UN Human Rights System Faces Existential Threat as Budget Cuts and Political Pressure Mount

The United States, as the UN's largest financial contributor, has suspended funding following Trump's return to office.

Switzerland:

United Nations human rights initiatives are facing disproportionate budget reductions amid a severe UN funding crisis, creating an "existential threat" to crucial investigations and accountability efforts, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report highlights that Washington's failure to pay UN membership dues, combined with Chinese and Russian efforts to defund human rights bodies, could potentially deliver a fatal blow to the UN's work against human rights violations.

"At a moment of sweeping UN reform and financial crisis, these efforts... pose an existential threat to the UN's human rights system," warned the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR).

The impact is already evident, as a high-level war crimes investigation mandated by the UN Human Rights Council into violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has failed to launch due to insufficient funding.

Other ongoing investigations have warned that further cuts could severely hamper their operations.

The UN is currently considering reforms, including a 15-percent reduction across its 2026 budget to address chronic liquidity problems worsened by US President Donald Trump's policies.

Since Trump's return to power in January, the United States, the UN's primary contributor, has paused its funding.

As of September 30, Washington owed $1.5 billion in unpaid UN membership fees, including $300 million in arrears from previous years, according to the ISHR report.

China, the second-largest contributor, has exacerbated the crisis by paying its dues "extremely late," the report noted.

Beijing only completed last year's payment on December 27, effectively rendering the funds unusable since UN financial rules require unspent budget amounts by year-end to be returned to member states, ISHR stated.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' UN80 reform proposal aims to distribute cuts across the organization's three pillars: peace and security; human rights; and sustainable development.

However, ISHR cautioned that these cuts would "disproportionately hit the human rights pillar due to years of underfunding."

The human rights segment currently receives less than one percent of the total UN budget.

The proposed cuts could severely impact the UN rights office, OHCHR, which has already seen tens of millions of dollars in US voluntary funds disappear this year.

The agency has received only 73 percent of member states' promised regular budget contributions for 2025, leaving $67 million unpaid.

"It's a huge gap," spokeswoman Liz Throssell told AFP.

In practical terms, she explained, "This is about victims who are less protected, people who can't get accountability."

"We have now reached the critical threshold of efficiency of the system. If it goes down further, it becomes very, very, very concerning."

Kaoru Okuizumi, deputy head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, warned that proposed cuts could result in the probe losing 27 positions—one-third of its staff.

"It's huge," she told AFP, cautioning that specialized teams, including one investigating sexual and gender-based crimes, "may be cut entirely."

ISHR warned that targeted efforts to defund rights investigations during UN budget negotiations could worsen the crisis.

Russia and China especially "have weaponised UN budget negotiations to serve their own interests and shield allies from scrutiny," said Madeleine Sinclair, head of ISHR's New York office.

During UN negotiations, the two countries repeatedly introduced proposals to reduce rights funding, with support from other "authoritarian states," the report stated.

Under the guise of efficiency, they seek to cut funds for OHCHR and for investigations into abuses in countries like Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.

The proposals "are clearly about crippling the OHCHR," report author Angeli Datt told journalists.

"They are not about efficiency."

Many countries yield to the pressure, with some even agreeing to block funding for investigations they themselves supported establishing, she noted.

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