With financial resources shrinking and major powers increasingly divided, the UN’s next leader will face pressure to concentrate on conflict prevention, humanitarian assistance and a more manageable development agenda.
The United Nations has confronted political disputes, humanitarian emergencies and financial difficulties throughout its history. Yet the challenges facing the organisation as world leaders assemble in New York for the annual General Assembly are particularly severe.
Divisions among the United States, China and Russia have restricted Security Council action on major conflicts, including those in Ukraine, Iran, Myanmar and Sudan. Developing countries continue to express frustration over unfulfilled international development commitments, while reductions in American funding have forced the UN to scale back humanitarian and peacekeeping activities.
These pressures make the organisation’s approaching leadership transition especially consequential.
Secretary-General António Guterres is expected to leave office at the end of the year after a decade marked by increasingly difficult international conditions. During his final years, much of his attention has been devoted to managing staff reductions, controlling expenditure and preventing a deeper financial crisis within the UN Secretariat.
His successor will inherit the immediate responsibility of keeping the institution operational while addressing a larger question: what should the United Nations concentrate on when political agreement and financial resources are both in short supply?
The candidates discussed as possible successors include senior UN trade official Rebeca Grynspan, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi and Guyana’s ambassador to the UN, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett.
Whoever assumes the position will confront a reality that previous UN leaders have struggled to overcome. In a divided international system, the organisation cannot expect governments to agree on every major global challenge.
The argument for reform, therefore, is not simply that the UN should become more efficient. It is that the organisation should narrow its priorities, strengthen its capacity to prevent and resolve conflicts, deliver humanitarian assistance more effectively and pursue development commitments that governments have a realistic prospect of fulfilling.
How the UN’s Responsibilities Expanded
Since the end of the Cold War, successive secretaries-general have generally responded to international crises by broadening the UN’s activities.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali sought to strengthen the organisation’s role in international peacemaking. However, the failure of UN peacekeepers to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre exposed serious weaknesses in its ability to protect civilians.
His successor, Kofi Annan, subsequently developed a wider agenda involving poverty reduction, the fight against AIDS and peace operations in Kosovo, Timor-Leste and several African countries.
Although the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 divided the Security Council, Annan continued efforts to strengthen international cooperation. A major summit in 2005 sought renewed commitments from member states, while the Peacebuilding Commission and Human Rights Council were established the following year.
Ban Ki-moon and António Guterres inherited an expanding collection of conflicts and humanitarian emergencies. The Syrian civil war, in particular, demonstrated how divisions among powerful states could prevent decisive UN action over many years.
As the organisation’s responsibilities increased, so did its finances. Combined revenue across UN entities rose from approximately $40 billion in 2010 to a peak of $74 billion in 2022, with humanitarian spending accounting for a substantial part of that growth.
Successive leaders also pursued ambitious international agreements.
Ban supported the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Guterres convened the Summit of the Future in 2024, where governments made commitments covering subjects ranging from artificial intelligence to justice between generations.
These initiatives demonstrated the organisation’s ability to bring governments together. Their limitations, however, became increasingly visible when states failed to implement earlier promises.
The resulting gap between diplomatic commitments and practical outcomes has contributed to doubts about the effectiveness of international cooperation.
Financial Pressure Is Forcing Institutional Change
The UN’s financial difficulties have intensified under President Donald Trump’s administration.
In early 2025, Washington suspended most American funding for UN humanitarian activities and withheld contributions to the organisation’s regular budget. Its payments towards peacekeeping were also substantially below expected levels.
Other major contributors have not fully compensated for the resulting shortfall.
European governments have reduced humanitarian expenditure while increasing defence budgets, and China has not stepped in to replace American funding. Beijing is now responsible for approximately one-fifth of the UN’s regular budget, making it the second-largest contributor after Washington.
American Ambassador Mike Waltz has also indicated that the United States and China have found some common ground on reducing UN expenditure.
Washington has since released approximately $4 billion for humanitarian operations and processed a $725 million contribution to the organisation’s main budget. Nevertheless, the next secretary-general will still have to operate within tighter financial limits.
The central challenge will be to preserve essential UN functions while reducing unnecessary administrative expenditure.
That will require more than routine budget cuts.
The UN system contains numerous agencies, programmes and offices whose responsibilities sometimes overlap. Three Rome-based institutions work on agriculture and food security. The UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration operate in many of the same displacement emergencies. Climate-related responsibilities are distributed across multiple offices, representatives and funding arrangements.
Although these institutions have distinct mandates, overlapping activities can complicate coordination and increase administrative costs.
A meaningful reform programme would therefore examine how agencies raise money, coordinate emergency responses and divide responsibilities.
