UN80: From “Less-with-Less” to “More-with-Less”

By Richard Ponzio
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 11 2025 – With the ink hardly dry on the Pact for the Future outcome for modernizing global governance from last September’s Summit of the Future, the United Nations’ long-standing financial crisis has morphed into an extreme liquidity crisis.

Exacerbated by multiple factors — rising populist political forces in traditional international organizations and foreign-aid-financing donor countries, pressure to significantly expand military budget outlays in response to heightened geopolitical tensions, the emergence of non-military security threats involving the environment and new technologies, and renewed frustrations about perceived bloated and dysfunctional international bureaucracies — there are no quick fixes.

Ongoing deliberations in New York and Geneva suggest that major humanitarian agencies, including the World Food Program, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and International Organization for Migration, could see severe annual budget shortfalls as high as 30% to 40%, and the UN Secretariat may need to let go at least 20% of its staff, in addition to other immediate cost-saving measures.

Internal UN modeling suggests that the year-end cash deficit will, absent budget cuts, leave the Secretariat without money to pay salaries and suppliers by September of this year, and a letter to Member States by the Secretary-General, in February 2025, warned that the UN’s peacekeeping budget to pay for troops may run dry by mid-year.

A UN briefing to Member States in June projected that in 2025 alone, resources across the UN system are expected to shrink by up to 30% compared to 2023 (directly impacting an estimated 30 to 60 million lives).

Though in unenviable positions, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and his UN system colleagues have, fortunately, chosen to shape a constructive course in response to the severe budget cuts now underway, in de facto ways, by major Member States (including the United States and China), which have largely financed and provided global political leadership through the world body for years.

The “UN80 Initiative,” first announced by the Secretary-General on March 12, 2025, aims to:

• • Rapidly identify efficiencies and improvements in the way the United Nations works.
• • Thoroughly review the implementation of all mandates given to the UN by Member States, which have significantly increased in recent years.
• • Conduct a strategic review of deeper, more structural changes and program realignment in the UN System.

It is critical that Member States work closely with the Secretariat to fully leverage this multi-pronged effort to help advance, rather than detract from, the Pact for the Future, by creating a more agile, cost-effective, and impactful UN system.

UN80 Initiative Status Update

On August 1, the UN Secretary-General presented to the General Assembly (GA) his “Report of the Mandate Implementation Review,” the chief outcome of the UN80 Initiative’s second workstream.

Utilizing new data analytical tools and focusing on the systemic and structural issues that cut across mandates — namely, a request or directive for action set out in the UN Charter, a resolution, or decision by a UN intergovernmental organ — the review recommends, inter alia, the creation of digital mandate registries to flag potential mandate overlap before it happens, as well as the development of shorter, clearer, more focused, and adequately resourced mandates.

Far more than a simple budgetary exercise and administrative tune-up, the UN80 Initiative is poised to complement the reforms detailed through the Pact for the Future’s 56 distinct actions by bringing greater coherence to a UN system now consisting of some 140 different entities, including 67 Secretariat Departments and Offices, 33 Peacekeeping Operation and Political Missions, 15 funds, and 14 specialized agencies.

It represents a welcome and long overdue opportunity to streamline the world body’s organizational structure and reduce significant overlap in its mission and operations, while still enabling the UN system to tackle effectively both short-term and “long problems.”

Following the Mandate Implementation Review, the Secretary-General is anticipated to soon introduce a package of concrete proposals with respect to the UN80 Initiative’s first workstream on efficiencies and improvements, with particular attention given to service delivery for those most in need of UN system support.

These recommendations will then feed into this September’s General Debate of the General Assembly and the revised UN Secretariat proposed program budget for 2026 (coinciding with the GA debate). Around March/April of 2026, the UN Secretariat proposed program budget for 2027 will be introduced, also reflecting suggested UN80 Initiative changes.

Additionally, in June, senior Secretariat officials began to brief Member States on possible UN entity mergers, program realignments, and other considered structural reforms (UN80’s third workstream organized through seven thematic clusters across the UN system).

