It is no secret that the United Nations faces a serious budgetary crisis. A memo circulated across UN leadership by the Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance in February on “Managing the 2025 regular budget liquidity crisis” outlined the need to reduce $400 million in spending through December. The memo referred to a letter from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres suggesting limiting travel, reducing utility bills and minimizing hiring of consultants.
At the same time, the General Assembly committee responsible for UN budget decisions is pressured to deliver an agenda to carry out global commitments such as the 2030 Agenda and the Pact for the Future. Concurrently, member states are rerouting their own national agendas and moving further away from global commitments amid rising geopolitical instability and uncertainty.
A big-ticket item that was in the budget committee agenda for the last session was General Assembly Resolution 77/278 from 2023 to rejuvenate the UN’s internship program. The resolution aimed to increase the diversity, value, and long-term sustainability of the future UN workforce. Member states will now have to decide in a post-Pact for the Future world whether they will have to drop long-term investments amid the UN’s overall budget crisis, falling into the same patterns as the progress (or lack thereof) toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, or seriously question investing in a well-structured UN secretariat internship program to relieve pressure on the UN system.
Over the past 10 years, 21,943 interns have been engaged in the United Nations
Secretariat which is roughly 2,200 per year. Internships have provided a key entry point for interdisciplinary and geographic diversity in the young workforce of the UN. Moreover, a well-structured internship programme is one key way for countries to progress on meaningful youth engagement commitments set out in both the UN75 Political Declaration and the Pact for the Future.
The current ad hoc nature of UN internships, which are primarily unpaid except in the case of certain agencies (such as the UN Development Program and Unicef), results in both inconsistent quality and inefficiencies across the system. Without standardized guidance on onboarding, completion, career development or visa and immigration support, interns experience starkly different benefits working at the UN.
An independent global coalition, called the Fair Internship Initiative produced a UN Internship Program Quality Index to measure the strengths and weaknesses of UN secretariat internship programs. It surveyed over 600 interns across the system in 2024, concluding that the World Intellectual Property Organization had the highest perception of internship quality while the Secretariat measured least.
Paid internships consistently score better not just for the equal opportunity they provide but also because they usually have more structure and development objectives and use interns’ skills across teams effectively. Not only does the ad hoc nature of internship programs leads to inconsistent experiences, but it also garners a piecemeal approach in which each UN entity spends its time and energy defining meaningful youth engagement, development objectives, and best practices, resulting in considerable duplication and wasted resources.
Resolution 77/278 recognized these shortfalls and requested the Secretary-General to undertake a full review of the UN secretariat internship program before the 79th session began for the 2024-25 year. The results, “Review of the United Nations Secretariat Internship Programme” reveal that both interns and managers prefer a structured program with enhanced approaches to learning and that paid internships, especially in New York, played a crucial role in the number of interns from diverse disciplines and nationalities.
Besides reviewing the status of internship programs, the secretary-general’s report presented a proposal for a restructured, rejuvenated internship program by, among other steps, striving for youth engagement as set out in the Pact for the Future. Such steps are meant to create a competitive, simplified and streamlined process to recruit interns from a wider geographic base. These proposals were considered by the General Assembly last week, and though enjoying express support from EU and ASEAN countries, a conclusion is yet to be reached.
As such, three key asks from the secretary-general to the General Assembly remain on the table: a proposal to restructure the internship program to improve its value and sustainability through structured learning, technological training, and financial support to enable wider geographic reach; remove the restriction of a “break in service,” prevents interns from obtaining or applying to positions in the “Professional,” and “Field Service” categories for six months after their internship; and approve the principle of a centrally funded and managed financial support plan.
Together, these results would significantly strengthen the retention of skilled young individuals in the UN workforce, which becomes increasingly important for the sustainability of the UN workforce amid senior-level positions being “retired out” of the system.
For the UN and its 193 member states, the Pact for the Future provides a long-term lens that can be used to tackle the current budget crisis while investing in young people. That approach lies at the heart of maintaining generational faith in multilateralism.
Nudhara Yusuf is Executive Coordinator of the Global Governance Innovation Network and Co-Chair of Coalition for the UN We Need
Muznah Siddiqui is a Global Governance Research and Planning Associate at UN University Center for Policy Research
When the Cards Are on the Table, Will the UN Stand By the Interns?
