The United Nations is saying as little as possible about a leaked White House memo that names the world body and some of its departments as targets for potential major funding cuts through the United States State Department. If enacted, through a process of negotiations between the Office of Management and Budget and the State Department, culminating in Congress, the implications could significantly affect the UN and its 193 members.
Although several spokespeople for Secretary-General António Guterres declined to comment extensively on the internal US government document, a more public reckoning seems inevitable as it remains unclear how the UN Secretariat, led by Guterres, is privately dealing with news of the US government memo.
“I’m aware of the press articles, which we’ve read,” said Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for Guterres, to reporters on April 15. “And I think you will understand if we decide not to comment on what appears to be a leaked memo that is part of an internal debate within the U.S. government.”
The US memo, below, has been reported throughout media this week; PassBlue also obtained a copy. It is perhaps the first tangible evidence of President Trump’s direction toward the much-anticipated funding cuts to the UN. In March, Guterres initiated a plan, dubbed the UN80 Initiative, to improve the organization’s efficiency in response to possible budget reductions by the US. The plan for systemwide cuts is underway and will be presented to the General Assembly by July, before diplomats take their August breaks.
Separately, the UN is facing a cash crisis, partly related to the US owing $1.495 billion to the UN regular budget and $1.1776 billion to the peacekeeping operation, according to a UN source.
The UN agencies exempt from the White House proposal are technical in nature, with the most prominent, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), presumably left intact because of its work monitoring Iran’s nuclear energy activities.
The other agencies, as reported by Reuters, are the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in Geneva; the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has been responsible for monitoring the dismantling of Syria’s stockpile, among other work; and the International Maritime Organization.
While Guterres says the UN80 plan — named for the organization’s 80th year — wasn’t started because of cuts from the US administration, other UN agencies whose funding has already been cut through USAID’s demise and State Department reductions have been more direct about the impacts on their programs.
Junior UN staff are losing their jobs just as important health programs are being excised across many developing countries and as sweeping funding slashes diminish almost all humanitarian services rendered by the UN and its partners. (European donors, another major source of largess to UN programs, are also decreasing their voluntary contributions.)
Field officers, who do most of the grunt work for the UN servicing the world’s most vulnerable people, have been told to leave — some within 48 hours. Others have had their contracts discontinued. The changes raise questions as to whether senior UN officials are being affected at all.
Concerns were aired in a letter by some former and current staff to the management of the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that recent job cuts have disproportionately affected lower-level employees, while senior positions remain largely untouched. In the letter, obtained by PassBlue, some staffers blamed the agency’s boss, Filippo Grandi, for expanding the organization by creating additional senior roles that shield them now that the knives are out.
An agency spokesperson confirmed that management has received the letter. He told PassBlue that 400 jobs “directly linked to US funding have already been, or are in the process of being, separated.” Some other workers have been told that their fixed-term contracts won’t be renewed.
Grandi said in a statement on March 20 that more than 90 percent of UNHCR staff work on the front lines, often in the world’s most violent places. The agency’s public health chief, Allen Maina, said a few days later that an estimated 12.8 million displaced people could be left without lifesaving help. These developments suggest that those hurt most by the funding withdrawals will be the refugees themselves — who number nearly 44 million people — and local or junior workers who earn less than their senior colleagues.
“The proportion of senior managers at P5, D1, and D2 levels at UNHCR has remained fairly stable over the past ten years, respectively 2.30%, 0,70% and 0.23% in 2025,” the spokesperson said in an email to PassBlue on how the shortfall in cash flow has affected leadership. “Their salaries represent 12 percent of the overall workforce salaries.”
Since Trump has returned to the White House in his second presidency, several other UN agencies have announced drastic cuts to their workforce and cut essential programs to mitigate the reality that millions of dollars are no longer available for their operations. The dismantling by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency of USAID has been followed by immediate implications for novel health research as drugs for diseases have been discontinued in several African countries.
Similar workforce and program trends are being felt across several prominent UN agencies, including:
• The World Health Organization (WHO) was one of the first agencies to feel the painful shift in US foreign policy, when Trump immediately announced after his inauguration that the country would withdraw from the entity (which takes a year to effect and will create a $1 billion gap in overall funding for the WHO). In response, the organization froze recruitment and limited travel, among other restructuring steps. A recent report from Health Policy Watch, an independent media site, said the WHO is proposing an emergency plan to lower the number of program divisions from 10 to 5 and to shrink the number of directors in the Geneva headquarters from nearly 80 to around 30. It is unclear if the plan has been approved.
• In the same vein, the UN’s International Organization for Migration, or IOM, has laid off about 25,000 workers, including those working on the US Refugee Admissions Program. Amy Pope, an American who leads the agency, told journalists on April 16 in New York City that the IOM has been forced, for example, to halt programs for the reintegration of Haitians being deported from the US. The US Department of Homeland Security plans to stop the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for 500,000 Haitians living in the country by August 2025. Pope said more programs might be cut from Haiti if the US does not resume its full funding to the IOM. (It received a stop-work order from USAID that has been partly reinstated.) “We, like our other UN partners, are waiting to see the direction that the United States Government will decide to go,” Pope said.
• UN peacekeeping operations are a serious contender for the chopping block, according to the White House memo. The OMB’s proposed cuts to the State Department could end assessed contributions to UN peacekeeping (subject to Congressional approval), citing “recent mission failures.” The US is currently mandated to pay about 26 percent of assessed fees to the UN peacekeeping budget, or about $47 million, the biggest payee, followed by China. Reuters reported that the missions in Mali, Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were named as the “failures” by the White House. The Malian operation was shut down in 2024; Unifil, in Lebanon, is the target of sporadic attacks by Israel in its fight against Hezbollah, the militant group, despite a ceasefire; and Monusco, in the Congo, is slated to withdraw from the country, albeit without firm deadlines, as a conflict rages in the east.
One direct effect of looming peacekeeping budget changes could be the hybrid African Union-UN mission in Somalia, a country in the Horn of Africa contending with the deadly Al Shabab and other terrorist groups. The AU has proposed a funding model in which the UN would pay 90 percent of the AU Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM). PassBlue reported that the US would not support the mission, despite the authorization of UN Security Council Resolution 2719 to allow AU peacekeeping missions in the continent to be partly financed by UN-assessed contributions. (The US abstained on the vote for the resolution last year.) A Council vote on funding AUSSOM is scheduled for mid-May.
John Kelley, acting US alternate representative, told the Council on April 8 that the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has outlived its mandate and that its functions need to be transferred to other UN agencies. “The United States is committed to rooting out unnecessary spending in international organizations,” Kelley told the 15-member body.
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has announced budget reductions of 20 percent because of a “funding gap” of almost $60 million this year. “These exercises are driven by funding cuts and not by a reduction of humanitarian needs,” Tom Fletcher, the head of the agency, said in a letter to staff members. Asked if the US overall aid cuts are responsible for UNOCHA’s decision, Dujarric, the UN spokesperson, said that “some of the cuts have come from the US. Some have come from other countries.” An immediate budget victim is UNOCHA’s base in Nigeria.
• UN Women, which is solely focused on promoting women’s rights, is debating whether to move a large portion of its workforce from its base in New York City to Nairobi to save money. As one person familiar with the discussions told PassBlue, removing experts from the US headquarters could weaken their influence in decision-making in the UN Secretariat in New York City, affecting gender equality advances negatively. (Unicef is also apparently mulling a partial move to Nairobi or outside New York City. Its spokesperson, Kurtis Cooper, did not respond to an email from PassBlue.)
Source: PassBlue / Digpu NewsTex