The UN enters its eightieth year in crisis mode. This is in part financial, with delays to the payment of regular budget dues by some large member States, as well as cuts to extrabudgetary contributions by many others (as of 9 October 2025, member States collectively owe around $1,87 billion in mandatory contributions). It is also political, with US President Donald Trump openly questioning the UN’s value, challenging international rule of law (here, he is enthusiastically supported by President Putin amongst others), and pushing back against international agendas (e.g., climate change, economic and social rights, sexual orientation and gender identify) that he considers ‘left’ or ‘woke’ (here, he is enthusiastically supported by hard right or populist politicians from all parts of the world). These trends, together with the UN’s inability to halt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or crimes against humanity in Gaza, have in turn led the public – ‘the Peoples of the United Nations’ – to increasingly question whether the UN, and multilateralism in general, is really capable of protecting human rights, securing sustainable development, or stopping wars and genocide. In Geneva, the most visible examples of this financial and political crisis are the significant job cuts across UN agencies and international NGOs, the relocation of some of those organisations to supposedly cheaper locations, and the disengagement of the US and others from the Human Rights Council (and even its Universal Periodic Review mechanism). Across the UN as a whole, the Council for Foreign Relations reports the UN secretariat is preparing to trim its $3.7 billion budget by 20 percent in 2026, which could result in roughly 6,900 job cuts from the UN’s 35,000-person workforce.
Against this backdrop, in March this year, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, launched his UN80 reform initiative.
The system-wide reforms, which build on earlier reform efforts of the Secretary-General (e.g., his development system reforms, and management reforms), respond to one vital question:
How can the UN adapt to become more agile, integrated, and equipped to respond to today’s complex global challenges amid tightening resources?
Guterres’ answer to this question is that, to survive and prosper, the UN needs to be more responsive and resilient, better equipped to serve the people whose lives depend on it, more accountable to taxpayers who underwrite its work, and more supportive of staff in their critical roles. ‘It’s about doing more, more effectively, and with fewer bureaucratic burdens — ensuring the UN system is better aligned to meet rising global needs with unity, agility, and purpose.’
The main pillars of the proposed reforms are two-fold.
First, to make the UN more efficient, by merging UN entities (i.e., agencies, funds, and programmes) with overlapping mandates (e.g., WHO and UN AIDS, UNFCCC and UNEP), moving some UN entities to cheaper duty stations (e.g., from New York to Nairobi), and rationalising mandates (i.e., mechanisms established through intergovernmental decisions – in other words, through UN resolutions).
Second, to make the UN more operational and able to deliver real change at national level, the reforms propose possible structural changes to the architecture of the UN system, and a realignment of programmes across entities. These would aim to improve system-wide coherence, make more efficient use of resources, and strengthen the Organisation’s on-the-ground impact.
Regarding the first pillar, in August, the Secretary-General released a report presenting the findings of his mandate review. This analysed mandates established by the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and the Human Rights Council, along with their subsidiary bodies.
The review found that, since 1946, these bodies have issued mandates to UN entities through more than 40,000 resolutions, decisions, and presidential statements, establishing inter alia peacekeeping missions, and mechanisms to advance the SDGs, respond to humanitarian crises, and promote and protect human rights. The report does not assess the merits of these 40,000 mandates (this remains the responsibility of member States, including the members of the Human Rights Council), but rather analyses, for example, the duplication of mandates (within and between UN bodies), inadequate coordination of their implementation by the UN system, fragmentation in mandate delivery, a growing gap between mandates and resources, and uneven mandate review mechanisms.
Then, on 15 September, the UN secretariat published revised programme budget estimates for 2026, including initial proposals to merge the mandates of different UN entities (agencies, funds, and programmes), and move some entities from places like New York and Geneva to less expensive workstations, in order to drive efficiencies.
Regarding the second pillar, in September, the Secretary-General shared with member States a report, ‘Shifting Paradigms: United to Deliver,’ proposing various structural reforms and programme realignments, outlining proposals for paradigm-shifting changes in the Organisation’s structure, in the way its entities collaborate, and in how it operates.
