The Secretariat Building at United Nations Headquarters, in New York. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas
By Stephanie Hodge
UNITED NATIONS, May 27 2025 – In 1945, with cities in ruins and hope stretched thin, 50 nations gathered in San Francisco and reached for a better world. From the ashes of fascism, genocide, and world war, they forged a charter — a binding declaration that peace, justice, and human dignity must be protected through international cooperation.
The United Nations was born not from idealism, but necessity. It was designed to prevent collapse.
Now, nearly 80 years later, the UN faces a different kind of crisis — a slow erosion of trust, legitimacy, and effectiveness. And yet, the sense of urgency that birthed the UN is absent from the reforms meant to save it.
Last week, Secretary-General António Guterres launched the “UN80 Initiative” — a promise to streamline, restructure, and modernize the institution. The speech was technically sound. It named real problems: fragmentation, inefficiency, and fiscal strain.
But it did not do what this moment demands. Because reform without purpose is choreography, not change. And perhaps more dangerously, it may reinforce the very power asymmetries it claims to redress.
I watched the speech not just as a professional evaluator or former advisor, but as someone who has walked this system — from post-conflict zones to policy tables — for over three decades. I’ve seen the courage of communities and the inertia of agencies. And I know when reform is performance. UN80, as currently framed, risks becoming exactly that.
What Was Said
The Secretary-General laid out three workstreams:
- 1. A comprehensive review of all mandates assigned to the Secretariat by Member States;
2. Identification of operational efficiencies across departments and entities;
3. Structural reforms — including agency mergers and the formation of thematic clusters.
He stated that this would be a system-wide process, not confined to the Secretariat alone, and emphasized the goal of building a more nimble, coordinated, and responsive UN. He described the UN80 Initiative as a response to geopolitical tensions, technological change, rising conflict, and shrinking resources. And he framed it as an effort to better serve both those who rely on the UN and the taxpayers who fund it.
These are real problems. The system is under stress. But while the administrative diagnosis is clear, the political and strategic roadmap remains vague.
Structure cannot substitute for strategy, and operational tweaks cannot resolve foundational incoherence. Reform must begin with clarity about what the UN is meant to be — and for whom it is accountable.
But What Was Not Said: Strategic Purpose
The most important question — reform for what? — remains unanswered.
What is the United Nations for in the 21st century? Is it a humanitarian responder? A normative engine? A technical platform? A peace broker? A rights defender?
The UN was never intended to be a donor-driven delivery contractor. It was designed to hold the line against war, inequality, and tyranny. But in recent decades, it has been slowly transformed into a service bureaucracy, dependent on earmarked funds, political favors, and private partnerships.
Until the UN reclaims its strategic purpose, structural reform will only mask decay.
Who Holds the Power?
Power in the UN system has shifted — not democratically, but informally:
• The P5 still hold vetoes over global peace and security;
• The G7 and G20 shape global development and finance from outside ECOSOC;
• Vertical funds (GCF, GEF, CIFs) operate in parallel, accountable more to their boards than to global norms;
• Major donors define the agenda through earmarks;
• And key leadership posts are quietly traded by geopolitical bloc.
UN80 is silent on this. But no reform is meaningful without confronting where power actually lives.
The Mirage of Clustering
I remember sitting in a government office in a post-conflict country a few years ago, trying to explain why three different UN agencies had shown up to offer nearly identical support on disaster risk planning. The local official — exhausted, polite — leaned back and asked me, “Is the UN not one family? Why do we get five cousins and no parent?”
This is the illusion that clustering now risks reinforcing. By merging agencies under thematic umbrellas, UN80 suggests that organizational dysfunction can be resolved through coordination and efficiency. But those of us who’ve worked in the field know: coordination without clarity, and structure without trust, rarely delivers.
Clustering is not inherently bad. But it is not a shortcut to legitimacy. Efficiency is not the same as coherence, and coherence is not the same as ownership.
You cannot engineer trust through organigrams. You must earn it through transparency, participation, and shared accountability. If Member States and local actors are not part of shaping how functions are grouped — and more importantly, how they’re governed — then the result is not reform. It’s rearrangement.
Staff know this. Many are not resisting change — they are resisting erasure. Clustering threatens not just jobs, but identities and mandates. It risks eroding technical expertise in favor of managerial simplicity.