By Nudhara Yusuf • Muznah Siddiqui
International & Regional Organizations
It is no secret that the United Nations faces a serious budgetary crisis. A memo circulated across UN leadership by the Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance in February on “Managing the 2025 regular budget liquidity crisis” outlined the need to reduce $400 million in spending through December. The memo referred to a letter from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres suggesting limiting travel, reducing utility bills and minimizing hiring of consultants.
At the same time, the General Assembly committee responsible for UN budget decisions is pressured to deliver an agenda to carry out global commitments such as the 2030 Agenda and the Pact for the Future. Concurrently, member states are rerouting their own national agendas and moving further away from global commitments amid rising geopolitical instability and uncertainty.
A big-ticket item that was in the budget committee agenda for the last session was General Assembly Resolution 77/278 from 2023 to rejuvenate the UN’s internship program. The resolution aimed to increase the diversity, value, and long-term sustainability of the future UN workforce. Member states will now have to decide in a post-Pact for the Future world whether they will have to drop long-term investments amid the UN’s overall budget crisis, falling into the same patterns as the progress (or lack thereof) toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, or seriously question investing in a well-structured UN secretariat internship program to relieve pressure on the UN system.
Over the past 10 years, 21,943 interns have been engaged in the United Nations
Secretariat which is roughly 2,200 per year. Internships have provided a key entry point for interdisciplinary and geographic diversity in the young workforce of the UN. Moreover, a well-structured internship programme is one key way for countries to progress on meaningful youth engagement commitments set out in both the UN75 Political Declaration and the Pact for the Future.
The current ad hoc nature of UN internships, which are primarily unpaid except in the case of certain agencies (such as the UN Development Program and Unicef), results in both inconsistent quality and inefficiencies across the system. Without standardized guidance on onboarding, completion, career development or visa and immigration support, interns experience starkly different benefits working at the UN.
An independent global coalition, called the Fair Internship Initiative produced a UN Internship Program Quality Index to measure the strengths and weaknesses of UN secretariat internship programs. It surveyed over 600 interns across the system in 2024, concluding that the World Intellectual Property Organization had the highest perception of internship quality while the Secretariat measured least.
Paid internships consistently score better not just for the equal opportunity they provide but also because they usually have more structure and development objectives and use interns’ skills across teams effectively. Not only does the ad hoc nature of internship programs leads to inconsistent experiences, but it also garners a piecemeal approach in which each UN entity spends its time and energy defining meaningful youth engagement, development objectives, and best practices, resulting in considerable duplication and wasted resources.
Resolution 77/278 recognized these shortfalls and requested the Secretary-General to undertake a full review of the UN secretariat internship program before the 79th session began for the 2024-25 year. The results, “Review of the United Nations Secretariat Internship Programme” reveal that both interns and managers prefer a structured program with enhanced approaches to learning and that paid internships, especially in New York, played a crucial role in the number of interns from diverse disciplines and nationalities.
Besides reviewing the status of internship programs, the secretary-general’s report presented a proposal for a restructured, rejuvenated internship program by, among other steps, striving for youth engagement as set out in the Pact for the Future. Such steps are meant to create a competitive, simplified and streamlined process to recruit interns from a wider geographic base. These proposals were considered by the General Assembly last week, and though enjoying express support from EU and ASEAN countries, a conclusion is yet to be reached.
As such, three key asks from the secretary-general to the General Assembly remain on the table: a proposal to restructure the internship program to improve its value and sustainability through structured learning, technological training, and financial support to enable wider geographic reach; remove the restriction of a “break in service,” prevents interns from obtaining or applying to positions in the “Professional,” and “Field Service” categories for six months after their internship; and approve the principle of a centrally funded and managed financial support plan.
Together, these results would significantly strengthen the retention of skilled young individuals in the UN workforce, which becomes increasingly important for the sustainability of the UN workforce amid senior-level positions being “retired out” of the system.
For the UN and its 193 member states, the Pact for the Future provides a long-term lens that can be used to tackle the current budget crisis while investing in young people. That approach lies at the heart of maintaining generational faith in multilateralism.
Nudhara Yusuf is Executive Coordinator of the Global Governance Innovation Network and Co-Chair of Coalition for the UN We Need
Muznah Siddiqui is a Global Governance Research and Planning Associate at UN University Center for Policy Research
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