The report begins with an important admission: ‘The UN system has been built over time – mandate by mandate, crisis by crisis – rather than from a single blueprint. Like any large, long-standing institution, no one would design it today exactly as it stands. But this moment also calls for our Organisation to rise to the challenges as demands and needs grow. With numerous entities, governance arrangements and mandates, there is significant scope to strengthen efficiency, effectiveness, coherence, transparency and accountability. We must act with resolve to deliver the results the world expects and deserves.’
The report then sets out the principles that should guide the UN’s operational reforms. In particular, they should: strengthen the system’s capacity to support countries in delivering on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and in responding effectively to emerging issues [e.g., climate change, digital technology], including those identified in the Pact for the Future; maximise the concrete on-the-ground impact of activities and services, and improve timely, demand-driven access to expertise for member States; and optimise efficiencies and effectiveness by reducing duplication and streamlining operations; considering consolidation or merger of structures where appropriate; and expanding shared services and common facilities.
On this basis, the report then sets out proposals to strengthen the UN’s delivery across all three pillars of its work – peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights – while also advancing more effective collaboration across the pillars. It proposes, for example, ‘a New Humanitarian Compact to cut bureaucracy and integrate billions of dollars in global supply chains, establishes a system-wide Human Rights Group to coordinate human rights systematically across all UN activities, and proposes the creation of a UN System Data Commons and a Technology Accelerator Platform to drive the modernisation of the system.’
What do the UN80 reforms mean for the human rights pillar?
Put simply, both key pillars of the Secretary-General’s powerful and far-sighted reform analyses and proposals, are directly and urgently relevant to the Human Rights Council, and the wider UN human rights pillar.
Ever since the establishment of the Universal Rights Group, we have raised the alarm about the proliferation of (usually repetitive) resolutions at the Council (some of which are also adopted at the Third Committee of the GA), the increasing length (and decreasing quality) of those resolutions, the increasing number of often meaningless debates and interactive dialogues (which, with increasingly limited speaking times, have been left neither interactive nor a dialogue), the continued establishment of yet more intergovernmental working groups to negotiate yet more international instruments (for example, the pointless new optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child), and (most expensively), the continued creation of new mechanisms, especially Special Procedures mandates and Commissions of Inquiry, with little thought given to the cost or effectiveness of such mechanisms.
All these points and concerns are reflected in the Secretary-General’s mandate review, which found:
- Large increases in the number of UN resolutions adopted each year, and high levels of overlap between resolutions adopted by different bodies (especially the Human Rights Council and the GA). For its part, the Human Rights Council has seen a massive rise in the number of resolutions since 2006, with well over a hundred texts now regularly adopted across the Council’s three annual regular sessions.
- Large increases in the length of resolutions adopted each year. Since 2020, for example, the analysis found that the average word count of GA resolutions has risen by 55%, and ECOSOC resolutions by more than 95% (the report does not mention the Human Rights Council in this context, but the length of its texts must surely show similar trends).
- Almost all these resolutions mandate new activities (e.g., meetings, reports – 55% of all mandated activities are requests for reports) or establish/renew mechanisms. In other words, more resolutions result in more activities and mechanisms, and more cost. (The report notes another worrying trend in this context – many resolutions call for new activities ‘within existing resources’).
- Pursuant to the previous point, the number and length of mandated reports has continued to grow. The Secretary-General’s analysis found that ‘in 2024, the secretariat published more than 1,100 reports, an increase of nearly 20 per cent since 1990. More than 60 per cent of these reports cover recurring topics.’ Many reports ‘also address similar issues [though] for different bodies.’ The average length of those reports has also grown, ‘and is now more than 40% longer than 20 years ago.’
- Mandated activities tend to continue for a long time. The report found that, for example, 30 per cent of GA resolution subjects in 1990 were still the subject of resolutions in 2024. The percentage is likely far higher in the Human Rights Council. For example, since the founding of the UN, no UN human rights thematic Special Procedures mandate has ever been discontinued (many have existed for decades – though two mandates were merged in 2000, and two more this year).
- Moreover, the substantive content of these recurring resolutions is remarkably similar year on year. The Secretary-General’s report found that of the more than 420 recurring GA resolutions regularly adopted between 2010 to 2024, 24% have been ‘extremely similar’ year-on-year, 31% ‘very similar,’ and 35% ‘somewhat similar.’ Again, similar trends can be found in the Human Rights Council, with sponsors often inexplicably keen to protect and repeat ‘agreed language.’
