As wars rage and atrocities multiply across the world, the United Nations—the institution built to safeguard humanity from the horrors of genocide and oppression—is facing a financial collapse of its own making. And this time, it’s not bombs or bullets but budget lines that are killing human rights.
A groundbreaking report from the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) lays bare how a small group of powerful states, led by China and Russia, have systematically hijacked UN budget negotiations to defund and disable the very bodies meant to investigate their abuses. Under the guise of “efficiency” and “reform,” these governments have turned the UN’s Fifth Committee—responsible for budget oversight—into a battlefield where human rights are quietly strangled by accounting tricks.
Weaponizing the UN’s Wallet
Drawing on years of internal documents and interviews, ISHR’s Budget Battles at the UN shows how Beijing and Moscow have entrenched themselves in key UN budget bodies such as the Fifth Committee, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), and the Committee on Programme and Coordination (CPC). Through these mechanisms, they have slashed funding for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and sought to defund investigations into war crimes and repression in Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea, and beyond.
Russia often plays the provocateur, loudly objecting to any allocation that might fund accountability efforts. China, in contrast, works quietly but relentlessly behind the scenes—building influence among developing nations in the Group of 77 by pitching cuts to human rights programs as a “rationalization” in favor of development spending. It’s a cynical manipulation of Global South priorities designed to shield Beijing and its allies from scrutiny.
A Crisis of Cash—and Courage
This sabotage has found fertile ground amid a deepening UN liquidity crisis. The United States, China, and Russia—three of the organization’s largest contributors—have all failed to pay their dues on time and in full, depriving the UN of billions of dollars. The United States alone owes $1.5 billion, while China’s habitual late payments have the same practical effect as non-payment, since unspent funds are returned as credits at year’s end.
Since the start of 2025, the revived Trump administration has halted nearly all voluntary funding to the UN, invoking claims of “anti-Israel bias” to justify gutting support for institutions that investigate human rights abuses globally. Together, these actions have slashed the UN’s human rights budget by over 25 percent—crippling investigations in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gaza, and silencing victims who once looked to Geneva for justice.
The UN80 Illusion
Instead of fortifying the system, the UN’s response has been the UN80 Initiative, an internal reform push that has so far translated into austerity measures. While the rhetoric speaks of “efficiency,” the cuts fall hardest on human rights work—15 percent reductions, compared with far smaller trims in the UN’s development and peacekeeping arms. China and Russia’s representatives on key committees are poised to deepen these cuts under the banner of reform.
As ISHR Executive Director Phil Lynch warns, this is not mere bureaucratic reshuffling—it’s a deliberate campaign to redefine the UN into a body that serves states rather than people. A UN stripped of its human rights pillar is a UN unfit for purpose.
The Stakes: Accountability or Authoritarianism
If this trend continues, the consequences will be felt not only in Geneva and New York but in every village where people rely on international attention to survive. Defunding human rights mechanisms means silencing inquiries into ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, war crimes in Ukraine, and genocide in Darfur. It means telling victims of mass atrocities that justice is simply too expensive.
The ISHR report is both a warning and a call to action. Democracies and committed states must act now—by paying their dues in full and on time, increasing voluntary funding to the OHCHR, reforming the ACABQ to prevent abuse, and rejecting reforms that gut accountability in the name of efficiency.
The Bottom Line
The UN’s founders envisioned an institution strong enough to protect human dignity from tyranny. Today, that vision is being suffocated not by overt rejection of human rights but by the slow bleed of bureaucratic sabotage. The question is no longer whether the UN can afford to fund human rights. It’s whether the world can afford what happens if it doesn’t.
