Look, nobody sits through 10+ sessions of UN negotiations from November to June. Nobody.
I did, and someone from ISHR, and we’ve been reading everything coming out of New York and Geneva alongside it, so let me just give it to you.
But before I walk you through the countries, watch this video first. It’s Mike Waltz, the US Ambassador to the UN, on the Sean Ryan Show, describing what he calls UN reform.
Listen to what he actually says in there:
2,600 international bureaucrats, gone.
25% of peacekeepers, gone.
An 18% budget cut, the first real one in the organization’s history.
And the US withholding its entire 25% share of the funding until it sees the reforms it wants. His words: “If we don’t see the reform, we don’t pay.” Get back to basics, stop wars, and drop “all this gender, climate, all this other nonsense.”
Now understand what you just watched.
UN80 was supposed to be a birthday. The organization turning 80, anniversary events, celebration, the whole thing. Instead, the biggest funder walked in, put the money on the table, and said: reforms or nothing.
That’s how UN80 went from a celebration to a hostage situation. And I don’t use those words lightly. When someone holds the thing you need and names the price of getting it back, there’s a word for that, and I just used it.
Everything I’m about to show you, every country, every position, every vote, is happening inside that hostage situation. That’s the context. Don’t lose it.
Okay.
Now, if you’re new to this, let me set the table, because I need you to actually understand what’s happening here, not just nod along.
The UN runs on things called mandates.
A mandate is just an instruction from countries to the UN: Write this report, hold this meeting, create this expert position, investigate this situation. Every mechanism you care about, the Special Rapporteur, the Expert Mechanism, the Permanent Forum, all of it exists because of mandates.
And this year, for the first time in about 20 years, the countries of the world sat down to decide how mandates get created, reviewed, merged, and killed. That process produced a resolution called 80/251. It passed the General Assembly on March 31.
So when I tell you what these countries said in those rooms, I’m not giving you gossip. I’m telling you who’s going to decide whether the things protecting your community still exist in 3 years. That’s the whole reason to read this.
The scoreboard first
The final vote was 168 in favour, 4 against, zero abstentions. And by the way, if you saw a 149-3-1 number floating around earlier, that number was wrong. 168-4-0. That’s the real count.
Russia forced that vote. Russia also tried to amend the text and tried to stretch the talks another month, and both of those attempts got killed by something called a “no action” motion, which Norway and Switzerland put forward.
What’s a no action motion?
It’s when the room votes to not even discuss your amendment. Over 90 countries backed it. Twice. Think about what that means. The room didn’t just disagree with Russia. The room refused to even have the conversation.
Now, here’s what matters going forward.
A new Working Group started May 1 and has to finish by April 30, 2027. The rules for reviewing existing mandates, and yes, that includes Human Rights Council mandates, are due in August 2026. And in December 2026, the Secretary-General delivers a list of mandates that are “inactive, duplicative, or fully implemented.” I call that the kill list, because that’s what it is. It’s the menu of things that can get retired.
One more date. A new Secretary-General takes office January 2027. Right in the middle of all this. Hold that thought, we’re coming back to it.
The two rooms, and why you can’t understand anything without this
Okay, this is the single most important thing in this whole piece, so I’m going to take my time with it.
There are two rooms. There’s the room where countries give speeches and vote on resolutions. And there’s the room where countries decide what actually gets money. The second room is called the Fifth Committee. It sits in New York, and it controls the budget for the entire UN system. Every mandate, every mechanism, every report, if it costs money, and everything costs money, the Fifth Committee decides whether it gets funded.
And before anything even reaches the Fifth Committee, it goes through a body called the ACABQ, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions. I know, terrible name. Here’s what it does. The ACABQ reviews the Secretary-General’s budget proposals before the countries ever debate them, and it shapes the actual staff positions, the travel money, the conference support, the real working capacity behind a mandate. Which means cuts can get locked in there, quietly, technically, before the political fight even begins.
