NEW SPECIAL BRIEFING FROM CRISIS GROUP
Ten Challenges for the UN
in 2026-2027
Special Briefing 15 / Multilateral Diplomacy 14 September 2026 20+ minutes
Ten Challenges for the UN in 2026-2027
As the 2026 General Assembly begins, the UN remains hobbled by cost cutting and big-power wrangling. The new Secretary-General to be chosen soon cannot cure all that ails the organisation, but much can be done to put its still considerable capacity to work.
What’s new? Leaders gathering at the UN General Assembly will find an organisation in need of revival. UN diplomacy aimed at halting wars and easing civilian suffering remains paralysed, while funding cuts have weakened UN capacity. States have one eye to the future as they prepare to appoint a new Secretary-General.
Why does it matter? The UN remains the only universal forum for global cooperation on war and peace, even as the international order it anchors is under mounting strain. Many member states hope the next Secretary-General can help the organisation dispel its malaise and forge a new direction.
What should be done? A new Secretary-General cannot resolve the world’s crises overnight, but this person should work with member states to address immediate challenges. High on the list should be bolstering the UN’s peacemaking and conflict management capabilities, mobilising political and financial support, and making a renewed case for international cooperation.
I.
Overview
When world leaders last met at the UN General Assembly in September 2025, the organisation was in disarray, reeling from U.S. aid freezes and major-power disputes. A year on, the organisation remains trapped in an open-ended crisis, even after an additional round of cost cutting and other reforms. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has morphed from a flawed champion of the international legal order into an overt scofflaw. While the U.S. has not repudiated the multilateral system anchored by the UN, it has done great damage to the organisation, insisting on shrinking multilateral peace operations, slow-rolling funding and tried to impose its ideological agenda. The Security Council continues to be a forum for hashing out big-power differences – with the U.S., Russia and China coming to agreement on second-tier files. But as regards the most salient peace and security challenges today – the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, as well as Ukraine and Sudan – the UN is notable mainly for being stuck. The next Secretary-General cannot cure all that ails the UN, but creative diplomacy could be useful in putting its still considerable capacity to work.
If the overall mood at the UN is one of drifting toward perdition, it is partly because everyone is waiting for change at the top of the system. Secretary-General António Guterres will complete his term at the end of December. A small batch of candidates – eight, at the time of writing – have been publicly and privately lobbying throughout the year to replace him. Most have been cautious in their campaigning, to avoid offending the major powers that dominate the selection process. UN insiders are watching with mixed feelings. Some hope that the next Secretary-General can bring new energy to the organisation and, assuming Washington is amenable, restore a measure of political relevance and financial stability. Others worry that the U.S., China and Russia will connive to choose a weak candidate firmly under their control and that the Trump administration will force the next UN chief to make even more radical cuts throughout the institution.
The selection process has at least focused minds on what the UN, multilateral cooperation and international law exist to achieve. Many member states have emphasised that they would like to see the incoming Secretary-General do more to promote conflict prevention and resolution, which Guterres has sometimes given short shrift while pursuing other goals, such as international cooperation on artificial intelligence. Guterres no doubt felt that he had little to gain by focusing on geopolitical crises given the lack of consensus among the big powers. But there is now a widespread sense that the UN cannot pretend to be a useful platform for discussions of far-reaching issues like AI if governments do not believe that it can deliver on its core, UN Charter-defined purpose of maintaining peace and security.
The crises of the last twelve months have also offered reminders of the extent to which the UN still offers a necessary if imperfect scaffolding for international cooperation. The Trump administration has grudgingly turned to the Security Council to endorse its conflict management efforts in Haiti and Gaza. Faced with the fallout of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, such as closure of the Strait of Hormuz, governments around the world have stressed the importance of international legal principles including the prohibition of aggressive war, rules protecting civilians and civilian objects in conflict, and freedom of navigation. Though the UN has had a vanishingly small voice in diplomacy aimed at ending the Middle East war, both U.S. and Iranian officials have acknowledged that the Security Council should play some role – if only a ministerial one – in any peace deal.
The UN ... remains best positioned to deliver humanitarian aid, mount peace operations and manage protracted crises that few other actors ... can handle.
These are small consolations, but at a moment in which the U.S. and Russia are learning the limits of hard power in the Middle East and Ukraine, there is still space to reiterate the case for diplomacy, cooperation and respect for law. The next UN Secretary-General can make it. While it is foolish to expect a single administrator, however senior, to save the world, many small and midsize UN member states, as well as many major-power officials, are ready to heed a call to reinforce the lapsing international legal order. The UN also remains best positioned to deliver humanitarian aid, mount peace operations and manage protracted crises that few other actors – including the flailing U.S.-backed Board of Peace – can handle.
It is possible that new leadership at the UN can give the organisation as a whole, and its peace and security pillar in particular, a new strategic direction. But amid deadly violence, regional rifts and institutional headaches, it is a near certainty that UN crisis management will continue to involve a great deal of firefighting and muddling through. This briefing, based on Crisis Group’s research at the UN and in the countries concerned, offers a guide to some of the most urgent issues.
II.
The Year in Review: Trends in UN Diplomacy
The UN spent much of the past year adapting to a more assertive and transactional U.S. administration. Alongside long-running crises in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, the latest U.S.-Israeli war with Iran placed additional strain on Council diplomacy and the UN-backed international order.1 Meanwhile, the UN’s multi-year liquidity crisis worsened, compounded by the U.S. aid cuts, disrupting operations at headquarters in New York and in the field. Steep reductions in voluntary contributions to UN humanitarian agencies forced the organisation to make difficult choices with its assistance, leaving many civilians affected by armed conflict with little support. Debates over the UN’s future simmered as member states began their search for the next Secretary-General. A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the organisation was no longer in shock but adjusting to a new normal.
A.
Crisis Management and UN Diplomacy
1.
The Security Council
A year ago, Crisis Group observed that U.S. diplomacy at the Security Council under the newly installed Trump administration had lacked a clear direction.2 The arrival of U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz in New York on the eve of the 2025 UN General Assembly marked the beginning of a more purposeful, and often determined, U.S. approach in the Council. Together with Panama, the U.S. secured Council authorisation for a new Gang Suppression Force for Haiti shortly after Waltz’s arrival, along with a UN logistics office to defray some of the Force’s costs (see Section III.4).3 Less than two months later, the Trump administration – backed by its regional partners and Palestine – persuaded the Council to endorse its ceasefire plan for Gaza and establish the vaguely defined Board of Peace.4 In both cases, the Council agreed to arrangements that concentrated decision-making authority in Washington and minimised the UN’s political and operational roles.
With UN diplomacy on the war in Gaza lowered to a simmer (see Section III.3), the U.S.-Iran conflict became the Council’s defining crisis of the past year. Major-power tensions over Iran were already high at the UN prior to the outbreak of hostilities at the end of February. After the breakdown of nuclear diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran in 2025 and the twelve-day campaign launched by Israel (and joined by the U.S.) against Iran in June, France, Germany and the UK – three of the participants in the 2015 nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – decided to reimpose “snapback” sanctions on Tehran that were otherwise set to expire that October.5 Beijing and Moscow rejected the legality of the reimposed UN sanctions, and in protest, they have obstructed business in all of the Council’s sanctions committees and thematic working groups since 2026 began.6
Tensions in the Council gradually escalated after the U.S. and Israel once again attacked Iran on 28 February.
Tensions in the Council gradually escalated after the U.S. and Israel once again attacked Iran on 28 February. China and Russia sharply criticised the two states during the Council’s first emergency meeting on the war. But even so they allowed passage of a Bahrain-led resolution condemning Iran’s retaliatory fire at its Gulf Arab neighbours days later, abstaining instead of vetoing it. Their posture suggested that preserving relations with the Gulf states was a higher priority than blocking a one-sided resolution that had no teeth.7
Their stances gradually hardened, however, as Washington pressed the Security Council to consider more coercive measures against Tehran. In early April, the Gulf states and the U.S. tabled a resolution for the Council to endorse a vaguely defined multinational naval coalition that would be tasked with reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Moscow and Beijing vetoed the text despite intense lobbying by Gulf capitals, arguing that the resolution would have given the U.S. open-ended authorisation to escalate its campaign.8 Weeks later, the U.S. and Gulf states drafted another resolution to demand that Iran open and demine the strait, while threatening sanctions for non-compliance. Despite finding over 138 co-sponsors, the U.S. and Bahrain did not submit the text for a vote, as they could not secure the support of Russia and China. Council diplomacy on the file has since stalled.
