By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2025 – The UN General Assembly High-Level Week (22-30 September) has been an opportunity for the world to convene on the most pressing issues of the day, from multilateralism, global financing, gender equality, non-communicable diseases, and AI governance.

Climate change is also a key issue this year as countries present their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ahead of COP30 in November. At this year’s Climate Summit, held on September 24, over 114 countries spoke at the General Assembly to present their NDCs before the UN Secretary-General and leaders from Brazil, the hosts of COP30.

While these climate action plans are an indication of their commitment to climate change, countries must go further demonstrate their commitment through action.

For some young people, like 15 year-old Zunaira, there is a disconnect between the statements made by leaders and the actions they actually take. Even in climate forums like COP29, “there [were] only policies made… only declarations made, but there [was] no real action.”

“In every country it’s like this, you know; they only speak empty words, and empty promises are made with us as young people and children,” she told IPS.

UNICEF‘s Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) measures the climate risk to children, focusing on both their exposure to climate and environmental hazards and their underlying vulnerability. The index evaluates 56 variables across 163 countries to determine which nations place children at the highest risk from climate impacts. It estimates that about 1 billion children currently reside in these high-risk countries. 

Zunaira believes that world governments and leaders need to include children’s voices and perspectives when planning effective climate policies. She observed that perhaps only three percent of the member states that attended COP29 actually included and listened to children’s voices in their policy discussions.

This is not a new demand either, as she remarked that other youth climate advocates have called for increased child engagement in previous conferences, but this was hardly reflected in negotiations.

Zunaira is in New York to participate in UNGA through UNICEF’s Youth Advocates Mobilization Lab, an initiative which recognizes the achievements of UNICEF’s youth advocates, providing child advocates the opportunity to network and share ideas and experiences.

UNICEF’S climate advocate, 15-year-old Zunaira, is with others during high-level discussions at UNGA80 in New York. Credit: UNICEF/Instagram

The 15 year-old climate advocate from the Balochistan province of Pakistan shared her research into the impacts of flooding on girls’ education, based on her experiences in 2022.

The 2022 Pakistan floods, which affected over 33 million people and killed 647 children, devastated communities that were not built to adapt to the extreme changes brought on by climate change. The link between extreme weather and climate change is apparent to Zunaira and other young people like her, even if some members in the community don’t recognize it right away and write it off as just a natural phenomenon.

Through a policy research programme hosted by UNICEF Pakistan, Zunaira investigated the impact of the floods on girls’ education when she was only 12 years old. She visited Sakran, one of the flood-prone areas in the state, where she interviewed people at a nearby village in the Hub district of Balochistan. Here she spoke to 15 secondary school-aged girls. She described how the devastation of the floods literally washed away the huts that used to be their schools.

According to UNICEF, her findings “highlighted that floods had exacerbated educational inequalities” and “[forced] girls into temporary shelters and disrupting their education.”

“The study also highlighted some promising interventions and called for better disaster preparedness in schools and flood-resistant infrastructure to safeguard girls’ education. The research underscored the urgent need for integrated strategies that combine climate resilience with gender equity.”

Zunaira remarked that with the devastation brought on by the floods, for many children there was no school to return to. She and many other students lost out on schooling because of the disruptions. In some cases, the next closest school would be up to 25 miles away from where some students lived, so there is seemingly little justification for sending them back to school.

There is also the need to invest in building up climate-resilient infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather conditions like flooding. Local communities need both the investments and resources to fulfill this, otherwise there may be little reason to build up a new school again only to see it get washed away again.The need for climate adaptation is something the international community must support, as seen with the Fund for for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

Zunaira’s message to world leaders is that they must encourage and include children and youth in climate discussions. They also should not reduce the lived experiences to statistics and should be conscientious of the lives forever changed or lost because of a climate disaster.

“You should think of this… it is not just a statistic. It’s something that life has lost, and thousands of homes and thousands of people, you know, have been displaced and lost their lives. So this is something that the world leaders must know: that they are not only statistics; they are real lives.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

UNICEF’S climate advocate, 15-year-old Zunaira, believes that children’s voices and concerns should be integrated into country’s NDCs. Children she says are not a statistic, they are ‘real people’ and need to be front and center of climate planning.

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Sep 26 2025 – As the high-level opening week of the UN General Assembly unfolds, with heads of states delivering often self-serving speeches from the UN’s podium, the organisation is undergoing one of its worst set of crises since its founding 80 years ago. This year’s General Assembly – ostensibly focused on development, human rights and peace – comes as wars are raging across multiple continents, climate targets are dangerously being missed and the institution designed to address these global challenges is being hollowed out by funding cuts and political withdrawals.

