The United Nations at 80

The United Nations at 80

The UN80 Initiative

2025 sees the UN celebrating its 80th anniversary. The UN was established to promote cooperation between the world’s nations to advance peace and cooperation. The UN was founded in the wake of the devastation of WWII with the aim of preventing future wars and promoting peace and cooperation between nations. 

The UN’s agenda has since expanded. It now encompasses cooperation on the advancement of human rights and development. As a part of marking its 80th year carrying out this mandate, Secretary-General António Guterres launched the UN80 initiative. The initiative is a proposal for a system-wide effort at reforming the UN to respond to the question: ‘How can the UN adapt to become more agile, integrated, and equal to respond to today’s complex global challenges amid tightening resources?’ Secretary-General Guterres commented at the launch of the UN80 Initiative that, ‘[i]t is essential that an organizational system as complex and crucial as the United Nations – subjects itself to rigorous and regular scrutiny to assess its fitness for purpose in carrying out its goals efficiently’.

The UN80 initiative was launched in March 2025. In July 2025, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution on UN80, which effectively endorses the initiative and its proceeding reforms to streamline the UN system. The resolution highlighted ‘the important role and comparative advantage of an adequately resourced, relevant, coherent, efficient and effective United Nations system in promoting international cooperation’, and welcomed the efforts of the Secretary General to strengthen the UN order to ‘keep pace with a changing world and to make it fit for the present and future challenges’.

UN80 is part of a series of efforts that the UN has launched in recent years to adapt to the changing world and make multilateralism more responsive, resilient, and efficient. Ongoing reforms that were previously launched include:

  • Our Common Agenda, launched in 2020 during the UN’s 75th Anniversary to accelerate implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and
  • the Pact for the Future that reaffirms multilateralism and established actions to revitalise the UN.

The UN’s (ongoing) response to a changing world: The Liquidity Crisis and More

The overwhelming driver of the UN80 initiative is efficiency. While the UN has recognised that it is lagging in its attempts to meet the SDGs, and that trust in multilateralism is declining, it is now focusing on how resource constraints within the organization compounds these two problems. Since the 1950s, the UN has dealt with liquidity issues that are multifaceted in their cause, but triggered by delays and shortfalls in contributions from Member States. These contributions, known as ‘assessed contributions’ are mandatory payments from Member States that finance the operations of the UN Secretariat. Delays in payments impact the budget of the Secretariat and affect the UN’s overall ability to function. 

In recent years, voluntary funding towards the UN and other agencies, funds, and programs has been declining. This comes as a result of geopolitical conflicts, changes in governments of major contributors, such as Donald Trump’s election as US President, and an overall economic downturn that is affecting multiple countries across the world. It is estimated that the UN has lost 40% of its funding since last year. These trends have made the liquidity crisis in the UN more acute, prompting a response from the organisation that would allow it to remain adaptable while carrying out its mandate.

While the UN80 is not a cost-cutting exercise that would solve the UN’s financial challenges – which the UN stated exists under separate proposals that are under consideration by the UN General Assembly – the UN80 is intended to create organizational efficiency that mitigate the impacts of this financial crisis.

 UN80 in other words is an attempt to create internal organizational changes to offset the effects of the immediate financial crisis, and to link these organisational changes to its wider reforms to make it more prepared for present and future challenges beyond liquidity issues.

The goals and work of the UN80 

UN80 builds and expands upon reforms that have taken place in development, peace and security, management, and data. Recognizing the limited resources currently available, the stated goals of the UN80 are to create a UN that is:

  • More efficient and cost-effective
  • More responsive to crises and countries’ needs
  • More effective in delivery of the SDGs
  • More accountable to taxpayers and the people it serves
  • More supportive of UN staff and their mission-critical work

UN80 Workstreams

To realize these goals, the Secretary-General has appointed a UN80 task force to develop reform proposals across three key areas/workstreams:

Workstream 1—Efficiencies and improvements:

  1. Identify efficiencies in the management and operations of the United Nations Secretariat, and the System as a whole
  2. Cutting red tape
  3. Optimising the UN’s global footprint by relocating some functions to lower-cost duty stations  

Workstream 2—Mandates implementation:

  1. Review approximately 4,000 resolutions and other mandate source documents. Mandates refer to the tasks and responsibilities assigned to UN organizations by Member States to guide their work
  2. Streamline delivery, reduce duplication, and increase impact, starting with the work of the Secretariat and expanding across the UN System 

Workstream 3—Potential structural changes and programs realignments: 

  1. Exploring structural changes to the architecture of the UN System
  2. Realignment of programmes across entities to ensure, optimal coherence, resource use, and impact

The UN80 Task force is chaired by Guy Rider, Under-Secretary General for Policy. Under the UN80 Task Force there are seven UN80 Clusters, grouped by thematic focus and led by a Principle, that will develop reforms for the three key areas above. These seven clusters are:

Carrying out the UN80 initiative and its proposals

The outcomes of the initiative, from the UN’s side, will be a series of proposals for reforms. The first set of proposals will be on improving efficiency in the UN Secretariat and will be presented to the Secretary-General for consideration. The UN80 Task Force delivered initial proposals on the first workstream, efficiencies, in June 2025, and proposals on the second workstream, mandate implementation, in July 2025. Proposals on the third workstream, structural changes, will follow in the next few months and into the beginning of 2026.

Workstream 1

In terms of the reforms for Workstream 1, which are mainly focused on the Secretariat, the proposals will be reflected in the UN’s 2026 program budget that will be submitted for Member States’ consideration in the upcoming General Assembly session in September 2025. Some of the proposals included consolidating human resources, finance and procurement services into unified hubs, with particular focus on New York and Geneva, and centralising payroll operations into three global processing centres (down from 10 centres currently in operation). Member States have voiced concerns of proposed budget and staff cuts, however, Under-Secretary General Guy Ryder has stated that the ‘reality of our circumstances’ means that ‘organizations have faced some wrenching decisions, and this happening every day’, although the goal of the UN80 initiative is, above all, improving multilateralism. It remains to be seen how the 2026 budget will be revised as the final proposals are still being established.

Workstream 2

Proposals under Workstream 2, the Report looked at the ‘life-cycle’ of the management of mandates from its creation to its delivery and its review, and proposed reforms at different stages of the life cycle. As mandates are directives from Member States, Guterres stressed at great length that the proposed reforms were not aimed at questioning the decisions given to the UN, but were about addressing the ways in which mandates were carried out so that they can be more effective, efficient, and impactful. Following the report’s publication, the UN General Assembly has established an ad hoc working group to identify principles and follow-up actions to carry out the recommendations of the report.

Workstream 3

For workstream 3 on structural changes and programme alignments, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, issued a report of proposals ahead of the High-Level Week of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly. A central proposal of the report is the New Humanitarian Compact. This Compact aims to ‘deliver faster, leaner and more accountable support to people in crises; restore trust in multilateral action; and maximise impact from every dollar’. To achieve these goals, the Compact targets trimming down bureaucracy, integrating global supply chains, establishing a system-wide Human Rights Group to coordinate human rights systematically across all UN activities, and creating a UN System Data Commons and Technology Accelerator to drive modernisation in the system. This will be conducted in six steps:

  1. Cut bureaucracy to serve over 100 million people faster
  2. Make supply chains work as one
  3. Scale up common services
  4. Strengthen country leadership, supported by better data
  5. Speak with one voice in humanitarian diplomacy
  6. Clarify roles to reduce duplication and strengthen impact
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