Complex and sometimes volatile relations among the U.S., China, and Russia continue to shape the boundaries of Council diplomacy beyond the Gulf. After the reversal of U.S. Ukraine policy in early 2025, when the Trump administration stopped sending arms to Kyiv to resist Russia’s all-out invasion, Moscow may have expected Washington to press the Ukrainian government to make concessions in negotiations to end the fighting. Instead, U.S. statements in the Security Council have criticised Russia’s full-scale invasion and called on the Kremlin to agree to an immediate ceasefire.9 More often than not, U.S. and Russian diplomats have sparred over UN responses to crises in the Middle East and Africa.
By contrast, Washington and Beijing have shown willingness to strike occasional deals in the Security Council. Though they frequently clash, recent Council action has depended on a degree of cooperation between these geopolitical rivals. In September 2025, the U.S. agreed to pay nearly $680 million to the UN peacekeeping budget and drop its objections to China becoming penholder on the Council’s Afghanistan file in exchange for Beijing’s support for the Gang Suppression Force in Haiti.10 U.S. diplomats also convinced their Chinese counterparts to support the delisting of Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab from the UN counter-terrorism sanctions list despite Beijing’s reservations.11 More recently, China and the U.S. collaborated to streamline the mandate of the UN political office in Afghanistan and approved each other’s candidates for leadership posts in UN missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
Other Council members have found it harder to haggle with – much less criticise – the Trump administration’s adventurism. For the UK, France and many of the Council’s ten elected members, the importance of preserving bilateral relations with Washington has often quashed the temptation to toss rhetorical barbs at their U.S. counterparts. The repressed anger was most evident during the Council’s first meeting in January, an emergency session called shortly after the U.S. abducted former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, when many diplomats stopped short of censuring the Trump administration by name or condemning its action, though many took the view that the raid contravened international law.12 Less than two months later, a majority of Council members only obliquely chastised the U.S. and Israel for their strikes on Iran, though many again saw the bombing as contravening the international legal order.13 U.S. and French diplomats had a public spat at the end of July following the General Assembly’s re-election of Volker Türk as UN human rights commissioner, but the animosity has not lingered.14
London and Paris have tended to lobby Washington behind the scenes when they disagreed with the U.S. in Council debates. They avoided a showdown in the Council on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out aggression against Ukraine in February, in contrast to a major row over a U.S. resolution calling for a rapid peace deal the year before, though U.S. and European diplomats still wrangled briefly over a General Assembly resolution in support of Ukraine.15
The elected members’ divergent interests have also played a prominent role in shaping Council dynamics.
The elected members’ divergent interests have also played a prominent role in shaping Council dynamics. Unusually, several elected members have found themselves directly implicated in issues before the Council in 2026 to date. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Somalia sought to preserve ties with the U.S. while influencing Council discussions on conflicts in their own countries.16 Denmark and Panama, meanwhile, have had to contend with Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and seize the Panama Canal, even as they maintained working relations with U.S. diplomats in New York. Bahrain assumed a more prominent role following Iran’s attacks on Gulf states, in close coordination with Washington. Colombia (under President Gustavo Petro, now out of office) and Pakistan, by contrast, have taken more critical positions on U.S. military actions. Whereas previous cohorts of elected members had found common ground in pressing Washington for a ceasefire in Gaza, the present elected ten are less unified in how to conduct diplomacy with Washington.
As for UN peace operations, where Washington sees clear strategic interests at stake, such as in the DRC and South Sudan, it has been willing to preserve UN missions and, at times, moderate its normally reflexive opposition to human rights, gender and climate-related activities – including where it has been stubborn in other mandate negotiations in the Security Council and General Assembly. More often, the U.S. has sought to scale back UN operations, claiming concerns about their effectiveness and costs. Over the past year, it has pressed the Council to narrow the mandates of UN missions in Abyei (a disputed territory on the border between Sudan and South Sudan), the Central African Republic (see Section III.5), Colombia, Kosovo and Western Sahara, while supporting the closure of the UN mission in Yemen’s port city of Hodeida.17 It has also signalled its intention to terminate the mandate of the UN Support Office in Somalia, which provides logistical support to the African Union troops fighting Al-Shabaab, at the end of 2026.18
Despite U.S. scepticism, several Council members have mounted spirited defences of UN operations. During discussions to renew the mandate of the UN mission in South Sudan, European and African Council members succeeded in stopping the U.S. from deleting swathes of the UN peacekeeping operation’s mandate language on the political process and reducing the mission’s troop ceiling by several thousands. In late 2025, the Council’s three African members and Guyana (known as the A3 Plus coalition), together with China, Russia and Pakistan, were able to nix Washington’s proposal to predicate the renewal of the mandate for the UN peacekeeping force in Abyei on a series of harsh benchmarks.19 Denmark and Pakistan (which work together in 2026 as an informal “peacekeeping duo”) negotiated intensely with U.S. counterparts to secure support for a thematic resolution to improve the UN’s accountability measures when its peacekeepers are harmed while serving in missions.20
These examples suggest that when members show unity and coordination – and when they are not confronting what Washington sees as its core interests – they can sometimes engage in effective diplomacy with the U.S.
2.
The Secretary-General
Secretary-General Guterres has spent much of his final year in office trying to forestall the UN’s urgent financial crisis (discussed below), complete reforms under the UN80 initiative that he launched in 2025 and defend the UN Charter in response to violations by two permanent members, Russia and the U.S.21 Neither Moscow nor Washington is eager to engage with him personally, curtailing his opportunities to pursue new diplomatic efforts. But the Secretary-General’s cautious outlook toward UN-led conflict management has left many diplomats and officials searching for a successor who will put the organisation’s work on peace and security front and centre.
The Secretary-General’s limited influence over the past year has not always been due to a lack of initiative. Shortly after the resumption of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, Guterres appealed for creating a humanitarian corridor to permit the passage of fuel and fertiliser through the Strait of Hormuz, established a UN mechanism modelled on the Black Sea Grain Initiative to facilitate these efforts and appointed a personal envoy to boost the UN’s diplomatic response.22 His focus on the war’s global consequences won plaudits but failed to have meaningful impact, as neither the Gulf states nor the U.S. showed serious interest in reopening the strait, except in full and without condition. The initiative has faded from memory even as the war has reignited and traffic through the waterway remains constrained.23
Elsewhere, Guterres has deployed his dwindling political capital selectively. At the end of July, he travelled to Cyprus to revive his long-running mediation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. He also made personal appeals to Sudan’s belligerents in support of a proposed humanitarian ceasefire in Darfur. The Secretary-General continued to press for Security Council reform, including at a high-level summit convened by France and Kenya in May, and in August he released a long-awaited review of UN peace operations mandated by the 2024 Pact for the Future (see Section III.9).24 Yet meaningful progress on these and other such priorities has eluded him.
B.
UN Reform
The UN’s financial outlook has deteriorated sharply over the past year, largely due to Washington’s failure to pay its fair share. Since President Trump returned to office, the U.S. has ponied up only a portion of the nearly $4 billion in dues it owes the organisation.25 U.S. officials have openly stated their intention to place the UN on a starvation diet and withdrawn from several UN bodies.26 Yet, to the relief of many diplomats and UN officials, Washington no longer appears intent on a wholesale retreat from the organisation. Since the end of 2025, it has provided nearly $5 billion in voluntary funding to Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNICEF and the World Food Programme, agencies that have embraced the administration’s reform agenda and retained bipartisan support in Congress. While these contributions have been critical in sustaining key UN operations, they remain well below Washington’s historical level of support and are heavily earmarked to align with U.S. priorities.27
Source: UN OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service / CRISIS GROUP
Though Washington has shown interest in working with UN aid agencies, the Trump administration is still bent on paring down the organisation. The first wave of cuts prepared under the UN80 reform banner were severe: member states agreed to a nearly 15 per cent reduction in the UN Secretariat’s 2026 budget and a 19 per cent culling of UN staff.28 Humanitarian and development agencies that traditionally rely on voluntary contributions were dealt harsher blows, even as many attempted to narrow their aid appeals (see figure below).29 Diplomats and UN officials alike are now coming to grips with the real-world consequences of a smaller UN, and it is likely to shrink further.30 Washington and Beijing will almost certainly propose additional trimming to the Secretariat during the next round of budget negotiations in December.31
Funding to OCHA for Prominent Conflict-affected Countries (USD, 2024-2025)
Myanmar received an additional $208 million in 2025 in a flash appeal to respond to the country’s earthquake in March 2025. Source: Data from UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Financial Tracking Services, last accessed 10 August 2026.
