By Javier Surasky
Following the election of Annalena Baerbock (Germany) as President of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on June 2, she stated in her acceptance speech that her first objective would be “to support Member States to renew, to refocus and to make our organization fit for purpose, fit for the 21st century,” calling for the UN80 initiative to be seen as an opportunity to adapt the UN to new challenges, rather than as a mere cost-cutting exercise. A few days later, on June 24, the Secretary-General officially presented the initiative to Member States.
Following
those two events, July was an active month for debates and developments
related to UN80.
To begin
with, Member States officially endorsed the initiative through the adoption of
General Assembly Resolution 79/318,
which we covered in a previous
blog post.
Before that
happened, on July 1, the UN80 Task Force—chaired by the Under-Secretary-General
for Policy, Guy Ryder—presented the progress of the process to Member States.
He reported that the registration of active mandates across all UN system
entities, including overlaps, had been completed. He also announced that by the
end of the month, concrete proposals would be presented for programmatic and
budgetary realignments, including measures such as applying cuts of between 15%
and 20% to “non-essential structures,” although it is not entirely clear what
that entails.
A week
later, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect published its report
UN80
and the Future of Atrocity Prevention: Opportunities for Structural Reform,
in which it argued that the UN80 initiative presents a strategic opportunity to
strengthen the UN’s atrocity prevention capacities. The report called for
protection mandates not to be cut, and for human rights, civilian protection,
and preventive diplomacy to be enhanced.
A similar
line of thinking emerged in environmental matters, where various specialized
forums proposed approaches that aim to operationalize reforms, for example by clustering
multilateral environmental treaties and establishing functional
coordination among agreements such as the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm
Conventions. This would avoid duplication and optimize the use of available
resources.
Unsurprisingly,
UN80 was also part of the discussions at the High-Level Political Forum on
Sustainable Development (HLPF), held in New York from July 14 to 23. In her
opening speech, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed
concluded by stating: “With five years to go, the Secretary-General’s UN80
initiative marks a historic step to build on recent reforms and ensure that the
United Nations remains a trusted, agile partner, ready to tackle today’s
challenges and tomorrow’s uncertainties, and drive our collective push for the
2030 Agenda nationally, regionally and globally.”
Shortly
afterward, on July 24, UN staff in Geneva issued a declaration
of “no confidence” in Secretary-General António Guterres and his
Under-Secretary-General for Policy, Guy Ryder, due to their handling of the
UN80 initiative.
Amid these
tensions, and in light of the current policies of the Donald Trump
administration in the U.S., the
Financial Times published an interesting article—available here via an
alternative source—on how China has increased its institutional influence
in UN system entities such as the International Telecommunication Union. This
agency is key to debates on the future of AI and space activity. The article
notes that China has aligned itself rhetorically with various countries from
the Global South in their support for and demands regarding the UN80
initiative, while U.S. representatives are calling for greater transparency and
budgetary oversight as a prerequisite for their political backing of the process.
We now
await further clarity in the form of the forthcoming report from the UN80 Task
Force, which is expected to include concrete reform proposals. Given the
crucial nature of the process—and the threats hanging over it, partly due to
the lack of transparency and clarity by its leaders—I want to close this blog
with a
quote from an anonymous document written by a UN staffer, who sarcastically
analyzed the start of the process:
“It reminds
me why I’ve stayed at the UN for decades despite everything. Not because I
believe in the reform theater or the management consultancy speak or the
endless PowerPoint presentations about transformation. But because somewhere
beneath all the bureaucratic nonsense, there’s still a flicker of the original
idea: that maybe, just maybe, we can work together to solve problems that no
one can solve alone.”