Testimony of Ambassador Mike Waltz, US Representative to the United Nations, at a Congressional Field Hearing on UN Reform

Ambassador Mike Waltz
US 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 need to notably thank each your employees and the nice workforce 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 need to say this to all the committee members, helps our arguments. It’s serving to our case throughout the avenue 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 warfare, nuclear weapons getting used for the first and solely time in historical past that would by no means occur once more.

But it is also sending a message that the Congress is watching intently. I inform my colleagues this and the UN Secretariat and paperwork all the time, do not simply pay attention 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 far more fiscally restrained place. We have money owed which can be exploding, and we even have constituents which can be asking robust questions. So I actually do recognize you taking the trip 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 unique mission, from its founding, again to sustaining worldwide peace and safety. As I’ve talked about in my listening to then the UN’s price range 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 paperwork, to eradicate duplication. We’ve made it clear that we’ll stop participation in some UN businesses that undermine our sovereignty and can’t be reformed.

Earlier this 12 months, President Trump did announce our withdrawal from 66 worldwide organizations. That evaluation is ongoing. And from my perspective, let me be clear, the US won’t fund organizations that act opposite to our pursuits.

Thanks to the President’s management, we have made some unprecedented reforms attainable. And I simply need to stroll you thru for a second our progress in 2025 and a few of our objectives.

On price range and staffing cuts, the UN must be doing much less and doing it higher. Let’s get it extra targeted and truly obtain extra outcomes. The 2026 UN common price range was estimated at $3.45 billion. The US funds roughly a fifth of that at $820 million in 2025 alone.

Again, I believe we want to cut back the UN’s dimension and guarantee each taxpayer greenback is spent responsibly, and thanks to the robust efforts by the United States, led by Ambassador Bartos right here and his workforce in what we name the UN’s Fifth Committee, which approves its price range, we’re working in the direction of a leaner and higher prioritized 2026 price range going ahead.

In December, we led Member States to undertake a historic 15% lower. $570 million out of the UN’s common price range. That will eradicate almost 3000 headquarters positions. And for our contribution, it can cut back our evaluation by $126 million. So simply in the six months that we have been right here, we are going to see going ahead, $126 million financial savings to the US taxpayer.

We’ve additionally pushed for a 25% discount in peacekeeping troops, and I’ll discuss a bit about different peacekeeping reforms in a second that may 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 have 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 usually exorbitant compensation and profit requirements that the over 100,000 UN employees obtain. The UN pays 17% greater than US equal civil servants, though many of them are proper right here in New York. They even have extra 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 price range.

So we want to, and we’re working to deliver these compensation and advantages packages again in step with widespread sense requirements. Part of that shall be the pension. There’s over $100 billion in administration, in the UN pension with 16% – I do not know of an employer or a authorities on the market that contributes 16% to their pension.

All of this stuff 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 a lot 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 focusing on 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 is one factor to cease a battle, to insert a global drive, to half methods with warring, with the two sides, or to separate them, to create the house for a political decision. But it might’t then grow to be an excuse to not have a political decision. When you might have a peacekeeping drive, for instance, in DRC and Congo, at the value of a billion {dollars} a 12 months, that is been there for 30 years – you are able to do the math and see how we now have a mission creep.

So what we’re trying 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 traces, once more, led by our reform workforce right here that we now have 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, typically to the tunes of 10,000 or 18,000 troopers. It’s fairly important. These nations have been being reimbursed whether or not they used the tools or not. All they’d to do is deliver it. So there was an apparent incentive in place – and we obtained this suggestions from the area, to not use the tools very a lot, haven’t got a lot of put on and tear, and nations would nonetheless obtain the similar stage of reimbursement.

We simply negotiated new guidelines, first time ever that put requirements in place that the tools really has to be used for the peacekeeping drive earlier than you obtain reimbursement. These are the form of widespread sense reforms that I believe are fairly arduous to argue with, though we obtained a lot of pushback, as a result of for a lot of these nations, it is a cash maker for his or her ministries of protection. We have been in a position to simply get these reforms.

Just a few examples as we glance to streamline these mandates, we’re additionally trying to draw some of them down. UNIFIL and Lebanon, we have made it clear hasn’t achieved its objectives, hasn’t lived up to its mandate and must be drawn down in the subsequent 12 months.

We’re trying at a strategic evaluation of the peacekeeping drive in Western Sahara that has been there for 50 years.

We are placing benchmarks in place for the peacekeeping drive that is in Southern Sudan.

We simply oversaw the orderly closure of UNAMI in Iraq, which is able to cut 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 don’t exist indefinitely.

On the humanitarian system, simply as a individual apart, as somebody who has served throughout Africa and the Middle East, I can not let you know what number of occasions I’d pull up to this tiny ministry in a small nation attempting in Africa or in South Asia, and you’ve got extra UN automobiles in the parking zone than they’ve of their whole ministry from 16, 17, 18, totally different businesses, typically with overlapping missions – all that means effectively, all to assist. But we have now pulled a lot of our funding that may drive these businesses to use the similar warehouses, use the similar aviation, use the similar car fleets, and eradicate a lot of that duplication of waste of their again places of work.

So shifting ahead, these reforms have taken some important steps. We have a great distance to go – as I’m certain we’ll hear about right this moment – to create a extra targeted, leaner and efficient UN. We are simply getting began. We’re constructing on this momentum heading into the subsequent 12 months with each lengthy overdue adjustments, the UN’s compensation system and pension plan, streamlining these peacekeeping missions, halting waste that undermines 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 can have a new Secretary-General elected this 12 months, 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 prime of our listing as we meet with some of these candidates.

So that is a important second with senior management transitions approaching right here over this subsequent 12 months. We want to have a clear message. We will prioritize certified Americans. Representative DeLauro, alongside the traces of what you sought to achieve this 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 might have UN businesses.

And I’ll simply conclude with echoing President Trump’s personal phrases. As he mentioned most not too long ago at the General Assembly: the UN has large potential. My cost from him is to assist him notice 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 discuss. If we walked away tomorrow – which I nor the president, are advocating – it could be reinvented elsewhere. I’ll push arduous and repeatedly to have it proper right here in the United States the place it belongs.

And I look ahead to protecting open dialogue together with your committee. I thanks for the laws, Chairman, that you just pushed via. It provides extra arrows in our quiver to assist make the UN nice once more. Thanks a lot.

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