While the UN imposed a raft of cost-cutting measures, reforms pursued through other strands of the UN80 process are likely to take longer to bear fruit. After initial hesitation, member states agreed to review the organisation’s mandating practices.32 In March, the General Assembly approved changes to how new UN mandates are created and fulfilled but sidestepped the more politically sensitive task of streamlining its existing portfolio of over 40,000 mandates for everything from sustainable development to disaster risk reduction. Diplomats have also welcomed the Secretary-General’s willingness to propose structural reforms to the UN system but have baulked at specific proposals to merge various UN agencies (see Section III.8), often due to a mix of national interests (which could involve political or financial ties to a specific office) and principled concerns that the changes could weaken the UN’s work in these areas.33 The General Assembly is unlikely to approve many more of Guterres’ proposals before the end of his term.
A separate liquidity crisis has jeopardised the UN’s solvency for much of the past year. Again, much of the responsibility rests with the U.S., which is the UN’s largest funder, and which over the past decade has increased the percentage of its obligatory dues that it has either delayed or withheld entirely from the organisation’s coffers.34 UN peacekeeping operations have been among the hardest hit by the organisation’s cash crunch. In October 2025, the Secretary-General instructed all peacekeeping missions to cut their budgets by at least 15 per cent, resulting in the repatriation of nearly 13,000 uniformed and civilian personnel (see figure below).35 The effects have been particularly severe in South Sudan, the DRC and the Central African Republic, where UN missions have scaled back patrols, closed bases and suspended local dialogue initiatives, among other activities.36
Source: “Peacekeeping – Troop and Police Contributors”, UN, 10 August 2026 / CRISIS GROUP
In June, member states agreed to temporarily ease the UN’s liquidity crisis by amending what the Secretary-General called a “Kafka-esque” 75-year-old administrative rule that required the organisation to return unspent funds from the budget to UN members as credits, regardless of whether the organisation had in fact ever collected the money.37 This little-noticed rule gained prominence only in recent years, as U.S. arrears ballooned.38 While the rule change offered a short-term reprieve for an organisation that had been concerned about meeting payroll ahead of the General Assembly’s High-Level Week in late September, it is unlikely to reverse many of the most severe contingency measures already put in place.
C.
The Search for a New Secretary-General
The process of choosing Guterres’ successor, which began in November 2025, is approaching a crescendo. Members of the Security Council held their first straw poll at the end of July, and they will continue to take these informal soundings until one candidate receives at least nine votes from the fifteen-member body with no objection from any of the five permanent members.
Eight candidates are in the running. They are: Ivonne A-Baki (former Ecuadorian ambassador to France and the U.S.), Michelle Bachelet (former president of Chile and head of UN Women), María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (former foreign minister of Ecuador and president of the 73rd General Assembly), Rafael Grossi (director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Rebeca Grynspan (former second vice president of Costa Rica and head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development), Olara Otunnu (former Ugandan foreign minister and former UN representative for children and armed conflict), Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett (Guyana’s permanent representative to the UN) and Macky Sall (former president of Senegal).39 Rumours abound of others weighing entering the race, and many diplomats lament that their preferences may well be in vain since those of the five permanent members will be decisive in the race’s outcome.40
Unofficial Results from UN Security Council Straw Polls
Source: “UN Security Council straw polls”, 1 for 8 Billion / CRISIS GROUP
UN member states have various priorities in assessing the candidates. Many are keen to restore the organisation’s credibility as a peacemaker, as Crisis Group noted in April.41 Reflecting this concern, nearly all candidates identified conflict prevention and the UN’s role in war and peace as central priorities in their vision statements, General Assembly hearings and public debates, though they differed as to how these goals should be pursued.42 Diplomats have also urged candidates to articulate their priorities for UN-led development assistance, as the next Secretary-General will need to outline a framework to succeed the Sustainable Development Goals that expire in 2030.
Separately, calls for the Security Council to select the organisation’s first woman Secretary-General continue to resonate. Six of the eight candidates in 2026 are women, compared with only ten of the previous 48 formally declared candidates in the UN’s 80-year history.43 But views differ among permanent members about the importance of choosing a woman to head the UN. On one hand, China’s ambassador to the UN declared that Beijing would be “very happy to see” the UN appoint its first woman to the top job.44 On the other hand, many speculate that the U.S., toeing the Trump administration’s line on “gender ideology” and “discriminatory equity ideology”, would object to any woman candidate. U.S. sources, for their part, suggest that the U.S. will not oppose any aspirant just because she is a woman.45
In theory, it is Latin America’s turn ..., but the candidacies of Africans Sall and Otunnu produced debate about how strictly states should adhere to the practice.
The UN also has an informal convention of rotating the Secretary-General position among geographic regions, which is sometimes honoured in the breach (Guterres was selected though the convention would have favoured a candidate from Eastern Europe), that may come into play this time. In theory, it is Latin America’s turn (with Latin America understood to encompass the Caribbean), but the candidacies of Africans Sall and Otunnu produced debate about how strictly states should adhere to the practice.46 It is unclear whether the permanent members will stick to convention when making the selection, but they are under political pressure to choose someone from Latin America.
Lastly, the deliberations have aggravated longstanding rifts between the Security Council’s five veto-wielding powers and the rest of the UN’s membership over who gets to choose the next Secretary-General. Though the permanent members often clash when sitting in the Security Council, they have uniformly rejected reforms that could dilute their influence over the selection process.47 Their agreement to include Otunnu in the Security Council’s 30 July straw poll before he could participate in a husting organised by the General Assembly provoked diplomatic blowback from advocates pushing for a fair and transparent process, including from the president of the General Assembly herself.48 A-Baki’s entry four days before the second straw poll heightened anxieties that new candidates could parachute into the race shortly before a vote to avoid prolonged public scrutiny.49 How the Council’s permanent members balance their prerogatives over the push for transparency could affect the next Secretary-General’s political credibility before she or he assumes the office.
III.
Ten Challenges for the UN
Even as the UN is mired in interlocking difficulties, the organisation can still contribute to conflict resolution and crisis management in many domains. The following list features countries and issue areas where the UN confronts either major challenges or opportunities in the year ahead. It is intended to demonstrate the myriad factors affecting how the UN and its member states respond to conflicts and emergencies around the world. The list is not exhaustive, however, and it excludes cases that Crisis Group has highlighted elsewhere or in years past, such as Afghanistan, the DRC, South Sudan, Ukraine and others.
1. Continuing UN engagement in southern Lebanon
In August 2025, the U.S. and Israel strong-armed the Security Council into shutting down the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) – first established in 1978 and significantly upgraded by Resolution 1701 twenty years ago – by the end of 2026 (though the phased withdrawal of troops will extend considerably past 31 December).50 While questions about southern Lebanon have long vexed the Council, the latest conflagration between Israel and Hizbollah raises the stakes even higher.51 The danger is now that the UN will terminate its 48-year blue helmet operation without clarity on what kind of international presence, if any, might follow.
Much will now depend on the trajectory of U.S.-backed negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, which to date have failed to produce a viable security arrangement. The two states signed a “framework agreement” on 26 June, under which the Lebanese army is to assert control of “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon, ensuring that Hizbollah no longer has a military footprint in these areas.52 Yet the scheme, which is meant to “serve as the mechanism for phased and verified (Israeli) redeployments”, has already run into trouble.53 Lebanon complains that Israel has kept attacking Lebanese territory, including with lethal airstrikes and the systematic destruction of villages, and authorised “pilot zones” only in areas that it never occupied. Israeli officials, for their part, make Hizbollah’s full disarmament a condition for the Israeli army’s withdrawal.54 Beirut officially outlawed Hizbollah’s military activities in March, but, in practice, it cannot risk trying to compel the group to disarm.55
Even if the terms of the deal were to be spelled out more precisely, the belligerents would almost certainly refuse to sign up to the underlying bargain. Hizbollah rejects the direct Israel-Lebanon negotiations outright, insisting that Lebanon entrust Iran, the group’s patron, with securing a full Israeli withdrawal as part of Tehran’s negotiations with Washington.56 Though Israel has participated in the trilateral talks with Lebanon and the U.S., it refuses to accept another arrangement like Resolution 1701, under which its troops withdrew from Lebanon after the 2006 war while Hizbollah remained under arms.