These ambitious ideas are likely to have an especially significant bearing on how quickly and effectively Pact for the Future implementation proceeds.

Taking the UN80 Initiative and Pact for the Future Forward, Together

The full realization of the Pact for the Future — and its associated Global Digital Compact (GDC) and Declaration on Future Generations (DFG) — means a United Nations system capable of keeping pace — and empowering people and nations to better grapple — with the pivotal challenges and opportunities of the present era, including devastating wars, runaway climate change, unconstrained artificial intelligence, the safeguarding of human rights, and promoting human development in today’s hyper-connected global economy.

At the same time, the UN80 Initiative wields the potential to complement and reinforce the Pact for the Future in at least four essential and concrete ways (as illustrated in the figure below).

First, it encourages a healthy examination of the world body’s core strengths — and many clues can be found within the Pact’s negotiated 56 Actions, as well as the UN’s long-cited three pillars of peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights.

Second, the initiative creates chances to promote long-overdue system-wide efficiency gains, from rebalancing a top-heavy bureaucracy to employing technology in creative new ways for back-office and other critical functions. Though it is regrettable (given the massive, urgent, and global planetary and human needs associated with present polycrisis, referring to how overlapping, urgent, complex, and sometimes even extreme problem-sets intersect and further exacerbate global threats and challenges), in the short-run, the UN and other global institutions will be forced to do less-with-less financial, human, and other resources.

However, as multilateral institutions progress in their restructuring — including through the tech-modernization, foresight, and behavioral/cultural shift program known as “UN 2.0” (an integral part of the Pact) — opportunities to achieve more-with-less could, at least in theory, begin to take shape, delivering a more nimble and effective organization.

How the UN80 Initiative Can Reinforce the Pact

Source: Original Figure, Stimson Center

Third, UN80 considers the need to relocate staff and associated capabilities closer to where operational needs are greatest, across Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia, as well as to consolidate departments/agencies, thereby striking a healthier balance between the UN system’s core functions and actual form.

Fourth and finally, it welcomes thoughtful deliberation among powerful governments and other key stakeholders about a new Grand Bargain to underpin the multilateral system for the coming decades. The agreement reached among the UN’s founding members eight decades ago, on June 26, 1945 in San Francisco, can be found in the opening words of the Charter’s Preamble: “… to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind …” Though it will need to arrive organically through purposeful and broad-based consultations, the new Grand Bargain should weigh fundamental global shifts since World War II and a new “logic for the future.”

The new logic taking shape will no doubt reflect renewed fears of another cold war or even a Third World War facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI), drones, and other cutting-edge technologies. But it is also likely to reflect intense though contentious concerns about environmental destruction, population growth, and migration — all terms not mentioned in the Preamble to the Charter.

Just as the 1945 United Nations struck a balance between inclusive idealism (one-state, one-vote within the General Assembly; a system introduced in the failed 1919 League of Nations) and Great Power realism (a small Security Council led by five veto-wielding major countries), the new (2025?) Grand Bargain will need to ponder similar kinds of global governance innovations — combining the exigencies of changing Great Power politics and technology with pragmatic and far-sighted multistakeholder approaches — to tackle new and emerging 21st century challenges.

If well executed by a motivated and mission-driven international civil service and backed by a cross-regional group of champion governments and partners in civil society, the combined UN80 Initiative and Pact for the Future follow-through agendas hold out the promise that the United Nations can navigate the turbulent waters ahead and come out a more nimble, tech-savvy, and outcome-oriented, rather than process-driven, international organization on the other side.

In short, they could collectively give renewed and tangible meaning to making the UN, as often phrased during the more than decade-long crisis of global governance, “fit-for-purpose,” with the ability to achieve more-with-less financial, human, and other resources.

Richard J. Ponzio, PhD, is Director, Global Governance, Justice & Security Program and Senior Fellow, the Stimson Center, Washington DC. He is also Co-Director of the Global Governance Innovation Network.

IPS UN Bureau

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