Strengthening India’s Contribution to and Leadership at the United Nations
The United Nations will host the General Debate of the 81st session of the General Assembly later this month. The organization continues its UN80 reform drive meant to streamline itself, while also facing what the UN Secretary-General had called a “race to bankruptcy”: a liquidity crisis compounded by a drop in development aid. The UN80 reform has resulted in a 21 percent cut in posts for 2026, building on measures that started as early as 2024, alongside a range of other steps. As the UN Secretary-General has put it, the focus has been on making support to programme delivery more consistent and reliable, doing away with parallel processes, and freeing up managers to concentrate on results.
As this reform process unravels, the UN remains caught in a serious liquidity crisis, with governments falling behind on their mandatory contributions. To prevent an imminent collapse, the UN Secretary-General had urged Member States to either meet their obligations in full and on schedule, or overhaul the organization’s financial rules altogether.
In parallel, OECD reports that Official Development Assistance (ODA) by Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members and associates saw a 23.1 percent decrease in 2025 over 2024. It is the largest annual contraction on record and a second consecutive year of decline. The UN system witnessed a 27 percent decline concentrated in core contributions to the UN, the largest annual drop on record. Compounding this is the growing leadership and funding vacuum as the U.S. withdraws from several UN entities to the extent permitted by U.S. law. This includes the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Peacebuilding Commission, Peacebuilding Fund, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), International Trade Centre (ITC), UN Women, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Democracy Fund, among several others.
This poses an uncomfortable question: who fills the space that wealthier powers are vacating? Despite years of high growth and a growing global voice, India has not realized its full potential to contribute at the UN. It is now time for India to rise and fill this global vacuum in budget, capacity and most importantly, work to ensure humanitarian needs are met. As the internal UN80 reform continues, India has a unique chance now to strengthen the foundation that is needed for the UN to deliver on its mandate, a goal very much in our national interest. This is not a call for India to reinvent multilateralism but to strategically approach the UN80 reform process and develop its own strategy to identify where India can play a stronger role within the UN system apart from the Security Council.
I write this not as a senior bureaucrat or a retired official, but as someone who has been associated with the UN since 2012 (with several professional breaks), as an intern, a manager, and a consultant, watching from the lower tiers of the UN system.
Foundationally, India needs to shift from a reactive and self-centered approach to a more strategic, deliberate and proactive approach to multilateralism. Instead of creating duplicate institutions, India should strengthen the ones that exist, and strengthen India’s contribution to and leadership at the UN as outlined below.
First, establish a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) Programme, modelled on the JPO system at the UN, that channels India’s youth and civil-service aspirants into UN departments on merit rather than focusing solely on lobbying for a handful of senior positions while overlooking the interns and junior staff, whose reports quietly support resolutions and briefings at the highest levels. The current JPO programme is open to applicants from participating countries, primarily those from developed countries as they fund these positions however, some allow the participation of individuals from developing countries. Several Member States require applicants to be under the age of 32 when applying to their JPO Programme. The creation of this programme for Indian nationals will ensure that our youth are exposed to the highest levels of international governance and will bring back valuable expertise to help India’s growth once their tenure ends. India would benefit if the Government engages with the UN to create a JPO pathway for careers for young Indians.
A second approach to supporting the UN system could be to place Indian Government officials from states and the centre as “secondments”, in enforcement and technical agencies. Expertise would therefore flow both ways, in a cash and capacity strapped UN system. For example, Indian nationals could support the United Nations Environment Programme or UN-Habitat, to share environmental and urban governance expertise and bring back global expertise to improve our environmental situation and cities. To realize this, India would need to work with UN agencies to establish agreements for secondments, if permissible.
Third, rely on retired Indian UN staff to help guide the MEA on strengthening India’s approach to multilateralism. Retired Indian UN staff bring a wealth of knowledge that could support the MEA to improve its multilateral approach. India should also strategically start planning for the future, to bring forward practical solutions to UN reform, by engaging senior and junior Indian UN staff. Those at the helm of the UN budgetary process and UN80 reform process could play an instrumental role to guide India on the UN reform process to fill UN gaps in concrete ways. This would generate creative ideas to increase India’s strategic contribution to the UN system, and the MEA could lead on this.
Fourth, and most importantly, India must step in to fill the humanitarian and budget gaps that wealthier states are slowly vacating to developing countries seemingly, and build goodwill across the Global South in the process. Of course, India has behemoth domestic challenges, but we also need to do more through the UN system as India’s potential is unrealized. Strategic autonomy serves our interests very well bilaterally, but if we project ourselves as a “vishwaguru” or use our foreign policy mantra of “vasudhaiva kutumbakam”, then we need to do more. We need to support established organizations that can deliver at scale globally and concurrently serve India’s interests. India has done its best with UNRWA, but more needs to be done to support organizations such as the World Food Programme. Perhaps we could fill the vacuum left by the U.S. at the trade organizations UNCTAD and ITC to advance their mission, while also bolstering our national trade ambitions; such synergies need to be identified. India should work directly with UN agencies to assess where to contribute, based on the need for urgent humanitarian funding support.
Finally, thanks to India’s diplomats, strategic autonomy has ensured that we have maintained good relations with states at war, such as the U.S., Iran, Russia, Ukraine and Israel. It is the trust and confidence that States such as Palestine, Russia, Ukraine, Iran and Israel have in India that has resulted in them asking India to play a constructive role or help to create the conditions for peace between states. The world wants India to step up and we can play a constructive role through simple steps that support mediation and peacebuilding. Appointing special envoys, drawn not only from the IFS but also include seasoned UN diplomats, historians, and experienced practitioners, to serve as India’s Special Envoys for conflicts in the Middle East or between Russia and Ukraine is a cost-effective solution and demonstrates exactly the kind of leadership India claims to desire and will showcase our ability to be leaders. This is not a new concept; India has had several Special Envoys, such as the Special Envoy to West Asia and the Middle East Peace Process and another envoy on climate. India can also leverage synergies with its close partners, for example; as two powers, India and Japan aspire for Permanent Seats on the Security Council and both have committed to joint projects in Myanmar. For projects to succeed in Myanmar, peace is essential, and therefore, India and Japan could consider appointing a Special Peace Envoy for Myanmar. While India supports the ASEAN peace process, under our Neighbourhood First policy, India should step up to solve the challenges by working constructively with the UN, ASEAN and the leadership in Myanmar, and not simply outsource the hard work of building peace to other States.
If we want the UN reform process to be meaningful and a stronger role for India at the global level, then we must also be honest about the paradox: a country that will not lead in peacebuilding, core to global security, has a weaker claim to a permanent seat at the Security Council. India’s role in peacekeeping around the world is laudable; it illuminates our Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam vision. So does vaccine diplomacy and our successful hosting of G20, among other global conferences. But we must remember that the world hopes for stronger action from India to constructively support the UN and strengthen peace globally; it is a call to bring India’s wisdom to the rest of our global family, a goal very much aligned with our national interest. It is time India’s foreign policy showcases its full capabilities to the world.
(The author may be reached at arjun.k.bhargava@gmail.com. )
