United Nations Reform

The United Nations enters its eightieth year under the banner of reform. The Secretary General’s report Shifting Paradigms: United to Deliver outlines plans to consolidate mandates, rationalize structures, and relocate parts of the UN system. The stated objective is efficiency. The real stakes are power and survival.

History shows us that reform often hides deeper conflicts. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “the most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.” Change, in the language of institutions, is never neutral. It determines whose voices will be amplified and whose will be silenced. In the United States, bureaucratic efficiency has often been weaponized to reproduce racial hierarchies under the guise of neutrality. The United Nations must guard against repeating this pattern by turning efficiency into a coded justification for weakening Africa.

Cost-Cuting Cannot be at Africa's Expense

The proposals for UN80 emphasize moving functions from costly headquarters cities to lower cost duty stations. The arithmetic seems logical, but the consequences may be deeply uneven. Professional staff from Europe and North America are being relocated to Africa, where operations are cheaper. Unless there are safeguards, the effect could be a crowding-out of locally recruited staff, who have sustained the daily work of country and regional offices for decades.

It would be inaccurate to suggest that all locally recruited staff are African, or that all African staff are locally recruited. The UN workforce is diverse and layered. Yet the pattern is clear. African duty stations host large numbers of national staff, while many professional posts are concentrated in Geneva, New York, and Vienna. Relocating expensive staff from those hubs to African offices without additional resources risks displacing Africans disproportionately, not because of their staff category but because of geography and politics. Eric Hobsbawm warned that “the real tragedy of the twentieth century was that the pursuit of efficiency was too often the pursuit of inequality by other means.” The UN must not allow its reforms to become an example of precisely that tragedy.

Money Talks: How Switzerland Secures Its UN Clout
The Swiss government provides a powerful lesson in the geopolitics of institutional presence. In June 2025 it pledged CHF 269 million, roughly USD 329 million, for the period 2026 to 2029 to reinforce Geneva’s status as a diplomatic capital. In 2024 it paid CHF 88.1 million in assessed contributions, including CHF 55.4 million for peacekeeping and CHF 32.2 million for the regular UN budget. In 2023 Switzerland’s official development assistance to multilateral institutions reached USD 1.9 billion, of which more than USD 825 million went directly to the UN system.

These figures are not mere bookkeeping. They are an explicit investment in influence. Geneva’s permanence as a global hub is secured not only by history but by financial commitment. In international relations, money is not charity but strategy. As Hans Morgenthau argued, “international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.” Switzerland has understood that in multilateral diplomacy, financial weight is a form of power.

Africa has not approached the multilateral system with similar seriousness. 

Contributions remain minimal, even from states that host critical UN institutions. Kenya, home to UNEP and UN Habitat, spends lavishly on political campaigns and presidential travel yet contributes only modestly to the UN system. The result is predictable. States that do not invest are seen as expendable.

Frantz Fanon reminded us that “he who has a stake in the world must act as if the world is his to build.” Africa cannot ask for protection if it refuses to invest in the institutions it seeks to preserve. Increased contributions need not equal Swiss or American levels. Even modest increments across the African Union would signal seriousness and collective ownership. To borrow the words of Joseph Nye, power in the modern age is not only military might but also “the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants.” Contributions, even small, affect outcomes. They buy voice, visibility, and resilience.

This is the opportunity for leaders like President William Ruto to drive a new African consensus. Standing before the General Assembly, he can declare that Africa will not outsource its future, that it is ready to invest in multilateralism, and that it expects justice in return. The symbolism of Nairobi hosting UNEP and UN Habitat must be matched by the seriousness of financial contributions and political will.

Africa Must Embrace Multilateralism as a Shield

The global order is fracturing. The United States is consumed by inward nationalism. Russia violates international norms with military aggression. Other powers carve spheres of unilateral influence. In this disarray the United Nations remains the only arena where African states, regardless of size, wield equal votes. Multilateralism is not optional for Africa. It is the continent’s last shield against irrelevance.

Amartya Sen wrote that “development is freedom.” For Africa, freedom takes form in multilateral institutions that give small and poor states a stage. Robert Keohane argued that institutions endure because they distribute benefits widely enough to sustain legitimacy. If the UN80 reforms shift burdens disproportionately onto Africa while shielding wealthier states, legitimacy will collapse. African offices must not be hollowed out. African staff must not be left vulnerable to restructuring without protection. To weaken Africa in the UN is to weaken the only institution that still gives the continent parity.

This is why Ruto and other African leaders must make multilateralism the centerpiece of their diplomacy at UNGA80. They must remind the world that weakening Africa weakens the legitimacy of the UN itself.

Fair Reform is necessary

No institution can survive unchanged through the turbulence of the twenty-first century. But reform must not be confused with retrenchment, nor efficiency with inequity. Communication theory reminds us that language shapes reality. If “streamlining” becomes synonymous with exclusion, then the UN will erode its credibility by its very vocabulary.

Africa must use the stage of UNGA80 to demand safeguards. Staff in African offices must be protected, not sacrificed. Regional and country offices must be strengthened, not hollowed out. Contributions must be increased to signal commitment. Frederick Douglass’s words remain relevant: “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Africa must make its demand clear, collective, and insistent.

The United Nations, too, must act with foresight. Kofi Annan once observed that “we will not enjoy development without security, we will not enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human rights.” Reform that marginalizes Africa undermines all three pillars at once. A reformed UN must be fair in form and substance.

Reform is not a euphemism for exclusion

The United Nations is at a moral threshold. It can mark its eightieth year by deepening justice or by betraying its own founding ideals. To undermine Africa in the name of efficiency is not reform but racism in bureaucratic disguise. To cut Nairobi while fortifying Geneva is to affirm that wealth buys permanence and poverty buys dismissal.

Reform can be an act of betrayal or a moment of rebirth. For Africa the choice is stark. Invest more, unite politically, and speak with one voice, or risk becoming the silent casualty of restructuring. For the United Nations the choice is equally stark. Either shift paradigms toward fairness or shift burdens in ways that corrode legitimacy.

If UN80 is to mean anything, it must mean that reform is not a euphemism for exclusion. It must mean that multilateralism remains the common property of all states, not the privilege of the wealthy. A United Nations that sacrifices Africa is not united at all.

Gem Musings is a seasoned International Relations and Public Affairs Strategist with extensive experience in global diplomacy, communication, and policy analysis.