Ambassador Mike Waltz
U.S. Representative to the United Nations
New York, New York
AS DELIVERED
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Frankel. Thank you for touring to New York. Thank you to the whole committee. I would like to significantly thank each your employees and the nice group right here of civil servants, Foreign Service officers, and our ambassadors, for serving to us put this on.
Just as an apart, to your level, Mr. Chairman, your presence right here, and I would like to say this to all the committee members, helps our arguments. It’s serving to our case throughout the road to get a UN that’s extra targeted, that’s leaner, that’s actually going again to its post-World War Two roots of ensuring a battle like that, a battle that had one thing as horrific as the Holocaust, a world at battle, nuclear weapons getting used for the first and solely time in historical past that that would by no means occur once more.
But it’s additionally sending a message that the Congress is watching intently. I inform my colleagues this and the UN Secretariat and forms all the time, don’t simply hear to me in phrases of our greenbacks getting used extra effectively. The United States Congress is watching very intently. We have the whole Western world in a way more fiscally restrained place. We have money owed which can be exploding, and we even have constituents which can be asking powerful questions. So I actually do recognize you taking the day out of your schedules right here.
As I said in my affirmation listening to, the UN really does want to get what we’re calling again to fundamentals and again to its authentic mission, from its founding, again to sustaining worldwide peace and safety. As I’ve talked about in my listening to then the UN’s finances in the final 25 years has quadrupled. We haven’t seen, arguably, a quadrupling of peace and safety round the world commensurate with these hard-earned {dollars}.
So we’re urgent it. We’re urgent it to streamline its forms, to eradicate duplication. We’ve made it clear that we are going to stop participation in some UN companies that undermine our sovereignty and can’t be reformed.
Earlier this yr, President Trump did announce our withdrawal from 66 worldwide organizations. That overview is ongoing. And from my perspective, let me be clear, the U.S. won’t fund organizations that act opposite to our pursuits.
Thanks to the President’s management, we’ve made some unprecedented reforms doable. And I simply need to stroll you thru for a second our progress in 2025 and a few of our objectives.
On finances and staffing cuts, the UN ought to be doing much less and doing it higher. Let’s get it extra targeted and really obtain extra outcomes. The 2026 UN common finances was estimated at $3.45 billion. The U.S. funds roughly a fifth of that at $820 million in 2025 alone.
Again, I believe we want to scale back the UN’s dimension and guarantee each taxpayer greenback is spent responsibly, and thanks to the sturdy efforts by the United States, led by Ambassador Bartos right here and his group in what we name the UN’s Fifth Committee, which approves its finances, we’re working in the direction of a leaner and higher prioritized 2026 finances going ahead.
In December, we led Member States to undertake a historic 15% reduce. $570 million out of the UN’s common finances. That will eradicate practically 3000 headquarters positions. And for our contribution, it’s going to scale back our evaluation by $126 million. So simply in the six months that we’ve been right here, we are going to see going ahead, $126 million financial savings to the U.S. taxpayer.
We’ve additionally pushed for a 25% discount in peacekeeping troops, and I’ll speak a bit about different peacekeeping reforms in a second that will even save us tens if not a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} whereas enabling what we name right here the repatriation, the sending dwelling of poorly performing peacekeeping troops.
These outcomes are unprecedented. They’ve by no means been seen right here in the form of UN ecosystem, and we’ve made it clear that future funding will rely on continued progress and effectivity, effectiveness, and accountability.
On UN compensation and personnel, we’re main reforms to what is commonly exorbitant compensation and profit requirements that the over 100,000 UN employees obtain. The UN pays 17% greater than U.S. equal civil servants, regardless that many of them are proper right here in New York. They even have further beneficiant advantages packages far exceeding what our nice civil servants, each right here and overseas, obtain. And employees prices alone are 70% of their common finances.
So we want to, and we’re working to deliver these compensation and advantages packages again according to widespread sense requirements. Part of that shall be the pension. There’s over $100 billion in administration, in the UN pension with 16% – I don’t know of an employer or a authorities on the market that contributes 16% to their pension.
All of these items we’re attempting to deliver again in line. And there’s different reforms. For instance, the quantity of interpreters and translators – occasions six for the six UN languages right here – know-how can be utilized, AI can be utilized, distant translation can be utilized that may save so much of the journey and the convention prices.
From an oversight perspective, past the salaries and advantages, oversight is crucial. We’re main efforts to empower oversight our bodies to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and misconduct.