- In addition to the proliferation of mandates, the report also draws attention to the fact that few (only 14% of relevant resolutions) contain ‘sunset clauses’ or any form of review mechanism to decide when they may have outlived their usefulness. This is manifestly the case with Human Rights Council mandates/mechanisms (at least, those addressing thematic issues). As noted above, for example, no thematic Special Procedures mandate has ever been discontinued. Annual panel debates continue year-on-year. The only means of discontinuing a mandate (e.g., a thematic Special Procedures mandate) is to influence the three-yearly negotiations on the resolutions renewing them – in practice, those renewals always happen by default, with rarely any opposition (indeed, OHCHR usually starts its searches for new mandate-holders before the relevant mandate has even been renewed). Collective reviews of mandates, which Guterres rightly argues ‘are more likely to promote […] coherence across the mandate landscape and the UN system, identifying activities to expand, reduce or terminate,’ have not been attempted by the Human Rights Council (though one was undertaken by the Commission on Human Rights at the turn of the century).
- Finally, the report rightly points out that mandated activities, including the establishment or renewal of mechanisms, are often insufficiently results-focused, and have historically been poor at communicating success and impact on-the-ground. This again, is certainly the case for Human Rights Council mandates and mechanisms (though this has improved somewhat in recent years – e.g., Special Procedures).
Turning to the second pillar of the UN80 reforms, these are also extremely relevant to the human rights pillar (even if reform of the human rights system is explicitly mentioned only once in the Secretary-General’s proposals).
While acknowledging that ‘human rights are central to the UN’s mandate,’ the report acknowledges that ‘their integration across all areas of the UN’s work remains uneven at a time when human rights themselves are under growing pressure worldwide […] Some missions and country teams place human rights at the centre of their work, while others engage only sporadically, leaving member States and communities with inconsistent support.’ This, again, has also been a regular criticism levelled at the Human Rights Council, and the human rights pillar, by the Universal Rights Group.
To rectify this situation, the Secretary-General proposes establishing a ‘Human Rights Group, comprising entities from across the UN system, led by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Group will ensure that human rights considerations are systematically integrated into UN policies and activities, while also improving efficiency and impact across the system at all levels.’
This reform is supported by proposed changes to the UN development system such as ‘integrated regional support for stronger delivery,’ ‘reconfigured UN Country Teams with empowered leadership,’ and the ‘further strengthening of the Resident Coordinator system.’
These proposals, though small in number, do have the potential to significantly increase the human rights pillar’s impact on-the-ground, continuing and expanding impressive changes that have taken place over the past five years (including in the context of the Secretary-General’s earlier development system reforms). Today, UN agencies including UNICEF, UNFPA, and UN Women, are far more sophisticated than previously in leveraging developing country engagement with the UN human rights mechanisms, and then integrated resulting recommendations into country programming documents (in order to better support implementation and impact). Perhaps the proposed Human Rights Group will enable OHCHR to also shift its focus towards supporting and tracking implementation at national level, and measuring impact.
However, real improvements in the operational effectiveness of the human rights pillar must be led by States themselves, especially members and observers at the Human Rights Council. At a time of crisis and reform, it is vital that States seize the opportunity to make the human rights system both more streamlined and efficient (see above), and more effective in terms of securing greater implementation and stronger impact (e.g., through more initiatives on national implementation and reporting systems, such as URG’s long-standing work with Morocco, Paraguay, and Portugal to encourage the establishment of national mechanisms for implementation, reporting, and follow-up (NMIRFs), and the improved delivery of technical assistance and capacity-building support under agenda item 10 – again as regularly proposed by URG). When reflecting on and introducing such vital reforms, the Council should be guided by the same principles listed in the Secretary-General’s operational reforms, especially that change should aim to: ‘strengthen the system’s capacity to support countries in delivering on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in responding effectively to emerging issues,’ and ‘maximize concrete impact of activities and services and improve timely, demand-driven access to expertise for member States.’
Featured picture: Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the opening of the general debate of the General Assembly’s eightieth session. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe. https://media.un.org/photo/en/asset/oun7/oun71118073
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