Richard Gowan (Crisis Group): “Morale at the UN is below zero”

The United Nations has faced an existential crisis over the past year. In a world of increased conflicts and humanitarian emergencies, the organization is undergoing severe funding cuts due to the Trump administration’s turn on multilateralism. The clock keeps ticking towards the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, with a majority of targets far from being on track and a Secretariat that will have to reduce 20% of its budget. 

Ahead of the opening session of the 80th General Assembly, and just one year before Secretary-General António Guterres’ tenure comes to an end, the Journal of Political Inquiry has interviewed Richard Gowan, the UN and Multilateral Policy Director at the International Crisis Group and one of the world’s leading experts on the organization. 

This interview was conducted on August 11th and has been edited for clarity. The full version can be found in the video recording.

 

In the run-up to the United Nations’ 80th General Assembly, what is on the minds of top officials?

Everyone is thinking about money. The US has cut virtually all its funding for UN activities. That means that the organization, and especially humanitarian agencies, are suddenly very, very low on cash. The UN is having to economize and shrink. It is a very difficult period. 

The expression ‘do less with less’ has become a symbol of the current sense of catastrophism at the UN. What does it actually mean?

In New York, everyone is thinking about their jobs. The Secretary-General António Guterres has said that the Secretariat has to shrink by 20%. But we shouldn’t just focus on UN officials and their careers. We should also think about what this means for vulnerable people. The UN will be feeding fewer people, it will be vaccinating fewer children, and it will be protecting fewer refugees because of this budget crisis.

Which of the agencies and programs are most vulnerable to these funding cuts? 

The World Food Program (WFP) was the most reliant on US funding. In 2024, the US covered about half of its budget. WFP is crucial in supporting civilians in a lot of crisis zones. So that’s a worry. But it’s more general than that. The US is also focusing really hard on any UN agency that focuses on gender or reproductive rights. They are real targets as well. 

“The UN will be feeding fewer people, vaccinating fewer children, and protecting fewer refugees“

The US is not alone in reducing financial support to the UN. We’ve seen other Western countries like the UK and the Netherlands following suit. Are we seeing a decline in multilateralism?

We’re certainly seeing a decline in countries’ willingness to fund the UN system. European countries in particular are shifting their priorities away from aid and the UN, and towards defense and NATO. No one is really coming to fill the gap. China could do it, but they don’t want to spend all that money. We are seeing a real downturn in support for the multilateral system. 

Is there an opportunity for other countries to step in and set the agenda?

Big countries from the Global South who have said they want more influence at the UN for many years can step up. For example, we have seen Brazil talking about the need for a new UN Council focused on climate change. But I don’t think many of these countries want to fill the financial gap that the US and the Europeans are creating.

The balance of power may change within the UN, but I don’t think anyone is going to bail out the organization financially.

Trump’s second term has been a direct blow to UN finances, but it could also be argued that the UN was too reliant on US funding to begin with. 

I think that’s a fair assessment. The UN had come to assume that the US would always be there. It is worth saying that the first Trump administration did reduce some funding to the UN, but it was nothing like as dramatic as what we’re seeing this time around.

Maybe the UN had gotten a bit too comfortable and too reliant on one donor, especially in the humanitarian sector, where the US was playing a really huge role that has now disappeared. 

“European countries will find money for Ukraine, we worry about humanitarian aid in countries like South Sudan or the Central African Republic“

In addition to the UN, the Trump administration has also cut many USAID programs—a double-blow to two of the main actors in humanitarian aid. Which crises are likely to worsen soon?

My instinct is that there will still be money available from some donors for certain high-profile crises. European countries will find money for Ukraine. We worry about certain situations in Africa, in countries like South Sudan or the Central African Republic. There, you have major humanitarian needs, but no donor is going to prioritise them. Those sorts of cases risk abandonment. 

Let’s talk about Secretary-General Guterres’ initiative to make the UN more efficient. What can we expect from UN80? 

António Guterres is racing to catch up with a very difficult situation. In the short term, UN80 is really a cost-cutting exercise. We are going to see the UN Secretariat reduce costs and staff being fired. Guterres can probably keep the organisation afloat, but there is a longer-term need for a big institutional rethink. We need to think about whether you can merge some UN agencies; sort out what is a very complex system, and make it simpler. 

Guterres doesn’t have time to do that. He finishes work in December 2026. He’s gonna put some ideas on the table for big organisational reforms, but it will be the next Secretary-General who will have to implement them.

There have been some complaints from UN officials who are not happy about having to move from New York or Geneva to Nairobi. Can that impact talent retention in top positions? 

Morale at the UN is at zero or below zero. Obviously, the financial cuts weigh very heavily on UN staff. There is also a feeling that UN80, by default, has been a very rushed process without a lot of transparency. People are unhappy. The reality is, though, that the organization does not have the financial lifeline that it needs to keep going. 

Some people are going to have to make some hard choices. A lot of younger staff will be asking themselves if this is an institution that they want to stay in, given that this is likely to be a very protracted financial period of pain. 