Institutional consolidation is likely to encounter resistance from organisations seeking to preserve their existing authority and resources. The next secretary-general will need to manage those interests while demonstrating that administrative reform can improve services rather than simply reduce expenditure.
Restoring the UN’s Role in Conflict Prevention
A more focused United Nations would also place greater emphasis on its original peace and security responsibilities.
Some diplomats believe Guterres has concentrated too heavily on humanitarian access during major conflicts while remaining comparatively cautious about pursuing political settlements.
His approach reflects genuine constraints.
Russia has used its Security Council veto to restrict UN involvement in Ukraine. American administrations have resisted aspects of UN diplomacy concerning Gaza, while China has discouraged an expanded UN political role in Myanmar.
Regional powers have also limited the organisation’s influence in conflicts such as Sudan.
These examples demonstrate that the secretary-general cannot independently resolve wars when influential governments oppose UN involvement.
Nevertheless, the organisation retains diplomatic tools that could be used more actively in conflicts where major-power interests do not make mediation impossible.
During the Cold War, Secretary-General U Thant helped facilitate communication between Washington and Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis.
The UN has since accumulated considerable experience in mediation, peace operations, logistics and post-conflict stabilisation.
That expertise remains relevant even when governments are unwilling to authorise large multinational peacekeeping deployments.
The Trump administration itself acknowledged the organisation’s operational capabilities when it sought Security Council approval for UN support to an international force addressing gang violence in Haiti.
The next secretary-general could therefore devote greater attention to discreet diplomacy, communication between rival governments and early intervention before political disputes develop into larger conflicts.
Such efforts may attract less public attention than international summits or major peacekeeping missions. They could nevertheless provide a practical means of rebuilding confidence in the organisation.
A More Realistic Development Agenda
A renewed emphasis on peace and security would not require the UN to abandon international development.
It would, however, make prioritisation increasingly important.
In 2015, member states adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals containing 169 specific targets. Their ambitions included eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.
Subsequent economic disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have made those commitments increasingly difficult to achieve.
Governments are now preparing to negotiate a new development framework for the period after 2030.
The existing framework covers a broad range of policy areas, from environmental protection and public health to justice, institutions and economic development.
Its breadth has allowed many governments and organisations to identify priorities within the agenda. At the same time, the large number of targets has made it harder to concentrate political attention and resources on a smaller set of measurable outcomes.
A revised framework could place greater emphasis on reducing poverty, helping countries adapt to climate change and protecting vulnerable economies from international financial shocks.
Such an approach would also need to address the concerns of developing countries that wealthier governments may use reform as an opportunity to retreat from development commitments altogether.
The next secretary-general’s task would be to encourage agreement on a more manageable set of objectives without allowing financial restraint to become a justification for abandoning poorer countries.
Fewer Conferences, More Focused Diplomacy
The UN’s approach to climate change and emerging technologies also deserves reassessment.
Large international conferences can raise public awareness, encourage participation and create political momentum. Yet their scale does not necessarily produce clear decisions or effective implementation.
Approximately 55,000 representatives of governments, businesses and civil society organisations registered for the UN climate summit held in Brazil last year.
Such gatherings demonstrate broad international interest, but they can also create complicated negotiating environments in which reaching specific agreements becomes difficult.
A more selective diplomatic approach could involve smaller groups of governments working through difficult policy questions before presenting proposals for wider international consideration.
Previous secretaries-general have often developed important initiatives through sustained engagement with a limited number of diplomatic partners.
The same method could be applied to contemporary issues such as climate adaptation, technological governance and international economic cooperation.
Large public events would still have a role, particularly when international attention is needed to encourage reluctant governments to act.
But they need not remain the default response to every global problem.
Preparing the UN for Future Crises
Debates about the organisation’s future frequently return to the possibility of comprehensive institutional reform.
Some experts believe the UN’s structural difficulties may eventually compel member states to reconsider its founding Charter. Others argue that a major international emergency could persuade governments to strengthen cooperation.
A large-scale cyberattack involving artificial intelligence or a series of devastating climate-related disasters could, for example, expose the limitations of fragmented national responses.
Such possibilities underline the importance of maintaining an international institution capable of coordinating collective action.
The next secretary-general will need to prepare for future emergencies while addressing the UN’s immediate problems.
That means improving conflict prevention, making humanitarian operations more effective, reducing administrative duplication and encouraging governments to agree on practical development priorities.
The organisation’s credibility will depend less on the number of declarations it produces than on its ability to demonstrate results.
A United Nations with a narrower agenda would not necessarily have a smaller purpose. By concentrating its resources on responsibilities it can realistically fulfil, it could preserve the international cooperation needed to address conflicts, humanitarian emergencies and shared global challenges.
