The UN secretary-general’s UN80 initiative was initially intended to mark and celebrate the UN’s 80th anniversary but quickly became the moniker for UN reform. Much has been written about the initiative, and the UN publishes regular updates on its website. Of UN80’s three workstreams—efficiencies in the UN Secretariat, the mandate implementation review, and structural changes and programmatic realignment—Workstream 3 is the least settled. If UN80 is to deliver meaningful reforms, it requires member states to become more proactively engaged in advancing Workstream 3 and to dedicate more human resources to the effort.

The secretary-general’s September 2025 “Shifting Paradigms” report on Workstream 3 emphasizes the need for improved coordination and collaboration, better use of technology, and sharing of operational support services, all of which have been proposed (and required) before. The secretary-general’s own 2017 reports on reforming the UN development system and several subsequent reports provide many of the same recommendations.[1]

This raises the question: Why haven’t these reforms already been implemented? In my own experience—and from discussions with other resident coordinators and humanitarian coordinators, staff of UN agencies, funds, and programs, and donors—there are several key reasons. These include the failure to fund UN entities in accordance with their mandates and comparative advantages; the tendency to provide funding and make decisions in silos; tensions between localization and risk management; the absence of professionalized, full-time boards for agencies, funds, and programs; and the inevitable bureaucratic impediments. Read more