This analysis, first published by IPI Global Observatory, has been edited for style. Views expressed by author Katja Hemmerich, the managing director of ReformWorks, do not necessarily represent IPI GO, IPI, or Arete News.
At the first informal briefing on UN80 by the U.N. secretary-general on May 12, a significant number of member nations, predominantly from the Global South, highlighted that this round of U.N. reform should aim to make the organization more inclusive. At first glance, this desired outcome seems out of sync with the political context. After all, UN80 has been driven primarily by a significant shift in U.S. policies on foreign aid, which has come at the same time as a U.S. rejection of diversity and inclusion policies, including at the U.N.
Yet an examination of what inclusion means from the perspective of member nations highlights that in recent decades, money flows have significantly impacted the U.N. degree of inclusivity. Consequently, the significant reduction in funding represents a unique opportunity to make the U.N. more inclusive, as intended by the U.N. Charter, which can only make it stronger in the long run.
Inclusion in the U.N. context
Typically, inclusion is considered in the context of the U.N. as a workplace, including the extent to which diverse employees have equitable access to opportunities and resources and feel a sense of belonging. However, the U.N. is an organization of member nations, and inclusion should be considered from the perspective of the equitable access of member nations to different sources of power and decision-making in the organization. Some aspects of inclusion are defined in the U.N. Charter.
The Security Council notwithstanding, the U.N. Charter and U.N. practices have generally aimed for an equitable balance of power, as illustrated by the practice that the secretary-general should not be a national of the Security Council's five permanent members, known as the P5. The U.N. Charter similarly sets out that decisions on the budget be decided by the General Assembly, where each member nation has one vote, regardless of size, power, or income level.
Yet the U.N.’s administrative and management practices and procedures have evolved in ways that have distorted this balance of power over time, making the U.N. less inclusive than its founders intended. Particularly in the areas of staffing and budgeting, practices have evolved that have given wealthy member nations disproportionate advantages. In some cases, this was unintentional, and in others it was part of an implicit political bargain to keep wealthy nations engaged and funding the U.N. In the current context, these issues should be revisited, and their impact on the long-term legitimacy of the U.N. considered.
U.N. senior appointments: money talks
Having the U.N.’s full membership represented in its workforce has always been considered an important aspect for organizational legitimacy. But more than that, it also represents an opportunity for all member nations to access some level of administrative power, thereby balancing out some of the less equitable power arrangements, like in the Security Council.
Senior-level appointments in particular are recognized as a source of power and influence and therefore coveted by most member nations. The importance of ensuring balanced access to such administrative power was recognized throughout the Cold War by each U.N. secretary-general, who worked hard to ensure that senior appointments were equitably allocated between the two Cold War blocs.
As the Cold War ended, the political calculation behind balancing competing blocs shifted toward ensuring the continued engagement of wealthy countries. According to a review by the Center for International Cooperation (cited here by ReformWorks), more than half of senior appointments since 1995 have gone to high-income countries, predominantly from the Western European and Others Group, or WEOG.
Ring-fencing of certain senior positions for particular countries has been a standard practice despite repeated General Assembly resolutions, including the Pact for the Future, indicating no country should have a monopoly on a particular position. The executive director of UNICEF has always been an American, for example. Similarly, only a few weeks after the adoption of the Pact for the Future, the secretary-general appointed a sixth consecutive British national as U.N. emergency relief coordinator.
The political calculation behind many of these senior appointments is that it can help keep key donor countries engaged in the work of the U.N. Major troop-contributing countries have tried to leverage their non-financial contributions to U.N. peacekeeping in a similar manner to access senior U.N. appointments. While their representation amongst force commanders grew significantly in recent decades, heads of mission continue to come disproportionately from the Western permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Money talks.
Yet developments over the last year or so indicate that the current proportion of senior appointments for high-income countries is now clearly out of step with their level of funding and political engagement at the U.N. As a result, there are also a lot fewer political and financial risks to systematically implementing the general rule outlined in General Assembly resolution 46/232 that nationals of the same member nation should not succeed each other in a senior appointment.
Returning to Article 101 of the U.N. Charter, and giving paramount consideration to "securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity" in senior appointments, would help to not only make the U.N. more inclusive, but also enhance its performance. As analysts at Devex calculated, "It is considerably more likely for the Security Council chamber to be destroyed by a piece of space junk than the most qualified [ERC] candidate happening to be a U.K. national six times in a row."
Access to U.N. experience for a representative workforce
Money also plays a role in WEOG’s disproportionate representation among the rest of the U.N.'s workforce, though in a less direct way than for senior appointments. Research has demonstrated that having experience working for the U.N., or in contexts in which it operates, is a key determinant of who is selected for formal employment opportunities. This is because U.N. experience is systematically used as a criterion to determine competence. But funding impacts the opportunities for young people from different countries and regions to obtain early-career work experience in the U.N.
