Saturday, May 10, 2025

United Nations, United States

The internal working group tasked by the UN secretary-general with proposing solutions to make the organization more efficient has suggested major reforms including merging certain agencies, according to an internal memo seen Friday, May 02 by AFP.

In March, Antonio Guterres launched the “ONU80” initiative aimed at improving the efficiency of the United Nations, which is facing chronic budget constraints reinforced by the policies of the US administration

And the memo leaked on Friday “is only part of the process”, commented Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General, who is due to report shortly to member states on the progress of the work.

In the memo, the working group describes a “proliferation of agencies, funds and programs that has led to a fragmented development system, with overlapping mandates, inefficient use of resources and inconsistent service delivery”, according to the six-page document seen by AFP, which compiles a number of “suggestions”.

The memo also deplores “outdated working methods” leading to “inefficiencies”, “inflation” in the number of senior officials and “duplication” of tasks across the UN system.

All this against a backdrop of “geopolitical changes and major cuts in foreign aid budgets” which “call into question the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Organization”.

Faced with drastic budget cuts by certain donor countries, in particular the United States, several agencies and services such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have already announced major reductions in their operations and staffing levels in recent weeks, provoking concern among employees, several hundred of whom demonstrated in Geneva on Thursday.

To address the problems identified, the task force calls for a “more streamlined, impactful and fiscally responsible” organization.

To this end, it proposes reforms to the Secretariat headed by Antonio Guterres, such as grouping together the Political Affairs and Peacekeeping Operations departments, but also puts forward ideas that can only be implemented with the agreement of member states.

In particular, it suggests the creation of a “single humanitarian entity”, mentioning several options, such as a merger of the Office for Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), or a merger of the operational capacities of Ocha, UNHCR, Unicef and WHO, in humanitarian operations.

The memo also envisages a “reduction” in the number of entities dedicated to development activities, an “integration” of UN-Climate into UN-Environment, and a merger of the UN Population Fund (specializing in maternal and child health) and UN-Women.

These are agencies that depend on mandates from UN General Assembly resolutions or other international agreements, and therefore on member states.

So “the process could become very complicated, because different states have different interests in different parts of the UN”, commented Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group.

And these “radical” proposals could also “meet a lot of resistance in several UN entities”, he pointed out.

UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh, interviewed in Geneva, has already insisted on the agency’s “unique mandate” to “protect refugees”.

Humaniterre with AFP