So here’s the game, and once you see it you can’t unsee it.
A country votes yes on something in Geneva. Big speech, warm words, everyone claps. Then that same country’s delegation shows up at the Fifth Committee in New York and votes against funding the exact thing they just voted for. Same government. Two rooms. Two completely different answers.
And nobody has to be the villain in either room, because the yes vote happened over here and the no vote happened over there and most people are only watching one room.
Every country I’m about to walk you through, you have to read them through both rooms. The Geneva or UNGA speech is half the position. The Fifth Committee vote is the other half.
Reading only one is how people get played.
The countries pushing hardest for reform
Let me start with the states driving this thing. Some of them sound like allies. Some of them are allies. But read the fine print on every single one.
United States
You already watched their position. The video at the top of this piece is the US position, stated more honestly on a podcast than it ever gets stated in the room. Everything their diplomats said over these 8 months is the polished version of what Waltz said into that microphone.
Inside the room, they came out swinging on literally day one, November 14. Their whole argument was money: $360 million a year spent on meetings and reports, reports that are 40% longer than they were 20 years ago. The US delegate literally said “I’ll buy dinner” for anyone who can prove those reports are worth it. That’s the energy they brought to the first meeting.
By March they sent their ambassador, who called the text “strong and balanced,” warned everyone against watering it down, and said that resisting a new Working Group would be “a pretty big cop out.” And then he said the quiet part out loud, on the record: “We can make the United Nations great again.” He actually said that. In the room.
Now here’s what you have to hold in your head at the same time. While saying all this, the US is withholding its entire 25% contribution, exactly like Waltz said in the video, and 95% of the $1.6 billion in unpaid dues to the UN is American. So understand what’s happening: The speeches are theater. The money is the actual play. The US doesn’t need to win arguments in the room because it’s already holding the hostage outside the room.
What do I expect from them? Maximum pressure through the budget, and the most aggressive possible definition of the word “duplication.” Remember that word. When the Working Group defines it, watch whose pen is moving.
European Union
The EU has been pro-reform from the start. Fewer meetings, shorter reports, they even wanted AI tools in the mandate registry from day one. In March they were the biggest supporters of the new tools and wanted the Working Group to have real teeth.
But here’s the thing about the EU, and I say this with respect for the people in those delegations. Every single statement they’ve made since April carries the same caveat, almost word for word: efficiency can’t come at the cost of human rights capacity. Every statement. Like clockwork.
And that red line already got crossed. The 2026 budget cut the human rights office deeper than the other two pillars of the UN, and the EU pushed back, and then accepted it. No vote forced. Nothing. So when I tell you their protective language is real but soft, that’s not me being cynical, that’s me reading what already happened.
What I expect? Expect a reliable pro-reform vote that defends human rights in speeches and folds under consensus pressure when the money’s on the table. Plan around that.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand (they negotiate together as CANZ)
These three started with something you almost never hear in a UN room: Honesty about themselves. Their opening statement said, basically, we the member states made this mess. We created too many mandates, too many meetings, and now the system is drowning. Our own doing.
In March, when other countries complained that a new Working Group would cost too much, Australia put the actual number on the table: $200,000 over 18 months, and called it value for money. They also said, straight up, that line-by-line negotiation would have killed this whole process. That’s a direct shot at Russia, and everybody in the room knew it.
But then something interesting happened, and this is why you read the fine print. On reviewing mandates, CANZ wants everything, maximum ambition. On the merger of two UN agencies (UNFPA and UN Women, the ones handling reproductive health and women’s rights), CANZ suddenly got very, very careful.
They asked where the analysis was behind the claimed savings. They pointed out the assessment had no legal analysis and considered no alternatives. They said protecting the mandates “may be difficult to guarantee within a merger scenario.” Their words.
So I expect a split personality: Hardline on mandate review, evidence-demanding on mergers. And they’ve already said publicly that the next Secretary-General needs to be a committed reformer. They’re playing the transition. Smart.
