Multilateralism under duress

UN's 80th anniversary tests money, mandate, and power

- RAJESH MEHTA & DIKSHA MITTAL

The United Nations enters its 80th General Assembly amid a paradox in New York: a crowded high-level week, a squeezed budget, and a geopolitical gridlock greater than any time in decades.

The question is not whether the UN matters; it is whether the institution can convert limited resources and shifting geography into real power before unfolding crises turn the plausible bleak into the probable catastrophic.

WHY THE NEXT WEEKS MATTER

UNGA 80's week is unusually dense by design: an anniversary commemoration, the SDG Moment, a Climate Summit ahead of COP30, a biennial financing summit, and conceptual meetings on women, youth, NCDs and mental health, nuclear disarmament. The schedule will pull leaders from pageantry into obligations and re-anchor multilateralism around tangible results beyond the podium.

This is also why finance sits at the heart of every room this September. The UN@80 initiative, launched in March, seeks efficiencies and mandates streamlining across thousands of decisions because funding has not kept pace with mission creep.

Despite the UN scale, total revenues reached $67.6 billion in 2023 where its core budget is a shrinking fraction, with only $13.8 billion from assessed contributions and a massive $46.8 billion from voluntary sources, the majority of which are earmarked and fragment priorities.

The United States remains pivotal, supplying $13 billion last year, including $3.2 billion in assessed dues and $9.7 billion in voluntary funds.