U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the global organization faces an extreme financial crisis, with the combined arrears for its regular budget and peacekeeping missions exceeding $5.6 billion.
The U.N. chief presented a sharply revised regular budget for 2026 of $3.238 billion to the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee on Friday. The figure is a 15.1% reduction from the 2025 approved appropriation.
The revised staffing table will pay for 11,594 posts, a cut of 2,681 positions representing an 18.8% in the workforce.
The dire financial picture was underscored by Catherine Pollard, Undersecretary-General for Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance, who reported that unpaid assessments for the regular budget totaled $1.87 billion as of Sept. 30 — the highest level in the past five years.
The presentation detailed specific debt owed by the largest contributor, with the U.S. owing over $1.495 billion for the regular budget and $2.356 billion for peacekeeping missions. Other major debtors for the regular Budget include China at $192.4 million and Russia at $71.7 million.
Guterres stressed that the lack of reliable funding threatens the U.N.'s core mandate, noting it began the year with a $135 million cash deficit. He pointed out that the budget does not address the U.N.'s liquidity problem, and he issued a stark prediction for the coming years.
"More uncertainty about collections and any delays in collections early in the year will force us to reduce spending even more. We will again spend less than the budget in 2026 because we did not collect enough," he said.
"That will probably lead to a collapse of the regular functioning of our organization," Guterres added. "And then potentially face the prospect of returning 600 million dollars in 2027 or about 20% of the budget. That means a race to bankruptcy."
'Collapse of the regular functioning' of the U.N. predicted
The U.N. is delaying $363 million in payments owed to member nations for "contingent-owned equipment" claims from troop-contributing countries. These are the requests for payment the U.N. receives from nations that provide uniformed personnel to its peacekeeping missions.
The budget adjustments are tied to the UN80 initiative, a multi-year reform effort focused on structural efficiency that coincides with the 80th anniversary of the U.N.'s founding in 1945.
The initiative includes a proposal to merge major agencies like the U.N. Development Program and UNOPS, and to combine the U.N. Population Fund and U.N. Women into single entities.
Additional reforms include consolidating macroeconomic functions currently split among the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UNCTAD, and the regional economic commissions into a single advisory function, and empowering the resident coordinator as the sole entry point to the system at the country level.
Under peace and security, the plan involves dismantling the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions and moving its disarmament and justice expertise to a new Center of Excellence on Prevention, Peacebuilding and Peace Support. The plan also eliminates two assistant secretary-general positions to consolidate management across geographic regions.
Common administrative platforms in duty stations like New York and Bangkok would be created. Programmatic cuts include liquidation of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and the planned drawdown of the U.N. Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia.
The U.N. system relies heavily on voluntary contributions for the majority of its work, while mandatory assessments fund its core operations. Voluntary contributions are non-binding funds for specialized agencies and programs, making up most of the system's expenditure but offering less financial stability.
Total U.N. system revenue reached approximately $67.6 billion in 2023, with voluntary contributions — including both core and earmarked funds for agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Program — accounting for roughly $46.7 billion, or about 69% of the total.
In contrast, mandatory assessments for member nations – binding dues from for the regular and peacekeeping budgets, calculated mainly by national income – totaled approximately $13.8 billion in 2023.
That covered the crucial, but smaller, annual budgets of the U.N. Secretariat's core functions, set at $3.72 billion for 2025, and the peacekeeping missions, set at $5.6 billion for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
As of September, only 136 of the U.N.'s 193 member nations had paid their mandatory assessments in full. Final budget approval is expected by the end of this year.
"Our choices are limited," Liberia's U.N. Ambassador Lewis G. Brown II told the committee. "The fiscal space is shrinking. As such, budgeting must remain mandate-driven and people-centered. According, the strength of this organization can no longer be measured by the size of these organs, but by the quality of services we deliver."