Norway and Switzerland
Simple story here. These are the two countries that actually saved the resolution. Their no-action motions are the only reason Russia’s amendments died. When the August fight comes and the text is under attack again, these two carry the shield again. That’s their job and they’re good at it.
Singapore and the Small States Group
Pay attention to this one, because it matters way more than people realize. The Small States Group is 52 to 55 countries, from every region, developed and developing together. Which means whatever they endorse gets to call itself cross-regional. That’s power.
Their whole argument is actually beautiful in its simplicity: small states get hurt most when the system is overloaded, because a delegation of 3 people cannot track 40,000 mandates. So the new tools, the registry, the concept notes, those help small delegations keep up. And notice what that does. The cautious camp says these tools burden developing countries. The Small States Group, full of developing countries, says the opposite. That argument war is not settled.
They haven’t committed yet on the Human Rights Council mandate question. Whoever wins them over gets to tell the legitimacy story. I’m watching them closely.
Liechtenstein
The thinker of the reform camp. Cost every resolution. Break the habit that every resolution automatically needs a report. And here’s my favorite moment: Their ambassador admitted, on the record, that member states “have lost our way a little bit” in how sloppily they write mandates. When Liechtenstein starts hedging, the small-state wing of the reform camp is cracking. They haven’t started hedging.
Japan, Korea, Romania, the UK, Croatia
Steady reform votes all year. Romania gave the single best argument for putting a deadline on the new Working Group: The working group on GA revitalization has existed for 20 years. Twenty years! That’s the alternative to deadlines, and everyone knows it.
The countries that fought it
Russia
Russia’s position never moved one inch in 8 months, and honestly, you have to respect the consistency even while you fight it. Day one: decisions belong to member states, period, and the Secretariat should advise only when asked. Everything else is overreach.
By March they were saying the new tools “must remain strictly auxiliary,” that they were “flabbergasted” anyone would oppose line-by-line negotiation, and they opposed basically every new idea in the text. Then they lost everything. Amendments dead. Vote forced. 168 to 4, with only Belarus, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Iran anywhere near them.
And then came the pivot, and this is the part you actually need to watch.
From April on, Russia stopped fighting the resolution, because that fight was over, and started fighting the implementation. Suddenly it’s all questions: Which proposals get member state decisions? Why is nobody talking about geographic representation of UN staff?
And in June, Russia did something clever: It publicly backed Palau and the Solomon Islands, small island states, on their demand for clarity about how reform proposals get approved. Russia wrapping itself in small island credibility. That was not an accident, absolutely not.
One more thing, and remember the two rooms.
In December, at the Fifth Committee, Russia co-led the yearly motion to completely defund 18 Human Rights Council investigations, and called them “anti-Russian and anti-Belarusian” out loud. That motion lost 85 to 14. They run it every single year. They’ll run it again.
What to expect? War by procedure inside the new Working Group. Here’s why that matters. The plenary vote is majority rules, and Russia loses majority votes. But working groups run on consensus culture, and consensus culture gives a determined loser power that votes take away. Line-by-line demands on the August rules. Budget challenges on everything. More borrowing of legitimate small-state concerns as cover. That’s what I expect.
Belarus
Almost silent all year. One procedural complaint. Belarus exists in this process to second whatever Russia says. Expect nothing independent, ever.
Nicaragua
One real intervention all year: The new Working Group is duplication, and cross-cutting criteria hurt developing countries. Then voted no. But here’s why Nicaragua matters more than its silence suggests: it makes sovereignty arguments in development language. It’s the translator between Russia’s bloc and the skeptics inside the G77. When you hear Nicaragua’s phrasing coming out of other delegations’ mouths, that’s the bridge working.
North Korea and Iran: invisible in the working meetings, spoke against at the adoption. They’re votes, not voices.
The middle, where the real fight lives now
Now we get to the interesting part.
