Guterres warns UN faces ‘imminent financial collapse’

UN chief Antonio Guterres calls on member states to address unpaid dues and overhaul world body’s financial rules.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the United Nations faces “imminent financial collapse” amid unpaid annual dues and other issues.

Al Jazeera on Friday reviewed a letter Guterres sent to all UN member states earlier this week, warning them that the global body faced a grave financial crisis.

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The letter urged member states to agree to overhaul the UN’s financial rules or accept “the very real prospect of the financial collapse of our Organization” and called on them to pay their annual dues.

Asked about the letter during a news briefing on Friday afternoon, a UN spokesperson said that, “when it comes to paying, it’s now or never”.

“We do not have the sort of cash reserves and the sort of liquidity to keep functioning as we’ve done in previous years – and this is something that the secretary-general has warned with increasing strength each year,” Farhan Haq told reporters.

While Guterres did not blame a specific country for the UN’s financial troubles, his appeal comes as United States President Donald Trump has moved to slash Washington’s funding for multilateral institutions.

Trump, whose administration announced plans this month to withdraw from several UN agencies, also recently launched his so-called “Board of Peace” initiative, which some experts have said aims to sideline the UN.

“Trump’s board appears to be a kind of pay-to-play, global club, judging from the $1 billion fee for permanent membership,” Louis Charbonneau, the UN director at Human Rights Watch, recently warned.

“Instead of handing Trump $1 billion checks, governments should work together to protect the UN and other institutions established to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law, the global rule of law, and accountability,” Charbonneau said.

The annual dues UN member states must pay are set according to each country’s gross domestic product (GDP), debt and other factors.

The US accounts for 22 percent of the core budget, followed by China with 20 percent.

But by the end of 2025 there was a record $1.57bn in outstanding dues, Guterres said, without naming the countries that had not paid.

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

In early January, the UN approved a $3.45bn budget for 2026 – down 7 percent from last year, as the global body looked to reduce costs amid its financial challenges.

Still, Guterres warned in the letter that the organisation could run out of cash by July.

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.

“In other words, we are trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle expected to give back cash that does not exist,” Guterres said in the letter.

As of Thursday, only 36 of the 193 UN member states had fully paid their regular 2026 contributions, the UN says on its website.