As delegations from all over the world descend on New York for the high-level opening week of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the organisation is undergoing one of its worst set of crises since its founding 80 years ago. This year’s General Assembly – ostensibly focused on development, human rights and peace – comes as wars are raging across multiple continents, climate targets are dangerously off-track and the institution designed to address these global challenges is being hollowed out by funding cuts and political withdrawals.

A UN Commission has just determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, while the Israeli state has escalated its campaign of violence by bombing Qatar. Meanwhile, Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to spill over with its recent launch of drones against Poland. Conflicts continue in many other countries, despite the UN’s foundational hopes of bringing peace, security and respect for human rights.

The Trump administration has abandoned multilateralism in favour of transactional bilateral deals while spearheading a donor funding withdrawal that is hitting both the UN and civil society hard. The US government has also repudiated the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the ambitious and progressive targets all states agreed in 2015, but which are now badly off track.

Today’s multiple and growing crises demand an effective and powerful UN, but at the same time they make this less likely to happen.

Palestine on the agenda

States face an early test during the high-level week, when they’ll be challenged to take collective action on a human rights catastrophe. The conference on Palestine and a two-state solution, convened by the governments of France and Saudi Arabia, meets on 22 September. This is expected to provide the moment for some global north states that haven’t previously recognised Palestinian statehood to do so.

Of 193 UN member states, 147 recognise Palestine, but many in the global north don’t. That has shifted since Israel’s current assault on Gaza began in reaction to the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks, with 10 more states granting recognition.

Momentum has built. France and Saudi Arabia convened the summit’s first session in late July. Several other states indicated their willingness to grant recognition in the summit’s declaration, albeit with some imposing conditions. A 12 September General Assembly resolution endorsing a two-state solution, including calls for an immediate ceasefire and establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, won the backing of 142 states. Those that may join France in extending recognition on 22 September include Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the UK.

They’ll face firm opposition from the US government, which has denied visas for Palestinian officials to travel to New York and can use its Security Council veto to stop Palestine becoming a full UN member. But the 22 September summit represents a rare moment where states can isolate Israel on the world stage and the UN can show its value as a space where states can join together to take a moral stand.

Diplomatic recognition of Palestine won’t stop Israel committing gross human rights crimes, and states that extend recognition need to take other measures, particularly stopping arms supplies to Israel and freezing economic cooperation. But recognition puts pressure on Israel and communicates support for a two-state solution. It means establishing diplomatic relations, potentially giving Palestinian authorities more channels to seek support in the face of attacks on rights. Global north states that have withheld recognition should seize the opportunity.

Climate and financing on the agenda

Among other key events of the high-level week is the 24 September Climate Summit, which aims to accelerate action ahead of November’s COP30 climate meeting. With only four hours set aside for the session, little progress can be expected on the badly off-track Paris Agreement commitments. The meeting may however offer a moment to pressure states to finally submit overdue revised plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts, since many have failed to do so.

A Summit for a Sustainable, Inclusive and Resilient Global Economy takes place on the same day, focusing on improving implementation of the SDGs. But existing global processes have already delivered disappointment this year, with the Financing for Development Conference failing to achieve a breakthrough. With donor funding collapsing, a one-day meeting in New York will struggle to change much.

25 September sees the launch of a global dialogue on AI governance. This is a potentially important step because AI has multiple human rights impacts and is under-regulated. Given that AI systems operate across borders, national governments alone can’t effectively regulate the technology. Another potentially significant event, on 30 September, focuses on human rights violations against minorities, including Rohingya people, in military-ruled Myanmar.

Whatever happened to the Pact for the Future?

Last year’s session however made clear the limits of the UN’s global summitry. Then, the headline event was the Summit of the Future, a special two-day meeting that marked the end of two years of consultations and negotiations to agree three outcome texts: the headline Pact for the Future, the Declaration on Future Generations and the Global Digital Compact.

The summit presented itself as an opportunity to refresh the UN in difficult and fast-changing times. Its stated purpose was to strengthen international cooperation on key challenges, address global governance gaps and reaffirm the UN Charter and other crucial global commitments, such as the SDGs. A level of ambition was on display when UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched his Our Common Agenda report in 2021 with the aim of revitalising international cooperation and reforming the UN. But it fell away as the process went on.

