In the UN offices in New York, the “eco-durable” labeled boxes are piling up. On empty offices, forgotten green plants rub shoulders with piles of abandoned files. In Manhattan buildings where international civil servants house, mailboxes are garnished with lease termination notice. Thousands of foreign employees have to bend baggage, leave their apartments, sell their furniture and return to their country. Diplomatic visas fall at the same time as contracts: departure is compulsory within a month.
Since his re-election, Donald Trump has carried out his threats: the United States has ceased to massively finance the UN. This year, the United States did not pay its contribution to the ordinary budget, digging a deficit equivalent to almost 22 % of annual resources. A hole of $ 1.5 billion which obliges the organization to slash in its workforce.
Financial earthquake
Almost 9 % of UN staff, tens of thousands of positions, will have disappeared by the end of the year. And this is a first stroke of the plane. An internal memo, revealed in the spring, even spoke of a 20 % cure if the budget crisis was getting worse. The small hands of multilateralism – secretaries, administrators, logistics agents – are the first sacrificed.
In specialized organization agencies, the shock is violent. The global food program sees one of its main contributors evaporate. The High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which received up to 40 % of its Washington budget, is forced to reduce its programs. UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency, was purely and simply deprived of American funds, the Trump administration having even tried to close it.
Trump’s dream is to slam the door of this organization
This financial earthquake does not only strike the camps of the Near East. It also reads in the streets of New York, where the discreet luxury of Long Island City gradually empties its inhabitants with multiple passports. Meanwhile, secretary general Antonio Guterres tries to transform the disaster into ” opportunity “ By merging or closing redundant agencies. Or by moving some structures from New York or Geneva to cities at lower cost like Nairobi or Entebbe.
European diplomats and NGOs howl to sabotage. Trump sneers. De Gaulle spoke of a “Machin” ? The Republican President sees in the United Nations a global cooperative of scratch-paper, an army of officials paid to pretend to act. On Monday, during the General Assembly, at the New York rostrum, Trump gave it to my heart.
“Not only does the organization do not solve the problems it should solve, but too often it creates new ones that we must manage”he launched, a go-goals. And to add, mocking, that the institution had offered him, as a welcome, that“A breakdown escalator and a prompter that did not work”after the First Lady and he found themselves stuck on a recalcitrant treadmill. Perfect summary, in his eyes, of an organization that stutter in form as in substance: both impotent, bureaucratic, incapable of something other than illustrating his own decadence.
Donald Trump has never said it aloud, but everything in his actions lets him guess: his dream is to slam the UN door, which he considers hostile to American and anti-Western interests. Barely invested in January, he had signed a decree to leave the World Health Organization. In 2023, Joe Biden tried to mend the link with UNESCO, a support check. Two years later, Donald Trump closed the door, freezing these funds and again raying the American agenda agency.
This is what these moving scenes illustrate: the brutal return of reality, where the United States is a horseman alone. Behind the glass facades of Turtle Bay, a world gets rid of. Born from the ruins of the Second World War, the UN must manage the gradual withdrawal of its largest lessor. Without dollars, without visas, without its army of civil servants, the largest international organization is almost only an ordinary company on the verge of the East River. In quasi-liquidation.