Debates about a future international presence will also be shaped by U.S. and Israeli scepticism. Israel has long questioned the value of UNIFIL in helping Lebanon constrain Hizbollah, and it has shown little appetite for a replacement that might obstruct its own military operations. The U.S. does not oppose an international mission per se, but it is wary of replicating a UNIFIL model that it deems ineffective.57 Washington has sidelined the monitoring mechanism attached to the November 2024 ceasefire, in which UNIFIL and France (the Council’s penholder on Lebanon) were represented. Instead, an annex of the June framework agreement provides for a U.S.-headed “military coordination group”, through which Israel and Lebanon will manage tasks that UNIFIL or a successor force might have helped tackle, including “deconfliction, verification and overall implementation”.58 Other Council members and Lebanon strongly favour retaining an international presence, having reluctantly agreed to UNIFIL’s termination at the end of 2026 to avoid a U.S. veto that would have abruptly ended the mission in August 2025.59
The framework agreement does not mention the UN or Security Council resolution 1701. The annex, however, proposes a future role for a “mutually agreed-upon third-party entity” to verify that non-state armed groups have been cleared from each “pilot zone”.60 To date, Israeli, Lebanese and U.S. negotiators have struggled to flesh out what such verification would entail, making it difficult for interested nations to commit troops to a mission that might prove dangerous. Yet even if the framework agreement eventually falls by the wayside, any other attempt to reach a deal that would link Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and cessation of airstrikes with an end to Hizbollah attacks on Israel and disarmament of the group would in all likelihood hinge on some sort of third-party verification.
International partners have begun debating options for a new multinational presence. In June, the Secretary-General proposed a follow-up UN mission involving both armed and unarmed troops.61 France and Italy have also announced plans to create a new multinational coalition in southern Lebanon as a successor to UNIFIL.62 In parallel, the European Union is weighing a separate mission comprising civilian and military personnel to advise and possibly train Lebanese forces – outside southern Lebanon – in addition to the €180 million it has already committed to support the Lebanese army.63
Any new multinational mission would have no choice but to work alongside the Lebanese-Israeli-U.S. security arrangement, even if that is not fully defined.
States wishing to participate in a mission would almost certainly demand Security Council authorisation prior to sending troops to southern Lebanon so as to guarantee their legal and political protection. Given U.S. veto power, Washington’s support on the Council remains indispensable, meaning that UN members cannot circumvent the trilateral mechanism championed by the Trump administration. Between now and the end of December, diplomats should monitor the evolution of security arrangements on the ground in southern Lebanon, while seeking to work out with Washington what kind of international deployment, if any, would be beneficial to Lebanon and its stability.
It is unlikely that any security arrangement, whether the June framework agreement and/or some future deal, will either fully disarm Hizbollah or completely dissuade Israel from conducting military operations in Lebanon. But withdrawing UNIFIL, with no immediate successor in place, could leave a vacuum that makes an already tense situation even more volatile. By inheriting UNIFIL’s most valuable functions – in particular, monitoring and on-the-ground deconfliction – a new multinational mission could set up a guardrail against fresh escalation. Ideally, that force would eventually assume other roles in bolstering a sustainable security arrangement for southern Lebanon that becomes durable enough to stand on its own feet.
2. Adapting the UN’s political strategy for Sudan
The UN continues to be on the margins of diplomacy aimed at halting Sudan’s devastating civil war. Secretary-General Guterres’ appointment of Pekka Haavisto as the new UN envoy in February has offered the organisation an opportunity to refresh its approach. Ramtane Lamamra – the UN’s previous diplomatic lead – struggled to find a bridge between the main warring parties, the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), or to coordinate the array of mediators working to resolve the conflict. The UN has had varying degrees of success in securing local deals over aid access, and it continues to prepare for a possible role in overseeing aspects of a mooted ceasefire.64 It is hard to see the UN leading efforts to stop the war, given the number of powerful foreign states backing the belligerents, but it should use the coming months to support other diplomatic tracks and raise global awareness of the urgent need to end the fighting.65
Nearly eighteen months ago, UN officials acknowledged that Sudan’s plight had become the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.66 Conditions have only deteriorated since then. An independent UN panel determined that mass killings, rapes and other atrocities committed by the RSF in October 2025 in El Fasher, Darfur – the city that hosted the headquarters of the former UN peacekeeping operation UNAMID – were “indicators of a genocidal path”.67 Diplomats and UN officials alike are sounding the alarm about similar risks in El-Obeid, North Kordofan.68 The two warring sides and their outside backers still believe there is more to gain from fighting than from negotiations. As matters stand, the country is in effect partitioned between the army and the RSF.69
To date, political negotiations have yielded few results. Much of the diplomatic focus has fallen on the Quad, a platform involving the U.S. and the three Arab powers with the most sway over the conflict parties – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Its September 2025 roadmap, however, has won over neither belligerent, while Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, at loggerheads in conflict settings from Libya to Yemen, are doubling down on backing the army and RSF, respectively, stymying agreement within the Quad about what to do.70 In parallel, the UN is working alongside the African Union (AU), the EU, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a Horn of Africa body, and the Arab League to support Sudanese-led civilian political dialogues as part of a nascent diplomatic track called the Quintet; these mediators convened a meeting in Berlin in April and another in Addis Ababa two months later.71 Sudanese participants cannot agree on how to move forward with the talks, however.
Having completed an initial tour of Sudan and the region, Haavisto can begin revising the UN’s diplomatic strategy.72 He will need to reassure all parties that the UN will be an independent, impartial counterpart, even though the army-led government is the legally recognised one in New York. Haavisto needs to build rapport with others across Sudan’s fragmented political spectrum, including armed, political and civil players that are enlisted in the war, on one side or the other, or are non-aligned, as well as the various African, Arab and other countries directly involved in the conflict in one way or another. He will also need to reach out to the RSF, even if its deeds have earned it widespread and deserved condemnation. Lamamra struggled to maintain this balance, with critics seeing him as weighting his engagements too heavily toward the army-led authorities and its allies.73 Haavisto now has a chance for a reset.
Haavisto should also strengthen the UN’s contributions within the Quintet. He could begin by stepping up outreach to various civilian groups between official Quintet meetings, with a view to mending fences between them. He could also help institute more consistent interactions between the Quintet and the army-led government, which has so far proven reluctant to get involved with a political process that is independent of its authority and takes place outside the country.74 The army is instead pursuing its own “national dialogue” inside Sudan, which few of its political or armed opponents look likely to join.
Behind the scenes, the UN should ... search for opportunities to bolster and connect the two diplomatic coalitions driving peace efforts [in Sudan].
Behind the scenes, the UN should also search for opportunities to bolster and connect the two diplomatic coalitions driving peace efforts, neither of which appears to have momentum at present. One way forward would be for Haavisto to work closely with counterparts to quietly float proposals for how Sudan could be governed whenever the main belligerents and their outside patrons summon the political will to seek an end to the war. Haavisto could help communicate these proposals to Quad and Quintet members, the two warring parties, and Sudan’s other main political movements and figures. Though it is hard to imagine a breakthrough any time soon given the entrenched positions on both sides, the UN should separately continue planning for a possible role in backing humanitarian access and ceasefire arrangements between the army and RSF should regional support for peace efforts eventually rise.75
Lastly, the UN can redouble its efforts to draw world attention to Sudan’s war and humanitarian disaster, if nothing else to caution states about possible spillover. The next Secretary-General should make this task a priority – including by paying a solidarity visit to refugee camps in countries neighbouring Sudan – and also warn of the mounting risks to states in the Horn and Red Sea regions should the conflict fester.76 The UN’s new leader should ensure that Haavisto and other UN envoys covering the Horn, central Africa and the Middle East remain in close contact in the hope of identifying opportunities to break the diplomatic deadlock among states in these areas.
3. Encouraging a role for the General Assembly in Gaza’s ceasefire
Having repeatedly called for a ceasefire to halt Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza from 2023-2025, the General Assembly has devoted little energy to discussing whether the mechanisms created to uphold it are working. The Security Council’s November 2025 endorsement of the Trump administration’s ceasefire plan in Resolution 2803 – including its highly unusual authorisation of a Trump-chaired Board of Peace to serve as Gaza’s transitional administration – has erected a de-facto firewall between the UN and the diplomatic apparatus overseeing the Palestinian enclave’s future, at least until the Board’s UN mandate expires at the end of 2027.77
With Gaza’s reconstruction at a virtual standstill and Israel tightening its grip on the territory, UN member states risk sitting idle as the U.S.-dominated Board veers further off course.78 The Board’s backtracking on the terms of its own fifteen-point roadmap – which features a scheme for decommissioning Hamas’s weapons agreed to by Palestinian factions but opposed by Israel – is just one of many troubling developments. The Security Council is, unfortunately, unlikely to consider corrective action until the Board mandate’s 2027 sunset. In the interim, member states should at a minimum use the General Assembly to assess the Board’s performance and to catalyse diplomatic pressure for putting Gaza on track toward recovery and Palestinian statehood.
