The World Is Changing Rapidly: Can the United Nations Restructure to Stay Relevant?

Damian Lilly

The United Nations is facing its greatest financial crisis since the organization’s founding at the end of World War II. The effectiveness and efficiency of the UN system is under unprecedented scrutiny. While there has been talk of reform for years, structural changes are now firmly on the agenda. Once a taboo subject, even the potential merger of UN entities is now openly being discussed.

On March 12, 2025, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched UN80 “to ensure [the UN] remains effective, cost-efficient and responsive to the people it serves.” This new reform initiative builds on the secretary-general’s global cooperation vision set out in his “Our Common Agenda” report in 2021 and the Pact for the Future agreed among member states in September 2024. It is being run in parallel to UN 2.0, which aims to modernize the UN for the 21st century by harnessing the power of innovation, data, digital, foresight, and behavioral science.

UN80 will develop proposals in three areas: identifying efficiencies and improvements in ways of working; reviewing the implementation of mandates from member states; and conducting a strategic review of deeper, more structural changes and program realignment. It is not the first time the UN has embarked on a structural review. A mandate review was initiated following the 2005 World Summit and published in 2008, although it led to few changes. Earlier in his term, Guterres also undertook a repositioning of the UN development system and restructuring of the peace and security pillar. But this time round, the fate of many of the UN’s core functions is at stake.

While it coincides with the 80th anniversary of the UN, it is hard not to conclude that UN80 is also a response to aid cuts by the United States (US) and other countries, although the secretary-general has denied this. Since US President Donald Trump took office, his administration has caused serious harm to the world body, while other donors have also slashed their foreign aid. This has sent shockwaves through the international aid system, forcing UN agencies to make massive budgets cuts and putting millions of lives at risk.

The coming months could see increased pressure for the UN to reform significantly. In the spirit of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Washington, which is slashing the US federal government, the founders of the organization DOGE-UN are marketing a similar approach to tackling the “bureaucratic bloat, waste and inefficiencies” of the UN. The former Serbian foreign minister, Vuk Jeremić, who ran for secretary-general in 2016, is reportedly using DOGE-UN as a platform for another attempt to take the top job at the UN. The race to become the next secretary-general will start in earnest next year, with the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization likely to be a central campaign theme. It is not inconceivable that a populist politician could run on a ticket to radically cut down the UN.

An Organization in Retreat

Multilateralism was already at a low ebb before the election of Trump. For the past seven years, the UN has faced a liquidity crisis because not all member states pay their dues in full or on time. There is no part of the organization that is not under serious budgetary pressure. The peace and security pillar has been suffering from diminished political support for some time. The last time a new UN peacekeeping operation was deployed was to the Central African Republic in 2014. UN peace operations have recently been forced to withdraw from Mali and Sudan and to scale back operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a result, the current 2024–2025 peacekeeping budget of $5.59 billion is far smaller than the $9.9 billion back in 2018.

The UN’s development and humanitarian budget has, until recently, been relatively stable. However, the dismantling of USAID has changed that, given that the US accounted for 40% of foreign aid globally, and many UN agencies have been significantly reliant on US funding. These cuts are part of a broader trend of traditional donors, including the UK, Germany, and France, slashing their aid budgets in recent years. Peak aid was reached in 2023, with official development assistance expected to fall from $213 billion in that year to $140 billion by the end of 2025.

As a result, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has already made budget cuts affecting 6,000 staff, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said it plans to cut its staff by a fifth, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and World Programme (WFP) are both reducing their costs by 30%, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is faced with a $600 million hole in its budget this year. Other UN agencies are expected to announce similar job losses and budget cuts in the coming weeks.

Options for Restructuring the UN

Given this loss of funding across the board, there is now a serious imperative to restructure the UN. This is no easy task given that any changes require approval from the member states that provide different UN entities with their mandates. The UN is good at creating new agencies, offices, and envoys but is not very adept at dismantling or consolidating them. In 2010, UN Women was created by merging the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) with several other entities that address women’s issues. There aren’t many other examples.

There is likely to be political resistance to restructuring the UN from member states that favor certain UN entities over others, and reaching political agreement over any changes will require significant negotiation. Different UN entities will themselves resist change to defend their mandates and placate disgruntled staff whose jobs will be on the line. With limited time left in his second term, the secretary-general may find it hard to push through needed reforms.

However, given the severity of the UN’s financial crisis, it is hard to argue that now is not the time for a significant restructuring of the UN. While any proposed organizational changes will not eliminate the impact of the budget cuts on the UN’s important work around the world, the consequences could be limited by increasing effectiveness and efficiency. For this to happen, though, they must be underpinned by a strong justification for eliminating duplication and enhancing synergies as well pivoting the UN toward areas where it still clearly has an added value to address future challenges. So, what might be some of the areas for restructuring?

