UN Funding Crisis Deepens as Trump Slashes Aid: Global Impact of US Withdrawal

UN Funding Crisis: US Cuts to UN Spark Historic Funding Crisis

The United Nations and its various agencies have been experiencing challenges in receiving sufficient funding for a long time. Right now, a problem that has been persisting for a while has turned into a major crisis in the shadow of Donald Trump’s axe. Given 22% of the UN’s core budget, the US gives the largest amount of the funds. In February, the White House stated that the US would be revisiting its membership in all international groups, conventions, and treaties for six months. This comprised the UN. The aim was to find means to cut back on or end US funding for such organizations or even withdraw from them altogether. Next month is the last day to be cut down.

UN Funding Crisis: Trump’s Budget Axe Threatens Multilateralism

Trump’s decision to end the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and most aid programs has already done a lot of damage to UN-led and UN-backed humanitarian operations that depend on discretionary funds. But Trump’s axe stands for a more serious threat: to multilateralism and the international rules-based order, which has been badly damaged. The UN has been based on the idea that everyone is responsible for keeping the world safe and secure and that people should work together to solve problems that affect everyone. This idea has recently been put up for abolition.

UN Funding Crisis: UN Charter Undermined Amid Global Conflicts

There is a lot at stake, and Washington is not the only evil. About 40 other nations are also behind on their yearly dues, just like the US. Donations given voluntarily are going down. Failure to stop Russia’s illegal war of aggression in Ukraine and the US-Israeli attack on Iran last month has done a lot of damage to the UN charter, which is a list of the organization’s basic principles.

When it suits them, China and other countries, like the UK, don’t follow international law. There are more and longer-lasting conflicts around the world, but UN peacekeeping operations and envoys are not given much attention. Vetoes often stop the Security Council from acting, and the General Assembly doesn’t have much power. The UN isn’t working in many ways.

There will be a moment of urgency soon. Not one thing will be able to take its place if the UN is allowed to fail or is cut down to the extent that its departments can’t do their jobs fully. That is, nothing but the law of the jungle, which is frequently seen in Gaza and other war zones where the UN cannot operate, aid workers are killed, and laws are not adhered to. The UN system has many problems, some of which it causes itself. But for most people in most places, the world without the UN would be less safe, less healthy, more hungry, poorer, and less able to last.

UN Funding Crisis: Trump’s 2026 Budget Slashes 87% of UN Spending

It’s not likely that the US will leave the UN for good, but with this conservative and ultra-nationalist president, anything is possible. However, Trump’s hostile purpose is clear. In his budget plan for 2026, he wants to cut all US spending on other countries by 83.7%, from $58.7bn to $9.6bn. That includes an 87% cut in all UN spending, whether it’s needed or not.

“The United States spent about $13bn on the UN in 2023.” Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace pointed out that this is only 1.6% of the Pentagon’s budget that year ($816bn), which is about two-thirds of what Americans spend on ice cream every year. Aid for economic growth, disaster help, and family planning would all be cut back.

Global Aid Agencies on the Brink of Collapse

The effect could change the whole world. Key UN agencies that are under attack include Unicef, the World Food Program (WFP), which could lose 30% of its staff, agencies that help refugees and migrants, which are also cutting back, the International Court of Justice (the “world court”), which has brought attention to Israel’s illegal actions in Gaza, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which keeps an eye on Iran’s and other countries’ nuclear activities.

Trump has already cut ties with the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and the Palestinian Relief Agency (UNRWA). He has also taken back $4 billion that was supposed to go to the UN climate fund, saying that all of these groups work against US interests. The UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals might not be able to be met if its budget is passed this fall. The US will no longer pay for foreign peacekeeping and observer missions in places like Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Lebanon, where there is trouble. Currently, the US pays 26% of all spending on these missions.

Withdrawing USAID aid is already killing people in Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, and Haiti, among other places. The situation in Myanmar after the earthquake, which is a war zone and short on aid, is called a “humanitarian catastrophe” by UN officials. A study in the Lancet found that Trump’s budget cuts could add more than 14 million deaths by 2030, with about a third of those deaths being children.

The World Food Programme (WFP), which is in charge of giving food aid around the world, says it expects to have a $8.1bn funding gap this year. This is because a record 343 million people in 74 countries are severely hungry. Other foreign countries aren’t doing enough to make up for the US’s absence. Only 11% of the $46.2bn needed to deal with 44 problems that the UN says are the most important have been raised so far in 2025. The UK cut its aid fund by £6bn not long ago to pay for nuclear weapons.

Guterres Warns of UN System Breakdown

The heads of the UN agree that many of the problems started before Trump. The secretary general, António Guterres, has started cutting thousands of jobs as part of the “UN80” change plan to make things run more smoothly and cut the main budget by up to 20%. Guterres said that the biggest problem is that some member states don’t want to work together, break the rules, or pay their fair share. They also seem to have forgotten why the UN was created in the first place. “It is not possible not to sign the UN charter.” It’s not a la carte offering. “It’s what world relations are built on,” he said.

Guterres says that stopping a third world war is the UN’s biggest accomplishment since 1945. But well-known experts like Fiona Hill think it’s already come to fruition. The UK and other nations have some important issues to deal with. Are they going to give in to Trump again? Or will they fight to stop this rebel president and rogue states like Russia and Israel from taking down the world’s best defense against chaos, endless wars, and needless suffering?

This article draws from and is inspired by content originally published by The Guardian on July 6, 2025, titled “The UN is our best defense against a third world war. As Trump wields the axe, who will fight to save it?”

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