The General Assembly was the hub of UN diplomatic activity on Gaza throughout the war, as both President Joe Biden and President Trump blocked the Security Council from taking meaningful action. UN members convened the Assembly’s Emergency Special Session on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (its dedicated format for discussing the broader conflict) on eight separate occasions, and they debated five failed Security Council resolutions.79 Member states adopted five major General Assembly decisions on various aspects of the conflict, including the New York Declaration of September 2025, which bolstered recognition of Palestinian statehood.80 Though these measures had limited impact on the ground, they signalled growing international opposition to the war’s trajectory.
The Security Council’s endorsement of Trump’s ceasefire plan upended these dynamics. By agreeing to the U.S.-drafted resolution (unenthusiastically supported by regional mediators and the State of Palestine), they in effect outsourced all responsibility for Gaza’s recovery and governance to the Board of Peace.81 Since then, the UN has been further isolated from diplomacy on Gaza. It neither participates in any of the Board’s structures nor has it been asked to help stand up the International Stabilisation Force envisaged by the Council-approved Trump plan.82 The Board’s High Representative Nickolay Mladenov (a former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process) has briefed the Council and submitted a report (as required by Resolution 2803), but the General Assembly has discussed the situation only once – indirectly – since November 2025. No member state has asked to reconvene the Emergency Special Session despite worsening conditions under the tenuous truce.83
The inattention seems particularly negligent given that Gaza’s circumstances are diverging from not only Resolution 2803, but also the array of General Assembly resolutions and international legal orders about Palestine.84 The lack of tangible progress in nearly a year after reaching a purported ceasefire makes international actors complicit in a brutal status quo: Gaza’s people are in effect hostage to diplomatic forces outside their control. Unless something changes, they will remain under siege, subject to bombardment and denied a future until the Board of Peace decides that Hamas has met Israel’s demands. Washington would likely veto any Security Council action perceived to criticise Israel – which receives unconditional backing from the U.S. at the UN – or to cast doubt on the legitimacy and efficacy of Trump’s peace efforts. But that ought not to be a justification for inaction in the General Assembly or elsewhere.
UN members should use the General Assembly to challenge the Board of Peace’s unhelpful domination of the diplomatic space.
UN members should use the General Assembly to challenge the Board of Peace’s unhelpful domination of the diplomatic space. The next meeting of the Global Alliance for the Two-State Solution, scheduled for September, could kickstart that endeavour. Member states should also consider reconvening the General Assembly’s Tenth Emergency Special Session to continue these efforts beyond High-Level Week. In addition, members should use these forums to offer political backing to the Palestinian technocratic committee as a means of asserting Palestinian ownership of reconstruction. These platforms provide an opportunity to reaffirm the necessity of the UN-led aid distribution network in Gaza, which remains the most capable one in the strip. Members might also signal the costs they would impose on Israel (bilaterally or in regional blocs) if it continues to obstruct provisions of the ceasefire and prevent the Palestinian technocratic committee from working in Gaza.85
States should also consider tasking the Secretariat with preparing a report to evaluate follow-through on the New York Declaration, adopted a year ago, by the beginning of the 82nd General Assembly session in September 2027. The Declaration commits its signatories to a range of measures to end the war in Gaza, to facilitate a credible pathway toward Palestinian self-determination and to support a sovereign Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.86 Such a report could be useful as the Council considers whether to renew the Board of Peace’s mandate, which it must do by 31 December 2027. Member states could ask the Secretary-General to focus on whether the Board is advancing commitments to reduce civilian suffering, rehabilitate Gaza and preserve a viable political horizon – and whether it is acting consistent with Security Council, General Assembly and International Court of Justice interventions on these matters.
While UN members cannot circumvent the deeply flawed ceasefire plan altogether, they can work through the world body to keep a global spotlight on Gaza. It is past time for the General Assembly to recover a sense of urgency for mobilising diplomatic pressure in support of the ceasefire and keeping space open for the Palestinians to pursue self-determination.
4. Reinforcing security and justice support to Haiti
International efforts to help restore security in Haiti have reached a decisive phase. The Gang Suppression Force (GSF), a multilateral mission authorised by the Security Council in September 2025 and backed with UN logistical support, landed in Haiti in June.87 Expected to be at full strength by the end of the year, the force faces the daunting task of confronting armed gangs that have held much of the country hostage for years.88 International efforts to staff, fund and equip the GSF are essential to ending this painful chapter in Haiti’s history. But even if this force puts gangs on the back foot, it will only be the start of a far longer campaign to bring peace to the country. Haiti’s government and international partners should work closely with the UN to build exit ramps for individuals willing to abandon the gangs and reinforce new judicial bodies to investigate and prosecute gang crimes.
The GSF’s close working relationship with the UN could help it avoid the problems that plagued its predecessor, the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support mission. A new UN support office services the force’s logistics needs (ranging from supplying rations and fuel to covering its medical services and constructing bases) and channels monetary contributions its way.89 Reasonably predictable funding from the UN’s assessed budget has enabled eight countries to pledge enough troops to surpass the initial target of 5,500 personnel, though as of publication only around 1,200 troops are on the ground.90 A separate UN trust fund has nearly $226 million in voluntary donations, which have been promised to cover the wages of deployed personnel.91
Informal ties also reinforce the force’s partnership with the UN. The Standing Group of Partners, the ad hoc political body with the job of overseeing the mission, appointed UN peacekeeping veterans to the force’s highest ranking civilian and uniformed positions.92 These officials are coordinating with senior staff in BINUH, the UN political office in Haiti tasked with engaging Haitian counterparts on governance and human rights, and in the force’s logistics support office. The UN headquarters gave wide-ranging assistance to the force as it went about its technical preparations, including by helping prepare its concept of operations and carry out pre-deployment training.93
Difficulties will inevitably arise once the GSF begins going after the gangs in earnest. Civilians are at risk of becoming collateral damage once the mission launches offensives.94 Troop-contributing countries that have taken part in previous UN peacekeeping operations will need to ensure that the soldiers they send to Haiti are prepared for a hostile environment. The Standing Group of Partners and the Security Council should be vigilant in monitoring how the force polices its members’ conduct and metes out any necessary discipline, especially given the history of international personnel committing sexual abuses while serving in Haiti.95
Any gains will be short-lived if Haiti and its partners do not take steps to dismantle the criminal groups for good.
Once the force reaches full capacity, member states hope that it can quickly impose a modicum of security.96 But any gains will be short-lived if Haiti and its partners do not take steps to dismantle the criminal groups for good. Offering individuals the opportunity to leave the gangs safely, with support for new livelihoods through a program of disarmament, dismantlement and reintegration, will be critical for winding down these groups.97 Important steps have already been taken to this effect. First, in early 2026 Haitian authorities reactivated the National Commission for Disarmament, Dismantlement and Reintegration, which the UN has offered to support in a range of ways.98 Secondly, the Security Council revised BINUH’s mandate in January to include assisting the state in designing and running a program to find exit ramps for gang members.99
The UN is also providing technical support to newly established special judicial units, mandated to address complex corruption cases and serious human rights violations, which will also be indispensable to any long-term campaign to weaken the gangs. The hope is that these courts will be able to address the links between powerful actors and criminal activity that have long gone unpunished. The government is working toward providing stronger security protection for the judges taking on these cases, as in the past many have recused themselves after being threatened.100
The focus of the Haitian authorities and their foreign counterparts, understandably, is on combating the gangs by force. But they should simultaneously lay the groundwork for dismantlement that is robust enough to ensure former members are not drawn back into the gangs’ orbit, whether by poverty or the weakness of local security forces. The UN should make sure these long-term objectives do not get lost in the push for tactical victories, particularly because they will require considerably more funding than is now available.101 For that reason, donor countries should not just fund the multinational force but also include both dismantlement projects and justice reform in their support to the country.102
5. Preserving UN operations in the Central African Republic
UN peacekeepers have been at the forefront of international efforts to protect civilians and back peace initiatives in the Central African Republic (CAR) since first being dispatched to the country in 2014. The U.S. and China, two of the Council’s permanent members, have suggested that the mission, known as MINUSCA, should now begin preparing to exit, citing the progress the country has made toward stability. (Their own interest is to lower the cost of UN peacekeeping.) Elections held in late December 2025 without a major disruption may bolster their case.103 But when renewing MINUSCA’s mandate in November, diplomats should ensure that the mission retains sufficient capacity to protect civilians and deter armed groups in the country’s troubled east, since it is the only entity that can provide a buffer against worsening instability in that region.