A UN Commission has just determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, while the Israeli state recently escalated its campaign of violence by bombing Qatar. Meanwhile, Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to spill over with its recent launch of drones against Poland and incursion into Estonia’s airspace. Conflicts continue in Myanmar, Sudan and many other countries, despite the UN’s foundational hopes of ensuring peace, security and respect for human rights.

The Trump administration has abandoned multilateralism in favour of transactional bilateral dealmaking while spearheading a donor funding withdrawal that is hitting both the UN and civil society hard. The US government has also repudiated the Sustainable Development Goals, the ambitious and progressive targets all states agreed in 2015, but which are now badly off track.

Today’s multiple and growing crises demand an effective and powerful UN – but at the same time they make this less likely to happen.

Cutbacks loom large

As state leaders meet, one of the items on the agenda is the UN80 initiative. Launched in March, this is presented as a reform process to mark the UN’s 80th anniversary. But reflecting the impacts of the funding crisis, it’s first and foremost a cost-cutting drive. The slashing of donor aid – not only by the USA, but also by other established donor states such as France, Germany and the UK, often in favour of military spending – is having a global impact. The UN is being hit both by states failing to pay their mandatory assessed contributions, or delaying them for long spells, and by underfunding of initiatives that rely on additional voluntary support.

When it comes to mandatory contributions, the most powerful states are those that owe the most, with the USA in the lead with a circa US$1.5 billion debt, followed by China on close to US$600 million. Meanwhile voluntary funding shortfalls are particularly hitting human rights work, always the most underfunded part of the UN’s work. In June, UN human rights chief Volker Türk announced that 18 activities mandated by Human Rights Council resolutions wouldn’t be implemented because of resource constraints. In a world riven by sickening conflicts, human rights investigations on Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine aren’t able to operate at anywhere near full capacity.

Funding shortfalls, intensified by the Trump administration pulling out of key UN bodies and agreements, have forced the UN to plan for a 20 per cent budget cut in 2026. That may involve shedding some 7,000 jobs from its 35,000-person workforce, merging some agencies, shutting offices and relocating functions to cheaper locations.

The UN is undoubtedly an unwieldy and over-bureaucratic set of institutions, and it would be surprising if there weren’t some efficiency savings to be made. If staff are relocated from expensive global north hubs to cheaper global south locations, it could help UN bodies and staff better understand global south realities and improve access for civil society groups that struggle to travel to the key locations of Geneva and New York, particularly given the Trump administration’s new travel restrictions – although that wouldn’t be the rationale behind relocation.

But the proposed cuts mean the UN is effectively planning to do less than it has done before, at a time when the problems are bigger than they’ve been in decades. Given this, decisions about UN priorities mustn’t be left to its officials or states alone. Civil society must be enabled to have a say.

Civil society already has far too little access to UN processes. At the high-level week, even civil society organisations normally accredited for UN access are locked out of events. Reform processes such as last year’s Summit of the Future have also fallen far short of the access needed. Civil society’s proposals to improve the situation – starting with the creation of a civil society envoy, a low-cost innovation to help coordinate civil society participation across the UN – haven’t been taken up.

Now even civil society’s limited access could be further curtailed. Already the Human Rights Council is shortening sessions, reducing the opportunities available for civil society. The proposed cuts would impact disproportionately on the UN’s human rights work. In the name of efficiency, the UN could end up becoming less effective, if it grows even more state-centric and less prepared to uphold international human rights law. States that systematically violate human rights can only benefit from the ensuing lower levels of scrutiny.

Civil society is an essential voice in any conversation about what kind of UN the world needs and how to make it fit for purpose. It urgently must be included if the UN is to have any hope of fulfilling its founding promise to serve ‘we the peoples’.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact [email protected]

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By Sarah Strack and Christelle Kalhoulé
NEW YORK, Sep 26 2025 – This September the UN turns 80, but the lessons of peace, justice, and cooperation are still unfinished. The world today faces the flames of inequality, conflict, ecological collapse and growing digital threats. In short, the very problems the UN was created to solve are once again staring us in the face.

That’s why the UN’s latest reform push, “UN80,” matters. Launched this spring, it promises to make the multilateral system more inclusive and accountable. But here’s the real question: can it align with 21st century’s needs? Will it be remembered as a budget drill or the start of a renewal that truly delivers for people where they live?

If this moment is going to count, three things must happen.

First, reforms must put people at the center, and we must avoid a reform by spreadsheet.