Civil society, despite well-founded doubts about the broad and vague nature of the summit’s focus and lack of buy-in from some powerful states, tried to engage constructively. But the process lacked the open, participatory and inclusive approach needed.

The pact contained some positives, including proposals to enlarge, if not properly reform, the Security Council and a commitment to analyse the impacts of military spending on the SDGs, leading to a recent report. For the most part, however, the pact was a disappointment, long on platitudes but short on practicalities. It said little about civic space and civil society’s UN reform proposals were largely ignored.

The other problem was the absence of an implementation plan. The pact contained 56 commitments but no roadmap. In March, Guterres established some working groups, and in May, states held an exchange of ideas on national-level follow-up. The economy summit on 24 September is one pact commitment, to be convened every two years. But this all feels insubstantial given the summit’s initial stated ambitions.

A review of progress is scheduled for 2028, but by then the UN will have a new Secretary-General and many other pressing global events will doubtless have happened. Without a strong implementation plan and resources to support it, summits are quickly forgotten. Strong civil society inclusion and buy-in is vital because civil society keeps international commitments alive and holds states and the UN to account for them. This process lacked that, and so a year after the pact was agreed, it’s largely fallen off the agenda.

Cutbacks loom large

Instead, attention has shifted to the UN80 initiative, launched in March. Touted as a reform process to mark the UN’s 80^th anniversary, this is an efficiency drive evidently motivated more by cost-cutting than anything else. The slashing of donor aid – not only by the USA, but also by other established donor states such as France, Germany and the UK, often in favour of military spending – is having a global impact. The UN is being hit both by states failing to pay their mandatory assessed contributions, or delaying them for long spells, and by underfunding of initiatives that rely on additional voluntary support.

When it comes to mandatory contributions, the most powerful states are those that owe the most, with the USA in the lead with a circa US$1.5 billion debt, followed by China on close to US$600 million. Meanwhile voluntary funding shortfalls are hitting human rights, always the most underfunded part of the UN’s work, particularly hard. In June, UN human rights chief Volker Türk announced that 18 activities mandated by Human Rights Council resolutions wouldn’t be implemented because of resource constraints. In a world riven by sickening conflicts, UN human rights investigations on Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine aren’t able to operate at anywhere near full capacity.

Funding shortfalls, intensified by the Trump administration pulling out of key UN bodies and agreements, have forced the UN to plan for a 20 per cent budget cut in 2026. This may involve shedding some 7,000 jobs from its 35,000-person workforce, merging some agencies, shutting offices and relocating functions to cheaper locations.

The UN is undoubtedly an unwieldy and over-bureaucratic set of institutions, and it would be surprising if there weren’t some efficiency savings to be made. If staff are relocated from expensive global north hubs to cheaper global south locations, it could help UN bodies and staff better understand global south perspectives and improve access for civil society groups that struggle to travel to the key locations of Geneva and New York, particularly given the Trump administration’s new travel restrictions – although that wouldn’t be the rationale behind relocation.

The cuts mean the UN will be planning to do less than it has done before, at a time when the problems are bigger than they’ve been in decades. Decisions about UN priorities can’t be left to its officials or states alone. Civil society must be enabled to have a say.

Civil society already has far too little access to UN processes. At the high-level week, even civil society organisations normally accredited for UN access are locked out of events. Reform processes such as the Summit of the Future are little better. Civil society’s proposals to improve the situation – starting with the creation of a civil society envoy, a low-cost innovation to help coordinate civil society participation across the UN – haven’t been taken up.

Now even civil society’s limited access could be further curtailed. The implication would be that in the name of efficiency, the UN would risk becoming less effective. It could become even more state-centric and less prepared to uphold international human rights law. States that systematically violate human rights can only benefit from the resulting lower levels of scrutiny.

Civil society is an essential voice in any conversation about what kind of UN the world needs and how to make it fit for purpose. It must urgently be included if the UN is to have any hope of fulfilling its founding promise to serve ‘we the peoples’.

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