MINUSCA continues to fill gaps that the Central African authorities cannot plug. A guarantor of the 2019 peace agreement, the UN mission oversees local peace dialogues and disarmament programs across the country.104 Though CAR’s allies – Rwanda and Russian paramilitaries from the Wagner Group – helped Bangui regain control of towns across the country after a 2021 rebel offensive, MINUSCA is the only external partner tasked with protecting civilians from violence. In many areas outside the capital Bangui, local institutions depend on the mission to build and repair government offices, supply logistical assistance and offer physical protection.
The threat of insurgency in CAR is much lower than it was a few years ago, but pockets of insecurity persist along the country’s eastern borders.105 Fighters from the ex-Séléka rebel coalition, which seized power in 2013 and plunged the country into civil war, as well as allied militias are active in the north east, most recently attacking CAR state forces and UN peacekeepers on 30 June in Am-Dafock, on the Sudan border.106 Separately, the Zandé self-defence militia based in Haut-Mbomou prefecture, in the south east, continue to assail civilians and state forces.107
UN peacekeepers are often the only force capable of deterring or responding to urgent threats [in the Central African Republic].
Intercommunal violence, opportunistic crime and conflicts between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers remain prevalent nationwide.108 Women and girls are vulnerable to rape in many places as a result. Spillover from Sudan’s civil war exacerbates these risks: Central African rebels have become war entrepreneurs, providing fighters for both the RSF and the Sudanese army in exchange for money, while over 40,000 Sudanese refugees have fled into north-eastern CAR. UN peacekeepers are often the only force capable of deterring or responding to urgent threats.
These developments should give Council members pause when they are considering a drawdown for MINUSCA. In November 2025, the U.S. pushed the Council to task the mission with charting an exit strategy ahead of the mandate renewal, owing in part to their assessment of CAR’s improved conditions and their scepticism about renewing UN operations indefinitely.109 U.S. and Chinese diplomats have found common cause in lobbying for reductions to the mission’s budget.110 Separately, the UN’s liquidity crisis has already forced the mission to repatriate nearly 4,000 troops (more than one quarter of the total) and close 21 operating bases that allowed MINUSCA to intervene in a range of conflict-affected areas outside Bangui.111
Though the UN’s financial crisis will make it hard to restore MINUSCA to its mandated strength, Council members should make sure that debates about the mission’s long-term future do not undermine its ability to consolidate the country’s security gains in the short term. In line with the November 2025 resolution, the Central African government and MINUSCA have begun work on a transition plan. A confidential report envisages MINUSCA shifting to a role of strategic support, with some state authority tasks transferable in the short and medium term, while others (notably protection of civilians) remain non-transferable. It also highlights major budgetary challenges Bangui faces in meeting these responsibilities.
Diplomats should use the mandate renewal to draw an explicit link between rising insecurity on CAR’s eastern borders, making sure that the mission retains sufficient capacity to conduct operations in that part of the country. They should also encourage MINUSCA to make non-military efforts to prevent further escalation through local political dialogues followed by various forms of disarmament. Council members should ensure that MINUSCA’s leadership is working closely with UN envoys in the Horn of Africa to better anticipate and react to any spillover from Sudan’s war.
All Security Council members acknowledge MINUSCA’s importance in helping CAR achieve a degree of stability through protecting civilians, restoring public services and supporting political dialogue, even if they continue to debate when and how those parts of its work should be whittled down. For the moment, the Council should help CAR consolidate gains rather than push for a hasty downsizing that would generate risks in a country where the UN has already invested heavily for the past decade.
6. Rallying around the International Criminal Court
The Trump administration’s “sweeping campaign” to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced in July, is the latest salvo in its assault upon the international order.112 It is not the first time that the U.S. has openly clashed with the ICC or sanctioned its personnel.113 But its latest move to obstruct the Court’s work by sanctioning its president and threatening its member state backers is a regrettable escalation that risks setting a precedent for U.S. efforts to bend other parts of the multilateral system to its will. A number of the UN’s most powerful member states (including the U.S., Russia and China) never joined the Court and generally resist its efforts in situations where they have deemed interests, member states that do back the court can chart their own course. Those that have not already done so should make clear their continued support for a strong, independent ICC, noting its role as the only permanent tribunal mandated to pursue individual accountability for international crimes, including those linked to conflict.
The current schism between the U.S. and the ICC is the latest episode in what has been a rollercoaster relationship.114 The U.S. never ratified the Rome Statute – the treaty establishing the ICC – even though it played a central role in negotiating the text and signed the document. Washington has long worried that the Court would prosecute U.S. servicemembers for their conduct abroad. In the early years of the Court, the George W. Bush administration purported to “un-sign” the treaty and pressured ICC member states to pledge they would not hand over U.S. personnel to the Court. Though the U.S. later cooperated closely with the ICC in some matters, the prosecutor’s decision in 2017 to investigate the conduct of international forces deployed to Afghanistan prompted the first Trump White House to place certain Court officers under sanctions.115 The Biden administration lifted those, several months before the ICC prosecutor announced that he would “deprioritise” work in Afghanistan that was unrelated to the Taliban.116
For a brief moment, even some of the ICC’s staunchest critics in the U.S. Congress lined up behind its work on Russia’s war in Ukraine, applauding its indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others.117 But relations soured again when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in late 2024 and have only gotten worse since the second Trump administration came into office.118 The latter imposed a fresh wave of sanctions on several Court officials in February 2025.119 Trump has allowed that this new campaign is in part an effort to defend his political allies in Israel.120
Concerns about the Court’s future come during a period when respect for legal restraints on the use of force is wilting.121 Many states are demonstrating brazen disregard for international humanitarian law.122 The Court has struggled to counter this trend. Even with 125 member states, its leverage is limited, particularly when big non-member state powers are implicated in alleged crimes that fall under its jurisdiction. The Security Council, which has the authority to refer cases to the ICC, has done so only twice – in Darfur (2005) and Libya (2o11) – a reflection of its divided geopolitical backing. Some Court watchers point to its institutional failings, including lengthy procedures and a number of prominent failed prosecutions. Sexual abuse allegations against former prosecutor Karim Khan (which he has denied) led to his dismissal from office at the end of July and dented the Court’s legitimacy.123 But there are limits to what the ICC can achieve without strong political backing, as it depends on member states and the Security Council to enforce its judgments.124
Unfortunately, Washington’s campaign has resonated with other states who are now looking to abandon their commitments under the Rome Statute. At the end of June, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger formally initiated their withdrawal from the ICC, calling it an “instrument of neocolonial oppression in the hands of imperialism”.125 Whatever the ideological justification, leaving the Court also has the practical benefit of shielding these regimes and their Russian partners from international accountability for acts committed once withdrawal becomes effective (which takes place after a year’s delay). Even though the three states were motivated primarily by parochial interests, the Trump campaign can only have made it politically easier for them to make this move.126
Other states have been more clearly motivated by desire to improve relations with Washington. Though the ICC has been investigating the situation in Venezuela since 2018, Caracas only submitted its withdrawal papers to the UN in July, after the U.S. announced its campaign. The same month, Chad also announced its withdrawal from the ICC, citing bias against Africa and the Court’s limited effectiveness. With little risk of domestic backlash, President Mahamat Déby may be seeking to bolster U.S. support for joint counter-terrorism operations in the Lake Chad basin and for Chadian troops deployed to the GSF in Haiti.127 Colombia’s new president looks to be mulling withdrawal from the Court as part of an effort to move closer to the U.S. and discredit his country’s own ICC-backed transitional justice court, which was created by a 2016 peace agreement with former rebel fighters.128
While the Court’s critics tend to disparage it as feckless, it serves an important function in reinforcing and applying international legal rules relating to mass violence.
While the Court’s critics tend to disparage it as feckless, it serves an important function in reinforcing and applying international legal rules relating to mass violence. It keeps the prospect of accountability on the table even in situations where the ability to enforce its decisions is limited.129 Its diminution is likely to erode the force of international humanitarian law yet further.
The Court’s member states should work together to limit the damage. While they may not be the world’s most powerful, there is strength in their numbers. They should encourage states that are vulnerable to U.S. pressure to stay the course and do what they can to buttress the Court’s resiliency. At a practical level, countries could offer basic banking services to ICC officials who have been targeted by U.S. sanctions. Member states should also use their negotiations of the annual General Assembly resolution on the ICC, scheduled to take place between October and November, to drum up public support for its work and galvanise pushback against the U.S. attack on this pillar of the international justice architecture.
