Secretary-General António Guterres (on screen) briefing reporters on the Mideast, April 30, 2026. He has proposed a way to help the UN from being forced to turning out its lights this summer amid a brutal liquidity crisis. Yet his plan would be a temporary fix as major countries, like the United States, are not paying their obligatory UN dues in full, on time or at all. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
The United Nations’ financial crisis is progressively worsening as a possible doomsday — when the organization can no longer keep its lights on — inches closer with every unpaid or delayed dues payment from all 193 members.
In the last two years, the 80-year-old institution has been dealing with an unprecedented liquidity crunch that has caused it to roll back lifesaving programs, cut its expenses even down to paper towels and reduce the overall number of staff.
Secretary-General António Guterres has clearly warned of impending disaster if member states continue to default on paying their mandatory financial obligations. With every alarm he has sounded, his words grow grimmer each time. Yet, a proposal by Guterres could help rescue the UN from financial abyss, albeit temporarily, involving a decades-old financial rule that critics say is contributing to the liquidity crunch.
In October 2025, as Guterres presented a slimmed 2026 budget to member states, he warned of a “race to bankruptcy.” The 2026 budget was about 15 percent lower than the previous year’s. The situation became more dire when it became obvious that the United States, the largest contributor, based on a formula accepted by all member states, was going to withhold its share of 22 percent of the regular budget.
The Trump administration says, however, that its obligatory fees to the UN are conditional. “The UN is in need of continued dramatic reform, and we intend to continue to use our fees that they claim we owe as leverage for that,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to the US Congress on June 3, without providing any specifics of reform.
Freeze or reform?
Using details from internal financial documents, copious closed-door negotiations reviewing the problematic financial rule and interviews with senior UN officials and experts, PassBlue has scrutinized the heated debate among member states on whether to freeze the difficult credit system or to reform the entire financial architecture.
“We had to reduce our activities, and the price was largely paid by those that received assistance from the UN,” Guterres told a group of journalists during his visit to Japan on May 22. “Which means there is more anger, which means there is less vaccination, which means there is less support for water and sanitation, which means more people die.”
“That is the reality,” he added. “The UN will move on. The UN was prepared for this and has been able to reform itself and is slim enough to be able to go on. But obviously, the price was paid by those that we were trying to support and some of them in very desperate situations.”
Only 55 — or 28.5 percent — of the organization’s 193 countries paid their dues in full this year within the required 30 days of the new calendar, or by Feb. 8, 2026. In 2026, as part of the decades-old ruling, 9.3 percent of the regular budget from 2025 was returned to member states as a credit, according to confidential financial documents seen by PassBlue. Assuming the 2027 budget is similar to that of 2026, the credit figure is projected to increase to 13 percent by next year at the current rate of delinquency.
The situation is even more alarming across all the three main budget streams — regular, peacekeeping and tribunals — so that if no action is taken, the UN may be forced to return approximately $1.3 billion in credits in 2027 across the regular and peacekeeping budgets.
As of April 30, 2026, the latest public accounting by the General Assembly’s finance committee, unpaid assessments for both regular budget and peacekeeping operations were approximately $2.8 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively.
As such, Guterres has proposed that the UN’s credit-return system, established in the 1960s and requiring the organization to reimburse unspent funds or uncollected dues to member states as credits — to be applied toward future assessments — to be completely reformed or frozen.
The plan would allow the UN to regain its balance as it manages the cash crunch. In defending his proposal, Guterres has told member states that his UN80 reform initiative to make the organization more nimble, “cannot substitute for or compensate for failure to honor that basic treaty obligation” of countries paying their assessments in full and on time.
His proposal would ensure that uncollected dues from nonpaying members do not automatically trigger budget reductions for the next year.
“Without action and under the present rules, the Organization will be forced to give back millions across regular budget and peacekeeping operations that it could not spend…
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