The UN is under financial strain. Geopolitical tensions are sky-high, negotiations are gridlocked, Member States are late on dues and membership fees, arrears run into the billions, and the UN’s mandate, efficiency, and effectiveness are under question.

“In a polycrisis world, shrinking the UN’s capacity is like cutting the fire brigade during wildfire season,” warns Christelle Kalhoulé, Forus Chair and civil society leader in Burkina Faso. “Reform cannot be about cutting corners. It must be about giving people the protection, rights, and solidarity they are being denied today.”

The UN80 Initiative marks the most sweeping reform effort in decades, with three tracks: streamlining services and consolidating IT and HR systems, reviewing outdated mandates, and exploring the consolidation of UN agencies into seven thematic “clusters.”

On paper, these reforms could bring overdue coherence. But the process has too often felt opaque, with key documents surfacing via leaks and staff unions flagging limited transparency and consultation.

Increasing the use of tools like AI is among the “solutions” being floated to “flag potential duplication” and shorten resolutions — yet without clear guardrails, there’s a risk of automating cuts and reinforcing bias rather than empowering people-first innovation. And the debate has too often been framed around cash flow, back payments, and cuts. The United States alone owes $1.5 billion in dues. Major donors are cutting ODA, and several UN humanitarian agencies are planning double-digit reductions in 2025 in their budgets.

As Arjun Bhattarai, Executive Director of the NGO Federation of Nepal warns: “Reform cannot be a synonym for austerity. Cutting budgets may make spreadsheets look tidy in New York, but it leaves communities in Kathmandu, Kampala, Khartoum, or Kyiv without support when they need it most.”

The danger is a reform focused on management efficiencies instead of reimagining what the UN must be to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.

Second, a better compass exists.

Despite its flaws, multilateralism remains indispensable. Without the UN, the world would be poorer when it comes to peace, cooperation, and collective problem-solving.

What makes the UN matter most, however, are not the halls of New York or Geneva, but the people and communities it exists to serve.

The UN was created “for the people and by the people”. Protecting, safeguarding and promoting healthy sustainable lives for communities must remain the core priority.

Our measure for reform is simple: a transformed UN must reduce inequalities, ensure fairer and more inclusive representation across its governance structures, deliver public goods fairly with accountability, and protect people better, faster, while safeguarding rights.

As Moses Isooba, Executive Director of the Uganda National NGO Forum, puts it: “A reformed UN must stand closer to the people than to the corridors of power. It must be measured not by the length of resolutions, but by the depth of hope it restores and the changes it makes for communities worldwide.”

If UN80 becomes a technocratic exercise in “doing less with less,” we will emerge with a smaller, weaker UN at precisely the moment we need it most.

If instead it becomes a justice-driven reimagining — linking architecture and finance to a clear vision of protection, equity, participation, and decentralization — it could renew the UN’s capacity to act as a backbone of international cooperation.

As Justina Kaluinaite, Policy and advocacy expert at the Lithuanian NGDO Platform, stresses: “The UN will survive another 80 years only if it learns to listen. True reform is not about doing more with less, but about doing better with those who have been left out.”

Third, put reforms through three simple tests.

When leaders meet in New York, we challenge them to have every reform proposal answering three questions:

1. The Inequality Question: Does this reform measurably narrow gaps — by income, gender, geography, or status — in who is protected and who benefits?

2. The Localisation Question: Does it move money, decisions, and accountability closer to communities, with transparent targets and timelines?

3. The Rights Question: Does it strengthen — not dilute — protection, gender equality, and human rights?

As Christelle Kalhoulé, sums it up: “The measure of UN80 should not be how much paper it saves, but how many lives it protects. History and the legacy we leave to future generations will not ask whether the UN balanced its budget in 2025; it will ask whether it stood with people.”

If leaders embrace this moment, the UN can emerge sharper, stronger, and more inclusive, with a justice-driven renewal of multilateralism, reclaiming its place as the backbone of global cooperation. If not, UN80 may go down in history as the moment when multilateralism chose retreat over renewal.

If UN80 is going to matter, it must prevent crises before they explode, deliver for both people and planet, give underrepresented countries and communities a real voice, keep civil society free and strong, and fix financing so money reaches those on the frontlines. The real test isn’t how tidy the org chart looks, it’s whether lives are saved, trust is rebuilt, and the UN proves it can still rise to the moment and be fit to serve this 21st century world.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Sarah Strack is Forus Director and Christelle Kalhoulé is Forus Chair and civil society leader in Burkina Faso