The UN80 process arrives at a pivotal moment. On the one hand, Member States confront cascading global risks—climate change acceleration, unsustainable debt burdens, persistent poverty and inequality, pandemics, and wars that kill hundreds of thousands annually. On the other, the UN’s overall income is shrinking fast: from $74.6 billion (2022) to $67.6 billion (2023) and, by the best projections, sliding toward $50 billion, roughly 2015 levels. This contraction, coinciding with surging needs, will translate into tens of millions of people left without essential support.

The UN80 Initiative rightly spotlights real management problems: a sprawling system of 140+ entities, 4,000+ offices, and 100+ departments/operations, operating under 40,000+ resolutions and mandates, many outdated or duplicative. Servicing 27,000 meetings a year at a cost of $360 million is emblematic of a machinery overly organized around process. There is duplication across peace and security, development, humanitarian, and human rights functions; incentives that reward siloed fundraising; and a mandate landscape that is bloated and often misaligned with 21st-century realities.

All of that merits action. But if UN80 becomes mainly a hunt for administrative efficiencies, it will become a missed opportunity. The deeper crisis is structural: the UN’s financing model is broken and its founding Charter commitments—on disarmament and collective security—remain unfulfilled. Unless Member States tackle both, efficiency improvements will amount to rearranging the wiring in a house with an unreliable power supply.

The real problem: politicized, precarious funding

Today’s UN revenue mix is dominated by voluntary earmarked contributions (about 61% in 2023), vastly outweighing assessed and core resources. This skews priorities toward donor preferences, weakens General Assembly authority under Article 17, fragments programming, and generates stop-go cycles that erode effectiveness and trust. A small group of wealthy states supplies the bulk of earmarked funds; many others contribute negligible amounts and, unsurprisingly, feel disengaged from the UN´s work.

Meanwhile, the largest contributors—those facing domestic fiscal pressures and rising debt—are least likely to inject fresh, predictable funding. When budgets tighten, foreign assistance is often the first cut, as we have seen recently among ODA donors. Left unchanged, the current model is a recipe for recurrent liquidity crises and widening legitimacy gaps.

A purpose-first reform agenda

UN80’s focus on mandate reviews, structural realignment, and efficiency is necessary but not sufficient. Reform should begin with the question of what the UN is for and then go on to the challenge of how to finance it accordingly. That means three moves:

1. Stabilize and depoliticize the revenue base.
2. Re-center governance and accountability in deliberative organs (GA for now and, under a Second UN Charter, eventually a Parliamentary Assembly).
3. Recommit to the Charter’s unfinished core: disarmament and enforceable collective security.

Without these, efficiency gains will be marginal at best and easily reversed at the first political headwinds.

A better financing architecture (near-term to long-term)

There are two dimensions to consider. In the near-term, building on proposals by Joseph E. Schwartzberg and others, every Member State would contribute the same fraction of GNI to a consolidated UN budget; something like a 0.1% of GNI could be a sensible starting point. The advantages are clarity, transparency, and legitimacy. Among its benefits: 

• Simple and even-handed. A uniform rate avoids the opaque discounts, carve-outs, floors, and ceilings that now undermine confidence.
• Ownership across the membership. Many countries currently contribute sums so small that the system fosters lack of ownership. A uniform, non-negotiable obligation of membership would restore shared responsibility.
• Predictability and depoliticization. Linking automatically contributions to GNI reduces opportunities for coercion and hostage-taking via arrears or threats to withhold funds.
• Redistributive in effect. Because low-income states are primary beneficiaries of UN outlays, a 0.1% of GNI contribution would, in practice, be returned to them severalfold via programs (e.g., WFP, WHO, UNICEF), while giving them real voice in collective priority-setting.

A progressive variant—slightly higher rates for higher GNI per capita members, with a modest cap (e.g., say 0.2% of GNI)—would enhance perceived fairness without imposing heavy fiscal burdens. Either model beats the current system on transparency, predictability, and legitimacy and both would rebalance from hard earmarks toward pooled, thematic, multi-year “soft” earmarking tied to GA-approved frameworks, preserving flexibility while strengthening collective governance.

