear to be rising to the occasion during a moment of crisis. By presenting additional cuts to the proposed program budget in the 2026 revised estimates, he is attempting to salvage his credentials as a reformer and responsible steward of resources. But the proposals he has made are more likely to hamstring the organization than to provide it a stronger foundation from which to weather a period of unprecedented financial and geopolitical uncertainty.

In addition to the changes reflected in the revised estimates report, the secretary-general has proposed further structural reorganization in the context of his 2027 proposed program budget. He has also floated the possibility of consolidating several funds and programs in the context of his Workstream 3 report, with more detailed proposals to be presented in 2026. Even if approved before the conclusion of his tenure, these proposals could not be implemented during his remaining time in office.

The selection process for the next secretary-general will soon begin in earnest. Whoever is elected may not agree with the changes and consolidations presented under the UN80 initiative. He or she should have the opportunity to articulate a clear and compelling vision for the role of the UN in this new era of international relations and to present proposals to reshape the organization in a manner that supports this vision. But the next secretary-general may not have this opportunity if the UN is already in the midst of a process of structural reform. Structural reform processes are highly disruptive and resource-intensive in terms of both intergovernmental consideration of proposals and the implementation of the resulting decisions within the bureaucracy. As a result, they generate considerable reform fatigue that suppresses the appetite for further reform for several years.

It doesn’t have to be this way. At the end of the Cold War, the Secretariat struggled to manage the increase in the demand for UN peacekeeping operations. But instead of taking action on various proposals for structural change, Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuellar “decided to take no action… because he was by then close to the end of his term of office and he felt, rightly, that the matter should be left for his successor to resolve.”[4]

To meet the challenges of today, a more responsible way forward would be for Secretary-General Guterres to focus on keeping the ship afloat, focusing on urgent practical problems. He should be working to ameliorate, rather than exacerbate, the liquidity crisis affecting the Secretariat. In doing so, he would be granting his successor the latitude to define their vision for the role of the UN and the opportunity to shape the Secretariat in a way that better aligns with that vision.

Eugene Chen is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research at the United Nations University (UNU-CPR). The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations University.

This article was originally published in Eugene Chen’s weekly column on Substack, “Blue Helmets, Red Tape.” It has been lightly edited from the original version.

[1] As indicated in the secretary-general’s bulletin on delegation of authority, the term “entity” is the generic term used to describe a Secretariat department or office, a peace operation (i.e., a peacekeeping operation or special political mission), a regional commission, or a resident coordinator’s office.

[2] DDR refers to disarmament, demobilization and reintegration and is used in the context of armed groups; PRR refers to prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration and is used in the context of terrorist groups.

[3] This is based on the advance version of the secretary-general’s Revised Estimates Relating to the Proposed Programme Budget for 2026 and the Support Account for Peacekeeping Operations for the 2025/26 Period, Tables 16 and 17.

[4] Marrack Goulding, Peacemonger (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 30–31.