For instance, the U.N. Secretariat’s Young Professionals’ Program, supported through assessed funding and targeted at both underrepresented and unrepresented countries, brings approximately 50 new entry level P2 staff into the U.N. Secretariat each year, as compared to the 180 new P2s who enter via the Junior Professional Officer program each year. The JPO program, funded by donors that earmark the vast majority of those positions for their own nationals, results in more than three times as many opportunities for entry-level staff from donor countries, which are generally already well represented.
A much more common way of gaining early U.N. experience is through internships or U.N. Volunteer positions, known as UNVs. In a recent ReformWorks survey of 635 millennials and members of Gen Z aspiring to an international career from 117 countries, 74% indicated they had some U.N. experience either as UNVs or interns. The U.N. Secretariat alone offers over 500 internships annually, and about 12,500 UNVs have been deployed per year over the last five years. While UNVs receive a stipend to cover their living expenses, interns in the Secretariat do not. In 2024, 91% of UNVs were from the Global South.
Conversely, between 2014 and 2023, 42% of the U.N. Secretariat’s interns came from just five countries: China, France, Germany, Kenya and the United States, reflecting that 63% of internships in 2022–2023 were in Geneva, Nairobi, and New York. Unless there is easily accessible financial support to take on an unpaid internship, like that provided by China and Germany to their nationals, those studying or living in or near Geneva, Nairobi, and New York are more likely to fill those internships.
Providing stipends for interns is one option for making crucial U.N. work experience more accessible — though this will be difficult in the current financial climate. Another such opportunity is the current effort to relocate staff positions to locations outside Geneva and New York. While such relocations would have immediate cost implications, including the payment of short-term relocation allowances, they would likely cut costs in the medium and long term.
The long-term horizon for such decisions should therefore also take into account how the expansion of offices in different regions would impact access to early U.N. work experience and, therefore, the representativeness of the U.N.'s workforce.
For example, none of Africa's unrepresented countries in the U.N. Secretariat during 2019-2023 were in East Africa, perhaps in part because the significant U.N. presence in Nairobi and the region has increased access to opportunities for U.N. experience that then translate into formal employment. Consideration could therefore be given to relocating some positions to the U.N.'s offices in West Africa, which has many unrepresented African countries.
Similarly, all of the unrepresented countries in the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean are in the Caribbean, and most of Asia's unrepresented countries are in the Pacific, both regions with a strong interest in development and mitigating the impact of climate change. Some offices and posts with relevant mandates could thus be relocated to those regions. Relocating posts and offices is an opportunity not only to save costs but also to allow other countries to access more opportunities to engage with and work for the U.N.
How funding has undermined multilateralism
Money has not just impacted the accessibility of U.N. work experience and appointments and the administrative power they bring. A growing body of research has demonstrated that earmarked voluntary funding flows have systematically undermined the multilateral character of the U.N. in recent decades. Earmarked funding allows donor countries to provide money to a particular issue or country program based on their national interest. This can often allow the U.N. to access funding more quickly than it would through other processes.
Yet over time, this pragmatic approach has led donor countries to increasingly bypass collective decision making with the broader membership of relevant legislative bodies, thereby essentially imposing their own priorities on the organization. Between 2011 and 2022, earmarked voluntary funding became the primary source of funds for the U.N. system, while assessed funding remained virtually static at 2011 levels, leaving those collectively agreed priorities significantly under-resourced compared to the priorities of donor nations.
If the U.N. is going to be an inclusive organization in accordance with the U.N. Charter, there is a need to reinforce multilateral decision making on its priorities and the resources it is allocated. This is in the interest of all member nations. After all, it was at the insistence of the United States that the General Assembly agreed to adopt assessed budgets by consensus, eliminating the possibility for a numerical majority of nations to force their priorities through the budget process, which only requires a two-thirds majority for adoption.
An organization that changes its procedures to prevent one group from imposing its priorities in the budget process but then allows the group that wanted the change to bypass the budget process and inject its priorities through a backdoor is not inclusive.
Adopting the World Health Organization's integrated budgeting process across the U.N. system would be one way to reinforce inclusive multilateral decision making on the organization’s priorities. Essentially, it is WHO's collective membership that decides on the overall funding needs, identifying thematic "buckets" for funding.
The agreed assessed funding is apportioned to those buckets accordingly and supplemented by voluntary funds from both member nations and private sector donors like the Gates Foundation. But once a bucket is full, no more funding is accepted, which allows program priorities to remain aligned with the collective membership’s decision making.
Another policy option would be to eliminate earmarking entirely, although this is politically unlikely. A more practicable step might be to restrict earmarking to one of the approximately 245 multi-donor trust funds that pool funds from multiple donors interested in a particular issue or region, which would mitigate the disproportionate influence of any single donor.
Introducing systematic levies on earmarked funds, as the Development Coordination Office did for development funding, could disincentivize earmarking in the long run while providing more cash in the short term.
The unfortunate reality is there is a very real short-term financial and liquidity crisis UN80 needs to address. If decision-makers can maintain a long-term perspective on how reforms will impact core elements of what has made the U.N. an effective multilateral organization — an equitable balance of power and inclusive decision-making — this reform process has a chance of strengthening the organization despite the financial cuts.