Medium term: adopt an EU-style “own resources” framework 

The European Union funds its budget through automatic, rules-based streams (a GNI-based contribution, a share of customs duties, and a VAT-linked resource), updated over time to reflect policy goals (e.g., the plastic waste levy) and underpinned by a Multiannual Financial Framework that stabilizes planning. An analogous UN model, anchored primarily in GNI, with optional add-ons (customs, VAT proxies, or other indirect taxes) would insulate financing from domestic political cycles and arrears; enable multi-year strategic planning and disciplined reprioritization; open access to capital markets on stronger terms (eventually allowing UN-backed instruments to finance global public goods). Crucially, no new UN tax bureaucracy is needed. As in the EU, national authorities would collect and pass through agreed shares using existing systems.

Supplementary global revenue: a financial transactions tax (FTT)

A very modest, well-coordinated FTT—originally conceived in Tobin’s spirit—could mobilize substantial resources while marginally dampening destabilizing speculation or, to put it less diplomatically, short-term trading frenzy. Design and politics matter of course, as I have argued elsewhere: successful experiences (e.g., Japan, Korea, Switzerland) show feasibility; Sweden’s 1980s misstep shows the pitfalls. Concentration of trading in a handful of financial centers means partial coalitions can capture large tax bases. Proceeds could be flexibly allocated (UN window plus domestic uses), easing adoption. 

None of these instruments obviates Official Development Assistance or operations by the multilateral development banks and the IMF. They complement and stabilize UN funding, moving the center of gravity from discretionary donor projects to collectively agreed priorities under General Assembly oversight.

Efficiency: necessary but aligned with function

Yes, streamline. Consolidate overlapping structures and senior posts; rationalize special envoys and thematic mandates; decentralize where proximity to need raises impact; pool funding to counter silos; modernize working methods (digital tools, hybrid formats, data-driven management). But anchor these changes in a coherent functional design—organized around the UN’s comparative advantages in norm-setting, prevention, protection, delivery at scale, and global public goods—rather than a one-off search for savings. Absent financing reform, efficiency drives run the risk of becoming austerity by another name and the track record for reform programs the main driver of which is austerity is that they end up being subverted by those affected, as I learned in my years as an economist with the IFIs and as documented in the development economics literature.

Fulfill the Charter: disarmament and collective security

Reform cannot be purely budgetary. The Charter’s promise of disarmament under effective international control and the creation of a Peace Force with enforcement capabilities remain unfulfilled; they fell victim to the Cold War. The world spends orders of magnitude more on national militaries (or subsidizing energy consumption which, the evidence has shown, not only worsens climate disasters but widens income inequality) than the entire UN system. Efficiencies demanded of the UN are not demanded of defense sectors whose bloated outlays often fuel insecurity. A credible UN for the 21st century requires Member States to advance concrete steps toward disarmament and enforceable collective security—so the Organization is not confined to mitigating consequences while causes proliferate.

UN80 should be the moment we stop asking the UN to solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century financing and a mid-century operating model.

A political deal worth making

What would a balanced UN80 outcome look like?

• Financing Compact. Adopt a universal 0.1% of GNI contribution (or a modest progressive schedule), phased in, with a roadmap toward an EU-style “own resources” framework. Commit to rebalancing away from hard earmarks toward core and pooled funds tied to GA-approved strategies.
• Governance compact. Reassert GA budget authority under Article 17, with enhanced transparency, performance dashboards, independent evaluation, so voice and vote track responsibility.
• Purpose compact. Align structures to function; integrate peace and security, development, humanitarian, and human rights around prevention and protection; and table time-bound steps toward the Charter’s disarmament and enforcement provisions.
• Cultural compact. Replace competitive fundraising with collaboration; reward cross-pillar results; make accountability about outcomes for people, not just process compliance.

This is not about “doing more with less.” It is about doing what matters with what is needed, on a foundation that is financially stable, politically legitimate, and strategically coherent.

The cost of delay and the upside of action

A 0.1% of GNI contribution is small next to what countries already spend elsewhere (global military outlays are roughly 27 times that ratio). Yet its impact—by stabilizing the UN’s core functions and pivoting the system toward prevention, protection, and delivery—would be transformative. Over time, adding automatic own resources and a carefully designed FTT would further depoliticize funding and unlock medium-term planning and prudent use of capital markets. None of this requires a new global tax collector; it requires political agreement and disciplined execution.

UN80 should be the moment we stop asking the UN to solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century financing and a mid-century operating model. Fix the money. Align the machinery to mission. Fulfill the Charter’s promises. Anything less invites a future of mounting human costs and eroding multilateral legitimacy. We can no longer muddle through; the challenges confronting humanity are advancing on timelines that will not adjust to diplomatic hesitations.