The world’s biggest annual gathering of global leaders kicks off its high-level week in New York, offering foreign dignitaries an opportunity to hear U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for reshaping the international system in his own image, making it a place with less foreign aid, more tariffs, and stripped-down norms, laws, and regulations.
For a president who craves international recognition, the United Nations General Assembly has provided a stage filled with the pomp and ceremony that appeals to him. But he comes to New York with his advisers having taken an ax to the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was once the world’s premier development and humanitarian institution, cutting funds for global health, children’s well-being, and the U.N.’s blue helmets, disparaging it along the way.
UN on edge
The prospect of a presidential visit has put the U.N. on edge and forced it to imagine a future without the United States — and without American taxpayers — supplying the funding and political leadership required to keep the U.N. and the wider multilateral system afloat.
Weeks after Trump began his second term, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres launched the UN80 Initiative, a hastily prepared reform plan aimed at lowering U.N. costs while increasing efficiency. The U.N. chief also called for eliminating up to 20% of the U.N.’s 33,000 secretariat posts — though many of those posts are currently vacant. The reform initiative won’t be resolved before the world leaders get back in their limos and leave town.
The road ahead looks rockier for the U.N.’s largely independent specialized agencies, such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the UN Refugee Agency — or UNHCR — which have had to let go thousands of workers at their headquarters and in the field.
Mixed milestones
But before we get into the numbers, how about we say a happy birthday to the U.N.?
The U.N. General Assembly plays host to several thematic summits, starting with an event today in the General Assembly Hall marking the 80th anniversary of the U.N.’s founding in October 1945. The General Assembly held its first session in January 1946, the same year Trump was born in its future home of New York City.
Later in the day, the U.N. will host a high-level meeting to reflect on progress, or really the lack of progress, on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, followed by another high-level meeting to mark the 30th anniversary of the landmark Beijing Women’s Conference, which comes at a time of pushback on women’s rights in the United States and beyond.
Other notable meetings include a climate summit (not to be confused with this week’s civil society-led Climate Week NYC), a series of high-level meetings on noncommunicable diseases and mental health and development financing, a commemoration of the international day of the elimination of nuclear weapons, and a meeting on the fate of Rohingya refugees.
The main event
The general debate will open tomorrow with a speech by Guterres, followed by an address by the new U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock, under the theme “Better Together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights.”
In keeping with tradition, Brazil, represented by leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will deliver the first speech from the General Assembly rostrum, followed immediately by Trump. I would love to be in the waiting room — GA 2000 — when those two cross paths.
For those who fret a Chinese takeover of the U.N., rest assured that President Xi Jinping will not be present, nor will his BRICS partner, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who rarely attends the U.N. annual summit. Xi’s latest frenemy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is also a no-show.
The money squeeze
Expect donors to talk a good game on the need for increased financing for development, climate adaptation, and debt relief, particularly in the global south. But the cold, hard numbers tell a different story. Defense spending is gobbling up a growing share of donor budgets, as key powers confront an increasingly unstable world. Global military spending has risen for 10 consecutive years, reaching an all-time high of $2.7 trillion in 2024, the steepest year-on-year increase since 1988, according to a U.N. report. Meanwhile, official development assistance, or ODA, is set to drop by 9% to 17% this year. That’s on top of a 9% cut in 2024.
“For the first time in nearly 30 years, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all cut their ODA in 2024,” according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The shortfall is undermining international efforts to achieve the SDGs, with the gap in funding resources required to meet the targets over the next five years standing at about $4 trillion a year.
“Rising global military expenditures are not delivering peace — and will not achieve sustainable peace.” Izumi Nakamitsu, the U.N. high representative for disarmament affairs, writes. “Instead, they undermine our shared vision for a just, sustainable and equitable future.”
Checklist
It’s not the New York marathon, but sometimes UNGA can feel like an endurance race. Imagine what it’s like for the U.N.’s secretary-general — 150 bilateral meetings with heads of state and governments, not to mention the multiple speeches he must deliver, the meals he must eat, and the receptions and side meetings he is required to attend.
Tom Fletcher, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, describes the process as “speed dating,” noting that he will engage in an “immense number of bilaterals with ministers, development colleagues, heads of government,” and attend side events’ breakfasts, lunches, and dinners to rally support and raise funds for the chronically underfunded U.N. humanitarian missions. “So I’ll be eating for the United Nations over that week.”
For those who aren’t invited to diplomatic receptions and dining events, I would recommend bringing a bag of snacks to get you through the week, maybe a pair of sneakers, and a good book or podcast to keep you busy if you get stuck on the west side of First Avenue as Trump’s convoy makes its way in and out of the U.N. headquarters. Oh, COVID-19 and flu vaccine shots would be nice. It’s ripe season for a spreader event.
Palestine’s future
Today, the General Assembly will convene a meeting on the two-state solution, during which France and other key Western powers are expected to recognize the state of Palestine, adding to the more than 140 countries that have already done so. Yesterday, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom formally recognized Palestine.
The move follows the launch of a massive Israeli attack on Gaza City, and its subsequent missile strike against the Hamas political leadership based in Doha, Qatar, dousing prospects for a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has vowed “there will be no Palestinian state.”
The Trump administration has responded to the statehood drive by revoking the visas of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his entourage, effectively preventing him from attending the session. He will now deliver his address via a video link.
There remains concern that Netanyahu will raise the stakes in his address to the General Assembly. Asked if he would respond to the Palestinians’ recognition bid by announcing the annexation of the West Bank, Netanyahu replied in Hebrew: “Future steps are future steps, but clearly, if unilateral steps are taken against us, then they're just inviting unilateral steps on our part.”
