U.N. Says It’s in ‘Imminent Danger’ of Financial Collapse.

U.N. Says It’s in ‘Imminent Danger’ of Financial Collapse.

31 January 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On January 30th, the BBC headlined “UN risks ‘imminent financial collapse’, secretary general warns”, and reported:

António Guterres said the organisation’s money could run out by July

The United Nations is at risk of “imminent financial collapse” due to member states not paying their fees, the body’s head has warned.

António Guterres said the UN faced a financial crisis which was “deepening, threatening programme delivery”, and that money could run out by July.

He wrote in a letter to all 193 member states that they had to honour their mandatory payments or overhaul the organisation’s financial rules to avoid collapse.

It comes after the UN’s largest contributor, the US, refused to contribute to its regular and peacekeeping budgets, and withdrew from several agencies it called a “waste of taxpayer dollars”. Several other members are in arrears or are simply refusing to pay. …

“Decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced,” the secretary general said, without naming specific members.

He said the “integrity of the entire system” depended on states adhering to their obligation under the UN charter to pay their “assessed contributions”, adding that 2025 ended with a record amount unpaid - equivalent to 77% of the total owed.

Guterres said a rule that the UN must return unspent money on particular programmes to members if it could not implement a budget created a “double blow” in which it was “expected to give back cash that does not exist”.

“I cannot overstate the urgency of the situation we now face. We cannot execute budgets with uncollected funds, nor return funds we never received.”

As a result, the UN is now returning millions of dollars it never actually had.

The letter reads: “Just this month, as part of the 2026 assessment, we were compelled to return $227m [£165m] – funds we have not collected.”

“The bottom line is clear,” Guterres wrote. “Either all member states honour their obligations to pay in full and on time – or member states must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules to prevent an imminent financial collapse.” …

The US is the UN’s largest contributor, but President Donald Trump has said it was not fulfilling its “great potential” and has criticised it for failing to support US-led peace efforts.

The US did not pay its contribution to the UN’s regular budget in 2025 and offered only 30% of its expected funding to UN peacekeeping operations.

Then in January, Trump withdrew it from dozens of international organisations, including 31 UN agencies. …

Other countries, such as the UK and Germany, have also announced significant reductions in foreign aid, which will inevitably impact the UN’s work.

Guterres had warned earlier that same month that the UN faced its most fragile financial position in years - again citing unpaid fees - having said in October that it faced a “race to bankruptcy”.

Trump has separately been accused by critics of seeking to replace some functions of the UN with his Board of Peace to oversee regeneration efforts in Gaza.

The US president has said its work would happen “in conjunction with the United Nations” - but when previously asked by a Fox TV journalist whether the board would take the UN’s place, he replied: “Well, it might.”

The US officially left the UN’s World Health Organization last week. It had refused to pay its 2024 and 2025 dues despite, WHO lawyers say, being legally obliged to do so.

Other agencies are also making huge cuts.

The U.N. was invented and named by U.S. President FDR in August 1941, and he spent the rest of his years until his 12 April 1945 death planning it, and planning how he could organize it to be formed so as to be joined by all nations.

Already by 1 January 1942, the 26 antifascist nations in World War II, including the U.S., UK, and USSR, signed the “Declaration by the United Nations”, stating that they intend “to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.” Subsequently an additional 21 nations signed the document.

During 18 October to 1 November in 1943, at the Moscow Conference, the U.S., UK, USSR, and China signed and as the U.N. puts it:

adopted a Joint Four-Nation Declaration in which, inter alia, they “recognize[d] the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States, and open to membership by all such States, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security”. For the first time, the idea of establishing an international organization to keep the peace after the end of World War II was thus expressly mentioned in an official document. Following this Declaration, the four States concerned appointed national committees of experts that separately worked on the drafting of a charter for the future organization (there were, however, earlier efforts in this direction in the United States, with the work of the Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations established on 27 December 1939, which was officially pursued by the State Department from 1942 until the Conference of Dumbarton Oaks, in 1944).

Then, during 21 August to 7 October 1944, the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, between the U.S., UK, and USSR, issued, on 9 October 1944, “Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organization”, the initial working document at the San Francisco Conference, which took place during 25 April to 26 June 1945, at which the new U.S. President, Harry Truman, who opposed FDR’s U.N. plan, did all he could to weaken it, so that the U.N. Charter that resulted has no enforcement mechanism and doesn’t even define the key concept, which is “aggression.” It also left as a mess the issue of funding the organization, which weakness now is being taken advantage of by the U.S. empire, led by Trump himself, to bring down the U.N. and its international-laws-based international order, and to replace that with the U.S. Government’s on-the-fly-created-and-modified international-rules order — whatever the U.S. President wants it to be at the particular time. This U.S.-Government replacement of the U.N. is entirely consistent with what had been President Truman’s intent, which was to produce ultimately an all-inclusive U.S. global empire or world dictatorship.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.