7. Recalibrating UN operations in Myanmar
Myanmar’s installation of a nominally civilian administration in April, following elections stage-managed by the military four months earlier, has created a dilemma for the UN. The elections have not restored state authority or legitimacy, and Naypyitaw does not have a credible strategy for ending the country’s armed conflict, either through negotiation or military victory.130 Humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate as fighting, economic decline and fear of conscription grip the country.131 Even so, more of Myanmar’s regional neighbours are giving the new administration de facto recognition, with Min Aung Hlaing – the coup leader who is now president – recently visiting India, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Beijing maintains a firm position limiting discussion of Myanmar at the UN, while Secretary-General Guterres has shown little willingness to invest political capital in the issue. Absent new diplomatic momentum in the near term, UN officials will need to calibrate engagement carefully to reduce harm, sustain livelihoods and support development without conferring legitimacy on abusive forms of rule.
Much of this work will fall to the new UN leadership in Yangon. In October 2025, Guterres appointed veteran official Gwyn Lewis as resident and humanitarian coordinator ad interim, ending the ineffective practice of rotating the position among agency heads.132 The resident coordinator will need to shape the UN’s engagement with the new administration while ensuring the organisation can continue delivering essential humanitarian and development assistance. Just as importantly, the office should provide clear strategic direction to the whole UN country team so that agencies operate according to a consistent approach within current political constraints.
UN officials will also need to manage relations with Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups. Aid agencies already deliver assistance in parts of the country outside state control, working through local partners despite the absence of formal agreements with Naypyitaw. As the devastating March 2025 earthquake showed, the UN remains one of the few organisations capable of delivering international aid at scale to civilians in much of the country, including areas outside government control.133 The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have become the largest and most consistent providers of assistance to Myanmar’s people, but they rightly cannot channel funds through a government they do not recognise. Their support is therefore delivered off-budget – outside state systems – and depends on UN agencies for fiduciary oversight and distribution. The resident coordinator will need to mind the political sensitivities of the UN role in providing this support, as well as the differing approaches of neighbouring states – including Bangladesh, China, India and Thailand – toward informal cross-border assistance.134
The next Secretary-General will have an opportunity to reset the UN’s overall strategy [in Myanmar] and provide stronger political backing for the envoy.
The same balancing act applies to the UN’s diplomatic track. Special Envoy Julie Bishop, who has struggled to translate her high-level regional access into meaningful entry points for UN diplomacy, has burned most of her bridges with Myanmar’s leaders by taking an increasingly strident public line – for example, returning from Naypyitaw to tell UN member states in June that the election was designed to entrench military rule and that Min Aung Hlaing’s proposed 100-day peace plan inspires no confidence.135 The next Secretary-General will have an opportunity to reset the UN’s overall strategy and provide stronger political backing for the envoy.136
An important test will come at the UN General Assembly. Since the 2021 coup, China and the U.S. have informally maintained the status quo by leaving in place the incumbent ambassador, Kyaw Moe Tun, who was appointed by the elected government and later aligned himself with the parallel National Unity Government. Naypyitaw is expected to press its case to have its nominee recognised as Myanmar’s permanent representative when the Credentials Committee meets in November. China committed in a 17 June statement with Min Aung Hlaing in Beijing to support Myanmar’s “full, equal and constructive participation” at the UN, repeating this formula in the General Assembly two days later.137 It is unclear what diplomatic capital Beijing may expend to this end. A decision has been put off each year because the permanent members who sit on the Credentials Committee – China, the U.S. and Russia – have preferred the status quo to a divisive vote, and because any consideration of the competing credentials for Myanmar could prompt a similar debate about the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan.138
The credentials debate could coincide with the International Court of Justice’s expected ruling in the genocide case against Myanmar that was filed by The Gambia.139 Although the case’s outcome remains uncertain, a finding of state responsibility arriving at the same time as a credentials dispute would intensify international divisions over the issue of the Myanmar administration’s legitimacy. It would also narrow even further the UN’s room for manoeuvre in Myanmar, since Naypyitaw would view it with even more antagonism. The cost for regional leaders of associating with Min Aung Hlaing might rise as well, complicating high-level visits to the country though probably not turning the tide on diplomatic normalisation.
The UN does not have the leverage to achieve major change in Myanmar. But the organisation is crucial for delivering humanitarian and other support to vulnerable civilians. A credible operational strategy, backed by sustained political support from headquarters, will therefore remain essential to efforts to alleviate public hardship and the effects of armed conflict.
8. Protecting the UN’s gender work in conflict settings
The UN’s reform agenda has raised thorny issues about how the institution should organise its work to support women and girls. In late 2025, Secretary-General Guterres proposed merging the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) with UN Women as part of the UN80 initiative.140 UNFPA leads the UN’s work on sexual and reproductive health, while UN Women (approximately one third the size of UNFPA) advocates for normative shifts on gender issues, including the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, and distributes funding to NGOs for related programming.141 Whether the merger will come to pass is not clear. Amid aid cuts and pushback against gender equality worldwide, many member states and UN officials worry that combining these entities would hobble the UN’s work on gender, including efforts to support women and girls affected by conflict, for years to come.
The Secretary-General’s proposal included a request for a UN-prepared report (published in March) that evaluated the risks and benefits of a merger – an idea that had been discussed and discarded in 2023.142 The merger it proposed would bring together UNFPA and UN Women in a new entity with a unified voice. It would also save the UN between $32 and $38 million per year, which the UN would urge member states to reinvest in the new entity’s work.143 The assessment acknowledged, but did not suggest ways to mitigate, the risk that member states could eliminate important but contentious areas of work – including a number of sexual and reproductive health services and work on LGBTQI+ protections – during negotiations to create the new entity.144
[The] separate mandates [of UN Women and UNFPA] help the UN respond to distinct political, security and humanitarian issues.
There are other risks, too. Though both agencies work on gender issues in conflict-affected countries, their separate mandates help the UN respond to distinct political, security and humanitarian issues.145 In Afghanistan, for example, UNFPA runs programs including menstrual health education and support for midwives, all in compliance with Taliban edicts.146 Though interactions between the Taliban and UNFPA personnel are sometimes “tense”, the authorities recognise the need for the agency’s services.147 UN Women’s Afghanistan office is on shakier ground. The Taliban consider UN Women to be among their loudest critics and reject the agency’s frequent calls for repealing highly restrictive decrees as interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.148 While UN Women supports livelihood projects that the Taliban see as consistent with their goals of keeping the economy afloat and help the agency maintain an in-country presence, its normative positions are a persistent source of friction. Combining the two UN entities may have the effect of imputing these positions to UNFPA and create unnecessary risks for the latter.149
UN efforts to support more than one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, also show why keeping UN Women and UNFPA separate is helpful in providing support for women and girls affected by conflict.150 UNFPA offers health services in response to prevalent sexual violence and high pregnancy rates. It must be politically adroit in its engagement with Bangladeshi authorities, given local sensitivities around sexual and reproductive health.151 By contrast, UN Women supports women refugees (including through vocational training) and is involved in politically complex conversations with Dhaka about supporting eventual refugee return to Myanmar.152
Currently, the conversations about health care and political matters are separate, so if the two need to raise their issues with authorities at similar times they can do so separately – even if in coordination – without having to choose one topic over the other. UN officials worry that the appointment of a single UN interlocutor to coordinate with the authorities on both immediate humanitarian priorities and longer-term political objectives could pit the new organisation’s teams against each other when deciding which issues should take higher priority in senior-level engagement.153
Member states across the geographic and political spectrum have expressed concerns about the proposed merger. A coalition including Canada, Poland, South Korea and Sweden – which includes top contributors to both agencies – wrote to the Secretary-General saying they were “not in a position to support such a proposal” given the lack of clarity on how the two mandates could be safeguarded.154 Separately, Russia and China also emphasised the need to protect the two mandates, albeit voicing different concerns. Russia pointed out that member states have no agreed-upon definition of “sexual rights”, saying it is therefore “inappropriate” for the proposed new entity to work in this domain. China, for its part, stressed that the process of merging two entities should be member state-led and transparent, suggesting that it objected to how the recommendation came about.155
In response to requests from member state governing boards for alternative proposals, UN Women and UNFPA distributed their own papers, first in June and then in August, suggesting ways to align some of their work without a merger, including through shared data analytics and joint projects on gender-based violence in some locations.156 Member states and UN officials should consider whether these proposals would satisfy the desire to increase efficiency without risking the mandate dilution implied by a merger. In so doing, they should shy away from politically ill-timed proposals that would threaten hard-won gains and could weaken UN support for women and girls in conflict and other crises in the long term.
