The United Nations is in financial crisis. In response, the UN is contemplating unprecedented belt-tightening reforms, including budget and staff cuts, that it has spent decades resisting. But a key part of the solution – reducing UN salaries to bring them in line with US civil servants – has not been proposed. The US should make the case for it.
The cause of the UN’s liquidity crisis is multi-faceted. One factor is the extraordinary 87 percent growth of the UN regular budget from $1.998 billion in 2005 to $3.729 billion in 2025. This growth was driven by demands from member states that require more reports, staff, and other resources.
This growth has been abetted by resistance from within the UN secretariat and among many member states to reforms proposed over the years by the United States and likeminded governments that would have helped constrain budget growth, improve efficiency, and eliminate redundant and outdated activities.
Increasing costs and questions about the value of these activities have contributed to many member states delaying or not paying their financial contributions in recent years, leading to substantial liquidity shortages. Although it is the most significant source of the funding shortfall, the US is not alone. China, Russia, and other large contributors had outstanding payments well into 2025.
However, the US is unique in that it has historically sought to leverage its status as the largest funder to the UN by withholding payments to pressure the organization to adopt reforms. In essence, America has delayed or withheld funding to spur the organization to adopt reforms or in objection to a specific policy.
Whether the Trump administration’s decisions to halt US funding earlier this year, secure funding recissions in July, and propose further cuts are intended for this purpose is unclear. The US has not made public its demands, if they have made them. Nonetheless, the resulting financial strain has forced the United Nations to float significant budgetary reductions and reforms.
Secretary General António Guterres announced the UN80 reform initiative in March. UN80 is aimed at reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and reducing waste. There are three main planks: adopting cost savings that the Secretary General can implement under his existing authority such as freezing hiring or shifting staff to lower cost locations; identifying and reviewing approximately 4,000 mandates (tasks ranging from peacekeeping operations to reports) adopted by the member states for duplication and ongoing relevance; and a consideration of structural reforms and consolidation of offices, funds, programs, and agencies across the UN system.
These efforts are overdue. In fact, they echo past reform efforts championed by the US that were ultimately rejected or shelved.
Twenty years ago, for instance, the US led an effort to compile a list of UN mandates to review for relevance, effectiveness, and duplication. The initial, partial review concluded that only 56 percent of the mandates in the Humanitarian cluster were “current and relevant” and that only 35 percent of the mandates in the African Development cluster were current and relevant. Rather than eliminate wasteful mandates, the General Assembly, instead, killed that mandate review.
Will this reform process be successful? Or killed like previous efforts? The US needs to push for success.
According to reports, as part of this process, the Secretary General is seeking to eliminate 20 percent of the budget and 20 percent of staff in the UN Secretariat. Unsurprisingly, the UN staff are opposed. But for organizations like the UN, it is difficult to achieve substantial budget reductions otherwise, as over 70 percent of the UN regular budget is dedicated to staff salaries and related costs. The US should support cuts, particularly for activities that are duplicative or tangential to the core UN mission.
However, the UN is overlooking a significant budget reduction option. Currently, under instruction from the UN General Assembly, UN professional staff are paid between 110 percent and 120 percent of equivalent US civil servants.
The UN justifies this because they are an expatriate service, i.e. their employees work in foreign countries. The US and other countries address this situation through cost-of-living adjustments and additional benefits. But here’s the catch – so does the UN. The UN has post adjustments and additional benefits that are designed to alleviate the challenges of expatriate service as explained in this AEI paper.
Paying 10 to 20 percent above equivalent US civil service salaries is an unreasonable overcompensation on the part of the UN. The financial implications of excessive UN salaries amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
As the largest contributor to the UN system, the US should work with the other member states to immediately reduce UN salaries to bring them into line with the member state that the UN has identified as having the best comparator civil service: the United States.
Brett Schaefer is a senior fellow at AEI, a former member of the UN Committee on Contributions, and a former member of the UN Task Force for the United States Institute of Peace. He has recently written on the WHO in The Dispatch, UNESCO in The Hill, and UNIFIL in National Review.
