United Nations is broke: Get ready for a major change
According to Reuters, most of which may be badly slanted, they have an exclusive from a secret UN memo.
UN eyes major overhaul amid funding crisis. The US is not paying its dues. Speculation currently is that the UN Security Council and General Assembly will stay in New York. I stress speculation only.
Summary
Global body roiled by cuts from donors, including U.S.
Task force suggests merging U.N. agencies to improve efficiency
UN document refers to ‘duplication’, bloating of senior management
Suggests relocating staff to lower-cost cities
The United Nations is considering a massive overhaul that would merge major departments and shift resources across the globe, according to an internal memo prepared by senior officials tasked with reforming the world body.The high-level review comes as U.N. agencies scramble to cope with the fallout from U.S. foreign aid cuts under President Donald Trump that have gutted humanitarian agencies.
The six-page document, marked “strictly confidential” and reviewed by Reuters, contains a list of what it terms “suggestions” that would consolidate dozens of U.N. agencies into four primary departments: peace and security, humanitarian affairs, sustainable development, and human rights.
We don’t know much about this, and I’m not going to take the Reuters information as a reliable source, as it is political in essence.
What is true, though, is that the UN is broke.
In other sources, there is talk of cutting the number of translators, for example, which is a drop in the ocean but shows the depth of savings that they are forced to look for.
Protesters from the U.N. and its specialist agencies held banners reading: “STOP FIRING UN STAFF NOW!” and chanted: “U.N. staff are not a commodity”. Smaller protests also occurred in Thailand and Myanmar on May 1, U.N. staff said. Apparently, many contractors have already been asked to go.
Some suggestions include that the World Food Programme, the U.N. children’s agency, the World Health Organization and the U.N. refugee agency would be merged into a single humanitarian entity. In addition, the AIDS agency is suggested to be incorporated into the World Health Organization.
The World Trade Organization is not a UN-funded organization. So, only speculation in terms of the WTO is available.
What is most amazing, is that one reads between the lines that many of these contractor organizations and even UN tentacles were funded by USAid and now the US has $2.7B in unpaid dues and it is estimated that something like 6,000+ jobs are at risk.
Heads are indeed rolling and knowing some of the history of this organization, heads may really roll. One cannot assess anything seriously from a Reuters ‘secret memo’. So far I see nothing in the Russian press excepting a notice that this is happening and nothing in the Chinese press.