These next countries all voted yes. All of them. And every single one of them wants the implementation on a shorter leash. 6 months from now, the real fight is not with Russia. The real fight is right here in the middle, over how sharp this thing actually gets. So let me walk you through them one by one.
China
If you understand China’s game, you understand half the board, so let me take my time here.
Day one, China’s statement was fully supportive of efficiency and reform. And in the same breath: By the way, we paid our $680 million contribution in full, and we urge “the largest contributor” to do the same. Friendly tone. Knife inside it. That’s the whole China approach in one sentence.
In March, China said: “we do not support the establishment of a new Working Group.” Warned about creating a “super mechanism above all existing bodies.” Wanted everything case by case, by consensus, through existing structures. Their deputy ambassador literally closed with a proverb about how a thousand-mile journey starts with one step, meaning: Slow down.
And then China voted yes anyway. Why? Because China does not stand alone in a 168-4 room. That’s not how they play.
Now, the two rooms.
Remember December at the Fifth Committee?
China tabled every single proposal to cut the human rights office deeper. Every one. While carving out protection for exactly 2 initiatives: The ones China itself runs at the Human Rights Council. And China’s own contribution, wired on December 27, arrived too late to spend, which is a big part of why $300 million had to be handed back unspent.
So what do you expect from the smartest player on the board?
This: Inside the Working Group, China will support “efficiency” whenever it kills mandates China dislikes, and will invoke “developing country concerns” whenever that protects mandates China likes. Both positions, same country, deployed as needed. China is the state most likely to quietly shape what “duplication” ends up meaning.
Never, ever read China’s General Assembly speeches without its Fifth Committee record sitting right next to them. It’s one strategy wearing two outfits.
Pakistan
Pakistan is, honestly, the sharpest lawyer in the room, and I mean that as a real compliment. Not just at the UNGA, but also at the HRC (I always have to suit up in the Indigenous Peoples resolution).
On January 26, Pakistan was the first country to say the thing: This process was supposed to be a review of how mandates get implemented, and it has quietly turned into a review of whether mandates should exist. One sentence. Everything the cautious camp argued for the next 5 months was built on top of that one sentence.
In March, Pakistan went through the draft paragraph by paragraph like a contract lawyer. Called one paragraph “factually incorrect,” and backed it up. Demanded deletions. Told the room a story about a government that once created a committee to review all its other committees, which got the point across better than an hour of speeches.
And their big consistent demand: The safeguards protecting certain mandates from review must follow into every downstream process. Everything that comes after.
Here’s the part I need you to actually use.
Pakistan said some mandates are “inconvenient for some but essential for many others.” Sit with that for a moment. That is a mandate-protection argument, fully formed, sitting right there, from a country nobody accuses of being soft on sovereignty. You can borrow that argument. It’s already been made for you, me, us.
Egypt
Watch Egypt’s movie, because it’s the best character arc in this whole story.
Egypt started as a blocker. Concept notes shouldn’t be mandatory. Putting cost figures in them would turn every negotiation into a budget fight. And my favorite line of the whole process: “establishing new bodies is the antithesis of what we are trying to achieve.” That’s a blocker talking.
Then watch what happened.
By April, Egypt was presenting a careful 4-part risk framework on the agency merger, covering mandate protection, operations, funding, and transition, and it landed almost word for word where Australia landed a few days later.
Egypt and Australia. Same page. Neither one planned it. Egypt also launched its own dialogue series on financing the UN’s field presence, which is what a country does when it’s building a platform.
Egypt is turning from blocker into broker. And here’s what you need to know about brokers: Brokers write the compromises. When merger criteria hit the Working Group, do not be surprised when the final landing zone has Egyptian fingerprints all over it.
India
India is the swing state, and India knows it’s the swing state, which makes it twice as interesting.
