UN funding Guterres using Trump cuts crisis to review bureaucracy

The UN will need to cut $500m (£368m) from next year’s budget and lose 20% of its staff to cope with a huge reduction in funding by the Trump administration.

- Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

The plan is likely to involve an initial minimum 3,000 job cuts out of a 35,000-strong main workforce. The overall UN core or regular budget would be cut from $3.7bn to about $3.2bn next year. It means reductions of 15.1% in resources, and 18.8% in posts in the regular budget compared with 2025 budget.

The cuts to the UN core budget do not take account of the cuts to the UN’s peacekeeping humanitarian and health agencies. Only last year the UN Secretary General António Guterres set the UN on an ambitious new “pact for the future” ranging across Artificial Intelligence and a new push on sustainable development.