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The government’s own oversight body has validated what figures have long indicated: the United Nations is not reliable in handling the funds it receives, with the State Department partially to blame for enabling this mismanagement.
According to a newly released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from April, an examination of 11 U.N. capital projects totaling over $4 billion revealed significant issues. These included extensive delays, costs exceeding initial estimates by hundreds of millions, contractor inefficiencies, and impractical designs, all overseen by a State Department bureau lacking a proper monitoring system.
American taxpayers are bearing the brunt of these financial burdens. The GAO confirmed that in 2023, the United States was the U.N.’s largest financial backer. As of early 2026, the U.S. had accrued around $2.2 billion in unpaid dues, a figure the U.N. has been keen to highlight while simultaneously allowing construction projects to falter. This situation is less about insufficient funding and more about severe management flaws masquerading as a budget crisis.
It’s Time for the U.S. to Reevaluate Its Support for the United Nations
The most glaring example of this mismanagement is the U.N.’s “Strategic Heritage Plan” in Geneva, which is now four years overdue and $91 million over its initial $871.4 million budget. The GAO report attributed delays to factors like the COVID pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and contractor issues. These are challenges faced by private construction firms, yet they still manage to complete projects. The lack of competitive pressure and accountability at the U.N. results in predictable outcomes, as highlighted in the report.
The single biggest disaster is the U.N.’s “Strategic Heritage Plan” in Geneva, a renovation now four years behind schedule and $91 million over its original $871.4 million budget. COVID, supply chain issues, contractor failures: GAO cites them all. So does every private construction firm that still manages to finish buildings. The U.N. has no competitive pressure and no consequences for failure, and it shows. The report, linked above, noted:
“Costs increased by 27 percent from the baseline because of the SHP’s schedule extensions.”
The project’s risk firm calculated that for every month of delay, the costs rise about $1 million.
It gets worse. The contractor on Building H, part of the same Geneva project, couldn’t manage its own subcontractors, finished two years late, and then left behind a defect list that kept growing long after “completion.”
“In December 2022, the list of minor defects that were not addressed included 10,588 issues that the SHP team had identified. By February 2024, the list had increased to 11,350 issues and included 412 on which there was disagreement with the contractor.”
Then there’s the International Telecommunication Union headquarters project. Member states approved architectural blueprints without anyone considering “cost and functionality.” Architects had “free rein,” billed for designs that were never buildable, and walked away. The GAO reported the U.N. burned through more than $20 million before scrapping the original plan entirely — not one wall built, not one foundation poured. In any organization accountable to someone, that would be a career-ending failure. Here, it barely registers.
The State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs had no formal guidance for monitoring any of it. No written indicators. No threshold for when to intervene. No chain of accountability. Staff rotated every few years and largely made it up as they went.
“State IO officials said they do not systematically monitor key indicators, such as budget and schedule, and do not have clear triggers, such as percentage over budget or time behind schedule, for when to take action.”
GAO recommended State develop formal oversight guidance. And State agreed, a basic step that somehow required a congressional audit to produce.
Now consider the timing. In January, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned all 196 member states of “imminent financial collapse” if the U.S. didn’t pay its dues, claiming the organization would run out of money by July. Pay up, or else.
What Guterres didn’t dwell on: his organization was four years behind schedule in Geneva, had torched $20 million on unusable designs, and let a defect list balloon past 11,000 unresolved issues. This is the same organization demanding to know why Washington is hesitating.
President Trump has already pulled the U.S. from several U.N. agencies. He should keep going. The GAO report makes the case without any editorializing: $4 billion in projects, years behind schedule, $20 million torched before a shovel hit dirt, and a State Department with no system to catch any of it. We need to stop paying, and start leaving them for good.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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