{"id":440875,"date":"2026-01-31T13:09:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T13:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/440875\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T13:09:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T13:09:24","slug":"un-says-it-could-have-zero-cash-by-july-as-us-withholds-dues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/440875\/","title":{"rendered":"UN says it could have zero cash by July as US withholds dues"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.N. chief \u2060has told member states the organisation is at risk of “imminent financial collapse,” citing unpaid fees and a budget rule that forces the global body to return unspent money, a letter seen by Reuters on Friday showed.<\/p>\n

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres<\/a> has repeatedly spoken about the organisation’s worsening liquidity crisis \u200cbut this is his \u200cstarkest warning yet, and it comes as its main contributor the U.S. is retreating from multilateralism on numerous fronts.
“The crisis is deepening, threatening programme delivery and risking financial \u200ccollapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future,” Guterres wrote in a letter to ambassadors dated January 28.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies and refused to make mandatory payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.<\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump has described the U.N. as having “great potential” but said it is not fulfilling that, and he has launched a Board of Peace which some fear could undermine the older international body.<\/p>\n

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Founded in 1945, the U.N. has 193 member states and works to maintain international peace and security, promote human \u200crights, foster social and \u200deconomic development, and coordinate humanitarian aid.
In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that \u200dfinance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally \u200cannounced.” He did not say which state or states he was referring to, and a U.N. spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n

‘KAFKAESQUE CYCLE’<\/p>\n

Under U.N. rules, contributions depend on the size of the economy of each member state. The U.S. accounts for 22% of the core budget followed by China with 20%.<\/p>\n

But by the end of 2025 there was a record $1.57 billion in outstanding dues, Guterres said, without naming the nations that owed them.<\/p>\n

“Either all Member States honour their obligations to pay in full and on time – or Member States must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules \u200dto prevent an imminent financial collapse,” he said.<\/p>\n

U.N. officials say the U.S. currently owes $2.19 billion to the regular U.N. budget, another $1.88 billion for active peace-keeping missions and $528 million for past peace-keeping missions.<\/p>\n

The U.S. State \u200dDepartment did not \u2060immediately respond to a request for comment \u2060on the Guterres letter.<\/p>\n

Guterres launched a reform task force last year, known as UN80, which seeks to cut costs and improve efficiency. To that end, states agreed to cut the 2026 budget by around 7% to $3.45 billion.<\/p>\n

Still, Guterres warned in the letter that the organisation could run out of cash by July.<\/p>\n

One of the problems is a rule now seen as antiquated whereby the global body has to credit back hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent dues to states each year.<\/p>\n

“In other words, we are trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle expected to give back cash that does not exist,” said Guterres, referring to author Franz Kafka who wrote about oppressive bureaucratic processes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.N. chief \u2060has told member states the organisation is at risk of “imminent financial collapse,” citing unpaid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[207812,28,101,207808,207811,207809,207807,207806,207810],"class_list":{"0":"post-440875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-budget-reform-un","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-guterres-warns-un","12":"tag-u-n-liquidity-crisis","13":"tag-u-n-secretary-general-antonio-guterres","14":"tag-un-budget-crisis","15":"tag-un-financial-collapse","16":"tag-unpaid-dues-un"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}