What happens in Gaza doesn’t stay in Gaza
The Middle East crisis, according to Elizabeth Campbell, who served in the U.S. State Department and the United Nations, has implications for the future of the U.N. and multilateralism more generally. Gaza, she told Devex during a recent Pro Briefing, “is the epicenter of absolutely everything that is going wrong. It is the laboratory where all of the norms, all of the principles, international humanitarian law, all of that has been completely, what’s the word I’m looking for, destroyed. No one is abiding by it. … And of course that challenge predated the Trump administration, and really began with the Biden administration.”
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When all else fails, reform
Gaza and Ukraine may be the big crises, but the theme of Guterres’ penultimate General Assembly summit is reform. In March, prodded by U.S. cuts, the U.N. chief unveiled his UN80 Initiative, which aims to find ways to save costs, streamline thousands of U.N. mandates, and consider restructuring the U.N., in part by merging redundant U.N. agencies.
It’s unclear when or whether the U.N. membership will embrace Guterres’ reforms. But in the coming weeks, the membership will have to come to terms with a revised 2026 U.N. budget proposal that calls for $500 million in cuts — a 20% reduction from the regular budget — the elimination of more than 19% of posts in the U.N. Secretariat, and an additional 13% reduction in U.N. peacekeeping posts.
“For some colleagues, these changes may mean relocation for themselves and their families,” Guterres wrote in an internal memo to staff reviewed by Devex. “ For others, they mean changes in functions or reporting lines. And for some, separation from service.”
On Thursday, Guterres unveiled the latest phase of the initiative, a structural reform plan that calls for a long list of bureaucratic streamlining initiatives, including proposals to merge several U.N. agencies and departments — among them, folding UNOPS into the U.N. Development Programme and combining the U.N. Population Fund and UN Women. Those changes also require member state approval.
ICYMI: UN80 and the incredible shrinking United Nations (Pro)
Deep dive: The UN — from big ideas to big cuts
Heading off campus
We will be hosting our own series of events from today to Wednesday, at Devex Impact House, highlighting discussions with David Beasley, the former head of the World Food Programme; former USAID Administrator Mark Green; Henrietta Fore, the head of UNICEF during Trump’s first administration; the International Crisis Group’s Comfort Ero; and UNOPS’ Jorge Moreira da Silva, among dozens of other speakers.
The Concordia Summit will feature World Bank Senior Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg, along with a number of Trump administration officials — including Richard Grenell, special envoy for special missions; Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau; and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr — as well as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and actress Goldie Hawn.
The Clinton Foundation will be hosting the U.N.’s Tom Fletcher, WFP chief Cindy McCain, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman.
The 2025 Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Forum will be hosting World Bank President Ajay Banga, Gates Foundation chair Bill Gates, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., and Sidi Ould Tah, the new president of the African Development Bank Group, at the Plaza Hotel on Wednesday.
About time
Days before the U.N. summit, the U.S. Senate on Friday finally confirmed Mike Waltz as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Jeffrey Bartos, a Pennsylvania Republican, to serve as U.S. ambassador for U.N. management and reform, and Jennifer Locetta, a Florida Republican, as U.S. ambassador for special political affairs in the U.N., which includes responsibility for U.N. Security Council affairs. Tammy Bruce, Trump’s pick to serve as Waltz’s deputy U.S. representative, was yet to be confirmed. Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokesperson who served as Trump’s deputy special envoy to the Middle East, has been serving for months in New York as a senior policy adviser, a position that doesn’t require confirmation.
Ready, set, campaign
Expect aspirants for the top U.N. job to begin more openly lobbying world leaders and foreign ministers. Names in the mix include former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet; Rebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican economist who leads the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development; Mexican environment minister Alicia Bárcena; María Fernanda Espinosa, a former minister of defense and foreign affairs of Ecuador (and speaker at our event); and Rafael Grossi, the Argentine head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In April, Bolivia formally nominated Vice President David Choquehuanca.
“A lot of diplomats tell us Grossi is looking too hungry at the moment and maybe actually be peaking too soon,” Richard Gowan, the U.N. advocacy chief at the International Crisis Group, tells Devex. “Also, Grossi is still juggling Iran and Ukrainian nuclear [crises], which is a bit like juggling chainsaws: there is quite a high chance you get hurt.”
The Latin Americans believe it is their turn to have one of their own lead the U.N. But expect candidates to emerge from elsewhere. Vuk Jeremić, the former Serbian foreign minister and former UNGA president who mounted an unsuccessful bid for the top U.N. job in 2016, showed up in New York to host a book launch for Hugh Dugan, who served in Trump’s first term as senior director for international organizations.
There are other races as well.
The quest for the top job at UNDP appears to be coming to a close, though not before world leaders return from a week of summitry. Jens Wandel of Denmark is said to be the favorite of Guterres, who will make the final decision.
But some U.N. diplomats say there has been pushback from influential donors. Other candidate-aspirants include former Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo; Nakamitsu, the U.N. undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs; Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, a Greek-French former development minister for Francophonie and international partnership in France; and Mohamed Nasheed, a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and the first democratically elected president of the Maldives.
UNHCR is also up for grabs. Filippo Grandi's term expires at the end of 2025. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is said to be vying for the job against Germany’s Niels Annen and Belgium’s former asylum and migration minister, Nicole de Moor. But the Swiss diplomat and migration minister Christine Schraner Burgener is viewed as the front-runner.
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About the author
Colum Lynch
Colum Lynch is an award-winning reporter and Senior Global Reporter for Devex. He covers the intersection of development, diplomacy, and humanitarian relief at the United Nations and beyond. Prior to Devex, Colum reported on foreign policy and national security for Foreign Policy Magazine and the Washington Post. Colum was awarded the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital reporting for his blog Turtle Bay. He has also won an award for groundbreaking reporting on the U.N.’s failure to protect civilians in Darfur.