Peace and security:The peace and security pillar already underwent a restructuring in 2019, which led to the merger of the Department of Political Affairs and the Peacebuilding Support Office into the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) and the reconstitution of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations as the Department of Peace Operations (DPO). The reform also set up shared regional divisions between DPPA and DPO to promote a “whole-of-pillar” approach to conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. However, some have argued that this restructuring could have gone further, particularly to improve integrated planning between the two departments. The secretary-general’s more ambitious original proposal faced opposition from some member states. UN80 could consider further integration of DPPA and DPO, including their potential merger, which could move the UN toward the type of flexible and adaptable approach to peace operations called for in the Pact for the Future. The 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review provides another opportunity to continue bridging the peacekeeping-peacebuilding nexus.

Human rights and protection:While the human rights pillar is the smallest of the three pillars, human rights is a cross-cutting issue across the UN system. The secretary-general launched a Call to Action for Human Rights in 2020 and, as part of this, the UN adopted an Agenda for Protection in 2024. However, neither proposed any restructuring, despite significant duplication of activities such as monitoring, response, and advocacy related to human rights among different UN entities, which was a missed opportunity. As I have proposed elsewhere, a more comprehensive approach to protection across the UN system could streamline overlapping mandates and improve efficiency. While OHCHR is facing financial pressures, there is an argument that it should play a stronger role in coordinating the UN’s work on human rights and protection to bring about such changes.

Humanitarian-development nexus:The development pillar provides perhaps the greatest opportunity for a shake-up. Much has been said about the humanitarian-development nexus, but the current approach is failing and requires an overhaul. A more radical approach for UN80 to consider would include (as I have suggested elsewhere) the merger of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Development Coordination Office in New York to break down silos between humanitarian and development assistance. Such a restructuring could centralize headquarters support for resident coordinators/humanitarian coordinators in the field and move the UN toward a more integrated and coordinated approach to crisis response planning, coordination, programming, funding, and monitoring.

Food:The UN has three food agencies, all based in Rome: the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WFP, which was established as an offshoot of FAO in 1961. While FAO is the lead UN agency for technical expertise in food security, WFP is more of an operational humanitarian organization. However, in recent years, as WFP has added long-term resilience programming to its life-saving food assistance, FAO has expanded its work from development to include emergency response, with growing competition between the two agencies. While the food agencies signed a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) in 2023 to strengthen collaboration, this has faced many challenges according to recent evaluations. Following the logic of the humanitarian-development nexus, and given both WFP and FAO are struggling financially, UN80 could propose merging the two agencies , which could produce millions of dollars in cost efficiencies.

Health:In the health sector, one possible move would be to dissolve UNAIDS and absorb it within the World Health Organization (WHO). UNAIDS was established in 1996 as a joint UN program involving eleven UN agencies to strengthen the UN’s response to the AIDS epidemic. While HIV is still a serious concern in many countries, having a UN agency dedicated to a single disease may become harder to justify, and the work of UNAIDS could be integrated with that of WHO and other agencies.

Migration: The UN has three agencies that address different forms of migration: UNHCR, IOM, and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). UNRWA has been under intense political and financial pressure for years. The government of Israel has recently tried to ban UNRWA, and should it cease operations, Palestinian refugees would fall under the responsibility of UNHCR, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, although there has been no such transfer yet. On April 22nd, the secretary-general announced a strategic assessment of UNRWA as part of UN80.

While UNRWA is a regional agency, UNHCR provides global protection and assistance to refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless persons, and IOM focuses on service provision to a broader population of migrants. There is overlap between the work of UNHCR and IOM, especially on internally displaced persons, and it could make sense to have a single agency dealing with all forms of migration. However, UNHCR and IOM operate according to different legal frameworks, and they have been careful to draw a distinction between the different rights of refugees and migrants more generally. Even without a full merger, there could be proposals under UN80 for the two agencies to extend their collaboration beyond their current limited framework agreement and potentially develop common services in a range of areas.

Population and sexual and reproductive health: Over the past three decades, population-related issues have become a smaller part of the work of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), while it has taken on many more issues related to sexual and reproductive health and gender equality. This has caused significant duplication with the work of UN Women. Particularly considering the large funding cuts facing UNFPA, there could be proposals under UN80 to abolish the agency and transfer some of its work to other agencies such as UNICEF and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) while investing in UN Women as the single agency focused primarily on addressing gender inequality.

Climate:Climate change has become an increasing priority for the UN, but there is not a single agency to coordinate climate-related work across the system. While climate change is a major focus for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), it is not its primary mandate, and the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is not a UN agency. If there was one area of the UN to potentially strengthen, this would probably be it.

Make or Break Time

Restructuring and merging UN entities are not a panacea for the UN’s problems. They should be embarked upon only if they lead to a more effective and efficient organization.

The options above are merely possible changes that could be on the table for discussion as part of UN80. Anyone working in the UN will likely have their own ideas. It is vital that UN80 provides the opportunity for an open debate about how the UN could be structured to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world. The secretary-general will report on the UN80’s proposals to the General Assembly in July.

While it’s hard not to see this as a bleak time for the UN, its financial crisis must also be seen as an opportunity for restructuring the organization. Many of the problems are well known, but for years there has been a lack of political will to bring about much-needed reforms. In today’s reality, there are no more excuses, and the UN needs to seize the moment for change.

* Damian Lilly is an independent consultant working on humanitarian, peace, and security issues.

** This article was originally published at https://theglobalobservatory.org/

*** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.