On peacekeeping reform, the administration has been clear about specializing in the core mandate of peace and safety, and we’re main efforts to wind down some of these ineffective and dear peacekeeping missions. Some of them have been round for 30, 50, even 80 years. So it’s one factor to cease a battle, to insert a global pressure, to half methods with warring, with the two sides, or to separate them, to create the house for a political decision. But it could’t then change into an excuse to not have a political decision. When you’ve a peacekeeping pressure, for instance, in DRC and Congo, at the price of a billion {dollars} a yr, that’s been there for 30 years – you are able to do the math and see how we have now a mission creep.
So what we’re wanting to do is, as these peacekeeping forces come up for renewal, normally on an annual foundation, tie them to a political course of and use that as a chance to drive efficiencies alongside these strains, once more, led by our reform group right here that we have now an envoy, somebody of an envoy rank devoted to.
This is simply as a fast apart, the reimbursement for the tools that these peacekeeping forces deliver, generally to the tunes of 10,000 18,000 troopers. It’s fairly important. These international locations have been being reimbursed whether or not they use the tools or not. All that they had to do is deliver it. So there was an apparent incentive in place – and we acquired this suggestions from the discipline, to not use the tools very a lot, don’t have so much of put on and tear, and international locations would nonetheless obtain the similar degree of reimbursement.
We simply negotiated new guidelines, first time ever that put requirements in place that the tools truly has to be used for the peacekeeping pressure earlier than you obtain reimbursement. These are the form of widespread sense reforms that I believe are fairly laborious to argue with, though we acquired so much of pushback, as a result of for lots of these international locations, it’s a cash maker for his or her ministries of protection. We have been in a position to simply get these reforms.
Just just a few examples as we glance to streamline these mandates, we’re additionally wanting to draw some of them down. UNIFIL and Lebanon, we’ve made it clear hasn’t achieved its objectives, hasn’t lived up to its mandate and ought to be drawn down in the subsequent yr.
We’re taking a look at a strategic overview of the peacekeeping pressure in Western Sahara that has been there for 50 years.
We are placing benchmarks in place for the peacekeeping pressure that’s in Southern Sudan.
We simply oversaw the orderly closure of UNAMI in Iraq, which is able to scale back prices by $87 million yearly.
We simply pressed for closure of the particular political mission in Yemen that may save $25 million yearly.
We streamlined missions in Colombia and Haiti, saving roughly $20 million yearly.
So once more, these peacekeeping missions that resolve issues not exist indefinitely.
On the humanitarian system, simply as a private apart, as somebody who has served throughout Africa and the Middle East, I can’t inform you what number of occasions I might pull up to this tiny ministry in a small nation in Africa or in South Asia, and you’ve got extra UN autos in the car parking zone than they’ve of their whole ministry from 16, 17, 18, totally different companies, typically with overlapping missions – all which means properly, all attempting to assist. But we’ve now pulled so much of our funding that may pressure these companies to use the similar warehouses, use the similar aviation, use the similar automobile fleets, and eradicate so much of that duplication of waste of their again places of work.
So transferring ahead, these reforms have made some important steps. We have a great distance to go – as I’m certain we’ll hear about at this time – to create a extra targeted, leaner and efficient UN. We are simply getting began. We’re constructing on this momentum heading into the subsequent yr with each lengthy overdue modifications, the UN’s compensation system and pension plan, streamlining these peacekeeping missions, halting waste that undermine the effectiveness. And we’ll work with the UN management to align our reform agenda with the Secretary-General’s – what he calls his UN 80 mandate.
We may have a brand new Secretary-General elected this yr, and we’re having these conversations now with the candidates of what they search to preserve and proceed, or what new they search to put in place, however reform is at the high of our record as we meet with some of these candidates.
So this can be a important second with senior management transitions approaching right here over this subsequent yr. We want to have a transparent message. We will prioritize certified Americans. Representative DeLauro, alongside the strains of what you sought to accomplish that a few years in the past, of having certified Americans in UN management positions, not simply right here, however throughout the ecosystem in Geneva, in Vienna, and Nairobi and different locations the place you’ve UN companies.
And I’ll simply conclude with echoing President Trump’s personal phrases. As he stated most not too long ago at the General Assembly: the UN has super potential. My cost from him is to assist it understand that potential. We are devoted to making the UN stay up to that promise, to making the UN nice once more – if I can say so our new acronym, MUNGA. The UN is the one place the place everybody can speak. If we walked away tomorrow – which I nor the president, are advocating – it might be reinvented some place else. I’ll push laborious and constantly to have it proper right here in the United States the place it belongs.
And I look ahead to holding open dialogue together with your committee. I thanks for the laws, Chairman, that you simply pushed by. It provides further arrows in our quiver to assist make the UN nice once more. Thanks a lot.
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