India backed the ambitious outcome and backed the new Working Group with a hard deadline, which split it from the cautious camp on day one. But India has one sharp edge, and for us it’s the most important sentence any country said all year: The exemption protecting mandates from review must be limited to “foundational and universal norm setting mandates.” Said very direct. Said repeatedly. Narrower than anyone else wanted.
Why does that matter to you?
Because whether something counts as a “foundational norm-setting mandate” is exactly the question that decides whether Indigenous-relevant mandates are protected from this review or exposed to it. That’s the whole ballgame, and India is holding the definition.
India also wants UN staff moved to Global South duty stations, ties everything back to Security Council reform, and was warmer on the agency merger than Australia was.
What I expect? I expect India to trade. Efficiency support in exchange for representation wins. If you get a chance to engage India, engage them on the definition of norm-setting. The definition. Specifically. Not the vibes around it.
Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Syria, El Salvador
All voted yes while asking for tighter member state control. Cuba runs its annual attempt to delete certain references at budget time, loses, and files again the next year, which tells you something about persistence as strategy. Saudi Arabia says little in the working meetings and negotiates hard everywhere else. None of these four will lead anything. All of them will amplify whichever direction the middle tilts.
The developing country mainstream
The G77 plus China, with Uruguay holding the pen
The G77 is the big negotiating bloc of developing countries, 134 of them, and Uruguay delivered its statements all year. In March: mandates are the “exclusive prerogative of member states,” respect the diversity of mandates, no one-size-fits-all. On the new Working Group, the G77 said it “remains engaged in internal deliberations,” which is diplomat language for “our members don’t agree with each other.” And they didn’t.
The cautious camp (Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Cuba) and the tool-friendly members (the Small States Group overlap, the Caribbean states) were in the same tent pulling opposite directions all year.
From April on, every single G77 statement opened with the same sentence: Reforms “should not lead to the dilution of development mandates.” Four meetings in a row. Same sentence. And here’s the thing, when 134 countries repeat one sentence four times, that sentence is the whole position. Everything else is decoration.
I expect unity on protecting the development pillar and cracks on everything else. August will strain this group hard. Watch Uruguay’s pen.
The South American group that keeps breaking ranks
Okay. This is the most useful thing on the entire map, so if you only remember one section, make it this one.
For 2 years running, a group of South American countries, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Uruguay, joined lately by the Bahamas, Guatemala, and Mexico, has broken away from the G77’s line at the Fifth Committee to table their own proposals defending full funding for Human Rights Council mandates. On the record.
Against the cuts.
Their argument, in their words: “blanket reductions risk undermining mandate delivery.”
Have they won a vote yet? No. They’ve lost every one.
But here’s what happened in December that should make you sit up straight: They picked up new supporters from outside the region. Cabo Verde. Mauritius. Maldives. And what pulled those three in? Climate-related human rights mandates. Countries facing rising seas realized the budget cuts were coming for the mandates connecting climate to human rights, and they crossed over.
Add this up.
Chile led a 40-state statement in December warning about the budget squeeze on human rights. 92 states signed a pledge in March to defend human rights through the whole UN80 process. Three years ago, none of this existed. Zero.
So here’s my read:
This group is small, it keeps losing, and it keeps growing at the same time. And the climate argument that pulled in Cabo Verde, Mauritius, and Maldives works the exact same way for Indigenous rights mandates. Same logic, same door. That’s where the alliance-building energy should go. Not toward the states already with us. Toward that door.
The Pacific and small island states
Solomon Islands speaking for the Pacific Islands Forum, Palau for the small island alliance, plus Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga. These countries voted for the resolution, they genuinely want efficiency, and they completely depend on UN field presence at the same time. Pulled in every direction at once, and honestly, fair enough.
By June their key demand crystallized into one clean question: Tell us exactly how these reform proposals get approved by member states. Completely fair question. And then Russia immediately endorsed it, which tells you the question has power, and also tells you the PSIDS are careful about who’s standing next to them when they ask it.
Their demand is legitimate and it’s separable from Russia’s use of it. I hope the association won’t poison it. I can see them joining the South American group soon.