True reform would start from the bottom: from countries asking what they need from the UN, and from people asking who speaks for them. Clustering should be a result of that dialogue — not a substitute for it.
Without that grounding, we risk building silos with broader walls and narrower doors — bureaucratic bunkers, not bridges.
History has shown us — from Delivering as One to UNDAF harmonization — that coordination cannot substitute for voice. Clustering, done wrong, will not solve dysfunction. It will make it harder to see.
If political appointments remain untouched, and if integration is led by budget pressure rather than strategic logic, clustering is not innovation. It is consolidation of power — dressed in reformist language.
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And history warns us: Delivering as One, the QCPR, UNDAF harmonization — all promised coordination. Few delivered accountability. Coordination without ownership, and structure without strategy, will not renew the system. It will only harden its fragilities.
The Case of UN DESA
UN DESA is a symbol of the UN’s internal confusion. Created to support ECOSOC, it now functions as a quasi-programmatic actor — duplicating the work of UNDP, UNCTAD, and regional commissions, often without field engagement or operational accountability.
DESA illustrates what happens when reform avoids politics: roles blur, duplication grows, and trust erodes.
Country Ownership: The Loudest Silence
UN80 risks becoming an elite project shaped by donors and technocrats, while the vast majority of Member States — especially those still recovering from colonization, debt, and climate injustice — are left out of the room. That’s not multilateralism. That’s managed decline.
The Global South — those who rely most on UN coordination, human rights mechanisms, and technical neutrality — were absent from this vision.
Where was their voice in designing UN80? Where were SIDS, LDCs, post-conflict governments, or frontline communities? How can reform be legitimate if it is not co-created with those it will affect most?
The Funding Problem
Guterres acknowledged financial stress — but sidestepped the truth:
- • UN financing is largely non-core, non-predictable, and donor-controlled;
• Agencies compete for funding rather than coordinate for impact;
• Global funds have more leverage than ECOSOC, and less accountability.
A real reform would propose a new multilateral funding compact — one that aligns with national priorities, funds coordination as a global public good, and dismantles dependency.
Do We Need Another War to Reform the UN?
We are not just facing crisis fatigue. We are watching the slow re-emergence of something more dangerous — the normalization of authoritarianism, xenophobia, and surveillance disguised as security.
Across regions, governments are shrinking civic space, dismissing international norms, and weaponizing fear. The ghosts of fascism are no longer metaphor. They are legislative proposals, detention centers, and unchecked algorithms.
The UN was created to prevent this. But unless it reclaims its moral clarity and structural legitimacy, it will become a bystander to its own irrelevance.
The UN Charter was written during war. The system it birthed was flawed, but urgent, and anchored in a vision that human dignity must be defended beyond borders.
Now we face cascading crises: ecological collapse, democratic backsliding, digital authoritarianism, and the erosion of global norms. Yet reform is treated as an internal budget exercise.
Do we really need another catastrophe to confront the imbalance of voice, power, and purpose in this system?
We already know what needs to change. What we lack is political will, institutional humility, and moral imagination.
Reform for What?
Not for balance sheets. Not for organizational charts.
Reform for justice. Reform for relevance. Reform for a world that will not wait.
Until we define the purpose, no amount of restructuring will restore credibility.
Final Thoughts
UN80, as currently framed, does not challenge the logic that broke the system. It risks becoming the next chapter in a long history of reforms that leave power untouched.
If we want more than managerialism — if we want meaning — we must:
- • Declare the UN’s core function in this century;
• End political appointments that corrode leadership integrity;
• Integrate vertical funds under multilateral coordination;
• Restore ECOSOC as the legitimate center of economic governance;
• And above all, center those whom the system was created to serve.
The Charter was a promise. UN80 is a test.
Let us stop pretending reform is neutral. Let us confront the politics, follow the money, and name what we owe the future.
Let us be braver than the moment expects.
This critique is not a dismissal of the UN. It is an insistence that it live up to its founding promise. I write from within — not to tear it down, but to hold it to account.
Stephanie Hodge is an international evaluator and former UN advisor who has worked across 140 countries. She writes on governance, multilateral reform, and climate equity.
IPS UN Bureau
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