It might just be the budget negotiation from hell. Over the past few weeks, number crunchers from governments have been holed up in the United Nations basement, grappling with a $3.2 billion U.N. administrative budget, a gruelling project which involves sifting through several hundred pages of line items and notes, and fighting over some 774 amendments that fill more than 130 pages on a draft budget resolution.
“It’s almost like a game of chicken,” said Daniel Forti, head of U.N. affairs for the International Crisis Group. “If you open this up to line-by-line negotiations, then everyone's in real trouble, because it's just too much to do in too short a period of time.”
The negotiations in the U.N.’s budget committee, also known as the Fifth Committee, represents the first major test of whether the U.N. member states will endorse Secretary-General António Guterres’ reform initiative, known as UN80, as well as his calls for a 15% cut in the 2026 budget and a reduction of more than 18% of its posts — though some 55% of the 2,681 posts marked for elimination are currently vacant. Guterres’ budget would shave about $577 million, or 15.1%, of the 2025 budget.