The African Group
Not one unified actor in this process yet, and that’s the story. South Africa argued for the new Working Group’s machinery while staying with the G77 on substance. Zambia, Senegal, and South Africa spoke in favour at the adoption. Mali and Angola stayed procedural.
But here’s the data point that matters.
When the South Americans broke ranks on human rights funding in December, the African Group mostly stayed quiet. Only Cabo Verde and Mauritius crossed. That quiet is the gap.
And we already know from the toxics resolution that the African Group will take real ownership of a rights mandate when somebody does the unglamorous cross-ministry legwork of connecting their Geneva people to their other delegations. Somebody’s been doing that legwork, and if you paid attention to the UN80 360 degree briefing you know who did that legwork.
The same play works here.
What I actually think happens next
Let me pull this together into what I actually believe, having watched all of it, based on what I know so far:
Nobody is fighting about whether to reform anymore. That fight ended 168 to 4. The whole game now is who controls 4 words: “duplication,” “completed,” “inactive,” and “norm-setting.” Those words become criteria. Criteria become lists. Lists become dead mandates. Everything every country has done since April is positioning around those words.
The blocs that held together for the resolution fight are scrambling for the implementation fight. Egypt sounds like Australia now. Russia quotes Palau. India is more pro-merger than Canada. Knowing which bloc a country belongs to tells you less than it did in March. Knowing where they stand on each specific question tells you more. That’s a real change in how you have to work the room.
I’ve said it twice already but I’m saying it again because it’s the most important thing in this piece: the Fifth Committee and the reform room are one game played by the same people in different costumes. China votes yes in the General Assembly and cuts at the Fifth Committee. The US preaches discipline while holding the system’s wallet hostage. Read both rooms or you’re reading nothing.
Human rights mandates are protected on paper and exposed in practice. The formal exclusions cover “foundational” and “structural” mandates, which sounds great, until you notice that Human Rights Council mandates sit fully inside the review, that the human rights office took the deepest budget cut of the UN’s three pillars, and that the slow starvation of secretariats, and you know exactly which secretariat I mean, runs completely underneath this review’s radar. The shield covers the things nobody is currently shooting at. The things being shot at aren’t under the shield.
A Global South pro-funding coalition is being born, and climate is what’s feeding it. Two years of South Americans breaking ranks, three new members from Africa and Asia, a 40-state warning, a 92-state pledge. It keeps losing and it keeps growing, and in this work, a thing that keeps growing while losing is a thing worth investing in early. Ask anyone who organized anything.
The new Secretary-General walks in the door in January 2027, and one month before that, in December 2026, the kill list lands: The official review of inactive and duplicative mandates. So a brand-new SG, hunting for early wins to prove they’re serious about reform, gets handed a menu of things to retire in their first 100 days. Whoever shapes that December list shapes what the new SG serves. That’s the whole game in one sentence. Oh and btw, the SG is elected by the 5 Permanent Members of the Security Council, which includes….you know who.
The calendar, screenshot this
End of July 2026:The Working Group takes up the review of the Secretary-General’s reports, which ones get merged, which ones go from yearly to every 2 or 3 years. That’s the first live test of death by slower reporting.
August 2026: The rules for reviewing existing mandates land, Human Rights Council mandates included. For our mechanisms, this is the most important document of the year. Not one of the most important. The most important.
End of September 2026: Advice on reviewing mandates across different UN bodies, the “clustered review” idea the US and Australia love and Pakistan called baseless.
End of December 2026: The kill list. The named mandates considered inactive, duplicative, or done.
January 2027: New Secretary-General.
End of March 2027: The Working Group considers the kill list.
April 30, 2027: The Working Group finishes.
That’s 8 months of meetings turned into one map.
And here’s the thing that gets me: None of these countries are hiding any of this. They’re saying their positions out loud, on the record, session after session, betting that nobody’s tracking it.
Track it.