9. Recasting discussions of the future of UN peace operations
Diplomats routinely cite peace operations as one of the UN’s flagship contributions to peace and security. But the Security Council has not authorised a large-scale blue helmet force for over a decade, and the number of troops and police personnel serving under the organisation’s banner has halved in the same period. There have also been few new UN Special Political Missions (SPMs), which are solely or largely civilian in nature. As noted in the introduction, the Trump administration has pushed for budget cuts to UN missions of all kinds, questioning their expense, efficiency and apparent lack of concrete goals.
To guide discussions about how to revitalise this atrophying tool, the Secretary-General published a review of all forms of peace operations.157 The review came out in August, having originally been requested by member states in late 2024. Though this study covers political missions – and makes a strong pitch for the UN to reinvest in prevention and good offices, discussed in the next section – many of its more technical recommendations are specific to operations with military and police components. A number of UN members, including the U.S., have complained that it says nothing startlingly new.158 But it is a solid overview of the challenges facing UN operations and a starting point for diplomatic discussions of solving them.
UN missions face new challenges like disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks for which they are ill prepared.
The report’s diagnosis of the problems facing peace operations is hard to dispute. As it notes, the UN is often tasked with propping up weak ceasefires and political processes amid endemic violence. UN missions face new challenges like disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks for which they are ill prepared. A divided and distracted Security Council provides limited political support for UN personnel on the ground and does not update their mandates in a timely fashion when they encounter changing threats (Council diplomats admit this judgment is fair).159
The Secretary-General stakes out a series of sensible, albeit technocratic, responses to these issues. He suggests that the Security Council should direct UN operations to find political approaches to ending and mitigating conflict; work out “compacts” with states defining shared commitments to making missions work; and take a flexible approach to reviewing and revising mandates. His paper calls for a further Secretariat report examining the capabilities UN missions need to become more agile, while hammering home the need for missions to become more cost-effective and accountable for their performance.
UN staffers and diplomats will spend much of the year ahead following up on these proposals, but even if they can fix some of the process issues, broader political questions about the future of UN peace operations will remain. In today’s fraught geopolitical environment, the space for mediators – hailing from the UN or elsewhere – to craft sustainable peace processes will likely remain limited.160 Embattled governments in regions such as the Sahel and countries like Haiti want international forces to neutralise their opponents rather than coax them to the negotiating table. Guterres and most UN officials agree that as a rule the UN should not become directly involved in peace enforcement, even if the Security Council backs ad hoc missions like the GSF in Haiti that the UN system can support logistically and administratively.
The fundamental challenge facing the UN is to rebuild a case for conflict parties and other actors to invest in mediation processes and peacebuilding efforts that minimise violence, and that UN peace operations are qualified to offer these efforts support when useful. There may be an audience for this argument. As Crisis Group has noted, efforts to crush insurgencies through force alone in cases such as the Sahel have gone awry.161 While the UN still has a lot of work to do improving how peace operations work, Guterres leaves them with a helpful to-do list. The next Secretary-General’s overarching challenge will be restoring the organisation’s standing as an actor that can deploy peace operations to backstop other peace initiatives when they show promise.
10. Repositioning the Secretary-General’s approach to crisis management
When the next Secretary-General takes office on 1 January 2027, she or he will have a brief window of opportunity to overhaul the UN Secretariat’s strategy-making and crisis response mechanisms. Incoming UN leaders typically shake up their executive offices in their first months and table broader proposals for reorganising the Secretariat for member states to consider.162 In the course of selecting a new Secretary-General, member states have emphasised that the winner should concentrate on peace and security. Many candidates have promised to engage on crisis diplomacy personally, a point emphasised in Guterres’ review of all forms of peace operations.163 But it is necessary to improve the institution’s systems for generating policy options for dealing with new and persistent conflicts, which have grown rusty in recent years. They will also have to prepare for the fall-out of global risks like the El Niño climate pattern on conflict affected states, which will test the diplomatic, humanitarian and development arms of the UN system.
Though Secretary-General Guterres made streamlining the UN’s peace and security pillar an early priority, organisational glitches have proliferated on his watch.164 Guterres has kept a tight grip on decision-making. Officials dealing with peace operations and political affairs, whether in New York or around the world, often feel out of the loop. As crises have proliferated, senior decision-makers in the Secretariat have become debilitatingly cautious, and inter-departmental turf wars (a perennial feature of life at the UN) have festered. Security Council members complain that when they ask for options papers from the Secretary-General – as they have done in cases including Gaza, Sudan, Haiti and Lebanon – the results come slowly and are generally mediocre at best.165
UN officials agree that a high priority for the next Secretary-General is to sort out [the] option-generating and decision-making mess.
UN officials agree that a high priority for the next Secretary-General is to sort out this option-generating and decision-making mess. Some believe it is a matter of a change in culture (and, in some cases, personnel). Others argue that it is necessary to centralise the UN’s systems for producing options and crisis coordination in a new planning cell inside the Secretary-General’s office, to speed up the process of responding to new conflicts and Security Council requests for help. The next Secretary-General would be well advised to resolve this top-level wiring issue – which will require fairly slight budgetary and managerial effort – before embarking on any wider reform of the Secretariat’s Departments of Peace Operations and Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, which will require more extensive inter-governmental negotiations, and more battles over turf.
The new Secretary-General’s choice of senior officials dealing with peace and security will also come under scrutiny. The veto powers typically insist on inserting nominees to run significant departments, often as bargains during the final stages of choosing the Secretary-General. An unwritten division among the major powers has emerged: France fills the post of Under Secretary-General for Peace Operations, the U.S. takes political affairs, the UK deals with humanitarian affairs, China handles economic and social affairs, and Russia names the head of the Office of Counter-terrorism.
UN officials and other member states grumble about this carve-up, but successive Secretaries-General have concluded that it is a political necessity to gain support from the Council’s permanent members.166 Some Secretariat staff worry that the Trump administration will lobby for a hardline loyalist to oversee the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, undermining the Secretary-General’s authority.
While it may not be possible to ignore the veto powers entirely, however, both Guterres and his predecessor Ban Ki-moon were able to resist appointing nominees from Washington, Paris and London whom they deemed unsuitable.167 To show at least a modicum of autonomy, the next Secretary-General should follow suit, potentially asking the veto powers for informal shortlists of candidates for particular roles. Equally or more importantly, she or he should look for strong appointees from non-veto capitals to fill key posts in the executive office – including Deputy Secretary-General, Chief of Staff and Political Director – who can buttress top-level decision-making and help balance the influence of P5 proxies in internal debates.168 These senior officials could take on direct mediation roles as well.169
For all the qualities of her or his advisers, the Secretary-General will also need to get personally involved directly in conflict prevention efforts and peace processes. The new Secretary-General’s team will need to set up a series of early visits for the boss to key capitals in various regions so that she or he can signal that the UN is reinvesting in the business of conflict management. Whereas Guterres was discouraged by early failures in his peacemaking efforts, his successor should embrace a more persistent attitude toward the UN’s role in peacemaking. In the years ahead, the organisation’s biggest failure may not be to fall short of lofty expectations in crisis diplomacy, but to eschew engagement altogether.170
IV.
Conclusion
The UN’s fortunes over the next twelve months will depend in no small part on who its members select as the next Secretary-General. She or he will face considerable pressure to hit the ground running and deliver quick wins for an organisation whose credibility has waned. Doing so will require the expenditure of limited political capital on a range of priorities. Member states will no doubt push the next UN chief to translate their vision for the organisation into plans for its peace and security, development and human rights pillars. The new Secretary-General will also be tasked with stabilising the organisation’s wobbling finances and spearheading a reform agenda. If the past year at the UN was defined by transition, then the coming year may be shaped by how quickly its new leader can deliver.
But the next Secretary-General cannot mend all that is fraying at the UN without renewed support from its members. At a moment of worsening geopolitical competition, a more pragmatic approach may be for states to come to a more limited interpretation of the UN’s role in world affairs. Central to that vision would be the organisation’s potential as platform to reduce global risks through communication and deconfliction, rebuilding its credibility as a peacemaker, and helping alleviate the worst of civilian suffering. The organisation will surely also have a role to play in helping the most vulnerable weather global economic shocks, including those linked both to conflict (as in the case of a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz) and to other drivers (such as the El Niño climate pattern).
Much of the debate about the UN’s work over the past year has centred on its shortcomings. That focus is understandable considering the worrying state of the international order. But as this briefing has shown, there are many crises where the UN is the only multilateral body with the mandate, legitimacy and capacity to open space for diplomacy. The organisation’s next leader would be wise to double down on those virtues. It may be an imperfect construction of the UN’s role in world affairs, but it is nonetheless an essential one.
New York/Brussels, 14 September 2026
