‘The mere fact that the governments created the United Nations and have maintained it is, in itself, evidence that mankind is capable of responding to the challenge of interdependence with which the evolution of human society has now brought us face to face as never before.’
Dag Hammarskjöld
Financing the UN Development System report, ‘Managing Unprecedented Times’ is the 11th edition in the series and continues to offer a comprehensive overview of financial trends and flows across the UN systemand the UN Development System (UNDS).
In this year’s report the Foundation and the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office retained a sharp focus on using the available high-quality, disaggregated data with the objective to inform evidence-based policymaking, enhance accountability, build public trust, and foster international cooperation.
The reader gets an overview of the general trends and retroactive analysis with the news of a decline in funding of the UN system between 2022 and 2023. This worrying situation is expected to continue after 2023, and most likely have further impacts on resource availability in 2024 and 2025.
Part One: United Nations resource flows
In part one the focus is on providing an analysis of the funding sources, allocation patterns, and emerging challenges to enhance transparency, support informed decision-making, and contribute to a more coherent and predictable financing landscape in support of the 2030 Agenda. It provides a detailed view of funding trends from 2010 to 2023, with some preliminary 2024 data.
Part two: The Marketplace of ideas
In part two, the contributions bring expert voices which explore innovative approaches to improving the quality of development funding. These insights highlight the demanding global conditions and propose innovative ways to build a more resilient and effective financing ecosystem for multilateral cooperation.
The 2025 edition of this report is also hosted on the specialised microsite offering an interactive online version with data visualisations. Here readers can explore some of the latest financial flows. It provides an opportunity to learn more about the contributing countries to UN entities and review the expenditure data by country and year. An archive of all previous reports is available for download.