Top UN official defends reform agenda as genuine, despite skepticism

Reform is always a fraught enterprise in a vast, entrenched bureaucracy such as the United Nations. Reform against the backdrop of a severe budget crunch triggered by the Trump administration’s foreign assistance cuts invariably leads to questions about the real reason for the reform — and whether it’s a reactionary, indiscriminate approach or a serious attempt at improving the U.N. Guy Ryder, U.N. undersecretary-general for policy, insisted it’s the latter. “We are taking a strategic approach,” Ryder told Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar during a briefing shortly before the 80th U.N. General Assembly. “The secretary-general is very deliberately investing in some areas and necessarily deprioritizing in others. But it's a thought-through, reflective approach to the way we have to invest our time, effort, and resources in the future.” Critics, however, see a rushed process that takes a guillotine to budgets, staff, and agencies. In recent weeks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released a revised 2026 budget that carves out $500 million from its regular budget and eliminates nearly 2,700 posts. He also unveiled a plan for structural reform that includes the merging of several U.N. agencies’ departments, including folding UNOPS into the U.N. Development Programme and the U.N. Population Fund into UN Women. In addition, UNAIDS would be phased out by the end of 2026, prompting concerns that the fight against HIV/AIDS could regress. “I hear the critique. I can't avoid the critique that this is an unreflecting, across-the-board downsizing,” Ryder said, adding that the U.N. “may have a smaller footprint, but can operate more effectively and nearer to meeting the legitimate expectations of our member states. But I repeat, everybody can make their judgment of this. Some will not see that strategic intent behind it.” One of the reasons why the strategic intent may not be clear to critics is that rank-and-file employees argue they’re bearing the brunt of cuts, while officials in the upper ranks, they say, are being spared — or simply reshuffled. Ryder said it’s more practical than political. “I think the element you have to factor into this is that, by definition, there are a lot more people working in lower grades than there are in higher grades. You can make the case that there are too many people like me, undersecretary-generals, assistant secretary-generals, but if proportionately you take a certain percentage off the ASG, USG ranks, that absolute number is always going to be much less than it is lower down where there are more staff members,” he said. “I don’t expect any workforce to welcome a process which is going to lead to … a significant cut in the workforce. I mean, who wants to do that?” he added. “None of us. Absolutely none of us. We are in circumstances where — and this is a judgment of the secretary-general, but it’s also the realities of our member state behavior — where we’re going to have to face up to some very difficult conditions and take difficult decisions.” Ultimately, the “acid test” of those decisions, as Ryder said, are the member states themselves, which must approve Guterres’ plans. Those member states have been encouraging Guterres to be “bold” and “ambitious,” Ryder said. “And now the question is reversed. The secretary-general’s put on the table a number of ideas — and let’s be clear, this is a first progress report … but we will discover in the coming weeks if the boldness that the secretary-general is demonstrating is going to be reciprocated by member states.” But he cautioned that whatever comes of the UN80 reform agenda, it won’t necessarily solve the world body’s financial woes. “Our liquidity problems very obviously and directly result from the nonpayment of financial contributions by a number of member states. And whatever budget, whatever size of budget we put on the table and is approved by member states, if a number of member states who … are responsible for paying a significant part of the budget don’t pay it, we’re going to have liquidity problems. I mean, that’s just a fact of life.” It’s why Ryder said the U.N., in a sense, must prove its worth. “We’ve got to put the United Nations in the best possible position to make a credible claim on the resources of member states. We’ve got to make ourselves the most attractive, investable proposition,” he said. And while the cuts are “admittedly painful,” Ryder said it’s “testimony to one thing we’re trying to do, which is to make sure that the United Nations, within whatever resources are made available to it, operates to the best of its capacities and in the most impactful way. Because the bottom line in all of this is impact. What sort of impact are we having on the everyday lives of people?”