It’s officially UNGA season! Over the next several weeks, I’ll be publishing exclusive updates and sharp analysis on everything happening around the UN General Assembly. Politico once called me the “uncrowned king of UN nerds” — and this is the time of year I earn that crown. Most of this coverage will be behind the paywall, but for September I’m offering a special 40% discount on subscriptions. If you want insider analysis and context you won’t find anywhere else, now’s the time to join.
The United Nations doesn’t exactly “celebrate” its birthdays. But it does leverage milestone moments as opportunities to reform and keep up with the times. The first year I properly covered the UN was in 2005, its 60th anniversary. Then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan championed a set of institutional reforms, particularly around human rights. At that year’s General Assembly, member states affirmed the “Responsibility to Protect” populations facing mass atrocity and genocide and created the Human Rights Council. These were major advances at the time, pegged to reinvigorating a core UN function at its 60th birthday.
A decade later, in 2015, the UN’s 70th anniversary ushered in the Sustainable Development Goals: 17 goals—including the total elimination of extreme poverty—that every country pledged to pursue by 2030. This was a profoundly impactful innovation, and today the SDGs remain the organizing principle of much of the UN’s work, from environmental protection to economic development and beyond. The 70th birthday was a high-water mark of member states’ collective ambition, with the UN as the platform for cooperative solutions to humanity’s most urgent problems.
Ten years on, as the UN prepares to mark its 80th anniversary during UNGA later this month, the vibe is very different.
Rather than using this milestone to expand the UN’s role in global affairs, this UNGA may mark an era of retrenchment. The geopolitical reality of 2025 is stark: ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan are eroding confidence in the UN’s ability to steer the world toward more peaceful outcomes. Meanwhile, the institution itself is mired in an unprecedented financial crisis, driven largely by U.S. funding cuts and clawbacks.
As in years past, the anniversary is being used as a catalyst for reform. But unlike the 60th and 70th, the reforms now on the table are not about expanding the UN’s reach. Quite the opposite. As the UN turns 80, the agenda championed by Secretary-General António Guterres and many member states would shrink the institution—preparing it for an era in which it must do less with less.
UN80, Explained
These reforms are being pursued under the rubric of “UN80,” which António Guterres launched in March when it became clear that the UN’s ongoing liquidity crisis was about to get much worse.
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