U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday announced the “UN80 Initiative,” a streamlining program named after the upcoming 80th anniversary of the world body. Skeptics suggested the program will be a largely theatrical attempt to ward off U.S. spending cuts by vaguely imitating America’s new fat-trimming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“These efforts are not ends in themselves. They are about better serving people whose very lives depend on us. They are about hardworking taxpayers around the world who underwrite everything we do,” Guterres told reporters on Wednesday.
“It is essential that an organizational system as complex and crucial as the United Nations subjects itself to rigorous and regular scrutiny to assess its fitness for purpose in carrying out its goals efficiently,” he said.
“This 80th anniversary year of the United Nations is a prime moment to expand all our efforts, recognising the need for even greater urgency and ambition,” he continued.
“This goes far beyond the technical. Budgets at the United Nations are not just numbers on a balance sheet — they are a matter of life and death for millions around the world,” he declared.
Guterres said streamlining and belt-tightening are necessary because “resources are shrinking across the board, and they have been for some time.”
“For at least the past seven years, the United Nations has faced a liquidity crisis because not all Member States pay in full, and many also do not pay on time,” he complained.
According to the United Nations, only 75 of its 193 member states have paid their full “assessed contributions” for 2025. Last year, 152 member states paid their full dues by the end of December.
Guterres promised to “move as soon as possible in areas where I have the authority,” while urging individual member states to “consider the many decisions that rest with them.”
Although his rhetoric was very similar to that of President Donald Trump and his cost-cutting adviser Elon Musk, Guterres insisted UN80 will not be “a version of DOGE.” He also said the program was not a hasty response to possible cuts in U.N. funding by the Trump administration.
Many critics of the United Nations, and of Guterres’ leadership as secretary-general, found these assertions difficult to believe.
“He’s had 8 to 10 years of opportunity to start what he’s calling for now, and there is not enough time in his remaining 18 months or 19 months in office that could provide any reason to think that his team is going to pivot and set the world on fire in ways that would be a footrace with whatever Elon Musk is doing,” said Hugh Dugan, head of a watchdog group called DOGE-UN.
Guterres was appointed to a second term as secretary-general in June 2021. His second term will expire in December 2026.
Dugan said he has already been told by U.N. insiders that Guterres’ UN80 plan includes no “real cuts” in the U.N.’s extravagant spending.
Dugan made his remarks to Fox News Digital, which asked Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric if the U.N. was worried about Musk and DOGE making deep cuts to U.S. funding for the United Nations. Dujarric declined to answer, deferring to Guterres’ press conference earlier in the day.
Touro Institute on Human Rights Director Anne Bayefsky was even less charitable than Dugan, denouncing the U.N. as a “bloated, corrupt and profoundly anti-American and anti-Jewish institution.”
“Every time a U.S. government begins to try to hold it to account or use the power of the purse to change this nonsensical equation, the U.N. trots out a ‘reform’ fake-out and America rolls over,” Bayefsky warned.
“President Trump and DOGE can change this perverse state of affairs,” she said.
Bayefsky said Guterres is “running scared” because he fears his “nonsense about being engaged in an ‘ambitious reform agenda’ will be called out.”
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) senior fellow Michael Rubin suggested last week that the U.N. could use a visit from DOGE – and he advised Secretary of State Marco Rubio to withhold all U.N. funding unless Guterres agrees to arrange such a visit.
“While many Americans may complain about efforts to return fiscal responsibility to government and to jump-start the economy by reducing the tax burden, even the most spendthrift members of Congress appear to be fiscal conservatives next to the United Nation’s bloated bureaucracy,” he said.
“Since socialist and former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres became secretary-general and began to jet around the globe, the U.N.’s total expenditures have increased rapidly, growing by almost 12% or $7 billion between 2021 and 2022,” he noted.
Rubin pointed to expensive boondoggles such as the U.N. Committee on Soups and Broth, its lavishly funded boutique postal service, and big spending on unnecessary travel in the age of teleconferencing as evidence Guterres has not been a careful steward of U.N. funds.
Read the full article here