“The Israeli-UN relationship is now fundamentally broken”

In 2024, the world experienced more armed conflicts than in any other year after World War II. Why do we live in a world that is now less peaceful than ten years ago?

The world has never been completely peaceful, and the UN has always struggled with conflicts. Ten years ago, for example, the civil war in Syria was claiming thousands of lives. The reality is that we are in a world with major power tensions. It is much harder to get cooperation through bodies like the UN Security Council on how to deal with conflicts. Tools like UN peacekeeping and UN mediation are only really credible when they have the backing of the big powers. The international system is fragmenting. The US is no longer the leader it once was. We see geopolitical tensions getting fierce. That creates an environment in which conflicts can burn out of control.

One of those conflicts is Gaza, where over 60,000 deaths have been reported and starvation is widespread. What is the UN’s role in the situation, and could more have been done? 

The reality is that in Gaza, there is no trust between Israel and the UN. I think that one of the de facto war aims for Israel now is to get the UN out of Gaza and the West Bank. They believe that UN staff have been complicit with Hamas. Since late 2023, the UN has been saying, “You have to have a ceasefire; the only way you can get the necessary aid into Gaza is an end to fighting.”

But Israel has declared the Secretary-General persona non grata; it has ignored criticism from the UN General Assembly; it has ignored the International Court of Justice. The UN really doesn’t have much leverage. 

Is there any basis for those attacks from Israel to the UN?

The UN has investigated and it has recognized that some individual UN staff were complicit in the 7th of October atrocities. I think it’s also fair for Israel to say that historically, many UN members have taken a very partisan approach, a partisan pro-Palestinian approach. It is tragically true that after the attacks of the 7th of October, we didn’t see the Security Council and the General Assembly showing sympathy for the Israelis. So I do understand Israeli negativity towards the UN.

But I think we also have to recognize that the way Israel is pursuing this campaign now—and the way that it is excluding the UN from humanitarian assistance—is pushing society in Gaza to total collapse. The UN has no choice but to speak up and plead for assistance to the vulnerable.

Israel has repeatedly ignored certain Security Council resolutions regarding settlements and the occupied territories.

We have to keep in mind that the UN has been involved in the Israeli-Palestinian question since the 1940s. From the point of view of the current Israeli government, one of the goals now is just to get out from under all of this UN oversight and show that Israel does not have to comply with UN demands. The Israeli-UN relationship has never been very easy, and it is now fundamentally broken.

“Leaders are coming to New York to meet Donald Trump, not because they care about the UN”

Ten years have passed since setting the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN’s “blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” The latest report shows that only 18% of those targets have been met or are on track. What should we expect for the next few years before the 2030 deadline? 

This is a source of huge frustration to developing countries. They feel that the Western donors are not taking the Sustainable Development Goals seriously. The Trump administration has said that it doesn’t believe in the Goals anyway. There should be a focused push to try and get as many people out of extreme poverty as possible.

There are some potential advances on global health coming up, and cheaper medicines may be available. By 2030, the UN is not going to be able to say that it has fulfilled the Sustainable Development Goals. That is now out of reach. 

Can we expect any silver lining from the General Assembly session?

A lot of leaders are coming to New York, but they’re not coming because they care about the UN. They’re coming because this is an opportunity to meet one man, Donald Trump. We saw this in 2017, when Trump was first president: his presidency will dominate the agenda.

I don’t actually think that this is going to be a General Assembly where there’s a lot of space for initiatives on strengthening multilateralism. I do expect a lot of leaders will at least offer verbal support to the UN. It is an opportunity for leaders to stand up and say that they believe in multilateralism. Even that will be a useful symbol right now. But we are not going to see backroom diplomacy about many big conflicts coming to fruition. 

António Guterres’ term is coming to an end in roughly a year. What’s the balance of his work? 

Guterres has been a very unlucky Secretary-General. He spent most of his first term dealing with the first Trump administration, and most people would agree that he did quite well. Then, as soon as Trump’s term was coming to an end, there was COVID, then Russia’s all-out aggression against Ukraine, then the Israel-Hamas war, and now, Trump again. Guterres has been Secretary-General during very hard times.

He has done some things well. He has made member states have conversations about crucial issues, like how to cooperate on the regulation of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, Guterres has not lived up to some of his early promises to focus on mediation and peacemaking. He’s generally not felt to have done a lot of peacemaking work, although he has had a few successes, like the Black Sea Grain Initiative. 

I’m not sure that anyone else could have done much better. The UN Secretary-General is always at the mercy of events and can only achieve what UN member states let them. Guterres has just been here in very troubled times. 

What do you think is going to be the profile of the next Secretary-General?

The race is hotting up. The expectation is that it will be someone from Latin America because there hasn’t been a Latin American Secretary General since the 1980s. But there are a lot of candidates out there—Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who is very strong on climate change and global development, and Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who presents himself as a peacemaker. 

We don’t know who the Security Council will choose. A lot of member states think it is time for a woman, and you will hear that from some leaders at the General Assembly. But a lot of diplomats are cynical and say that it might actually still be a man.

---

This interview has been edited by Julia Bails.