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Anonymous ID: 5cc8ae Feb. 7, 2026, 2:09 p.m. No.24229750   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9796 >>9851

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Explainer: Why is UN warning of 'imminent financial collapse'?

 

GENEVA/WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is sounding the alarm on U.N. finances, warning that the world body is at risk of "imminent financial collapse" due to unpaid fees and a budget rule that forces it to return unspent funds.

Guterres has repeatedly spoken about the U.N.'s worsening liquidity crisis but this was his starkest warning yet, and it came as the United States, its main contributor - and debtor - is retreating from multilateralism on numerous fronts.

 

The crunch comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a Board of Peace with himself as lifetime chair, which some fear could undermine the United Nations, a body with 193 member states formed in the ashes of World War Two that works to maintain international peace and security.

Under Trump, as well as refusing to make mandatory payments to the U.N.'s regular and peacekeeping budgets, the U.S. has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies with their own budgets, and moved to exit U.N. organizations including the World Health Organization. In December, the U.N. appealed for a 2026 aid budget only half the size of what it had hoped for in 2025, acknowledging a plunge in donor funding at a time when humanitarian needs have never been greater.

Guterres launched a reform task force last year, UN80, seeking to cut costs and improve efficiency. The approved 2026 regular budget is roughly $200 million higher than he proposed, but about 7 per cent lower than the approved 2025 budget.

Guterres warned in his letter that the U.N. could run out of cash by July and cited a "Kafkaesque" requirement for it to credit back hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent dues to states each year even if it never received the money. U.N. officials hope to overhaul this "bizarre" rule, which Guterres has called "a race to bankruptcy."

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/why-is-un-warning-imminent-financial-collapse-2026-02-04/