THE DOGE-UN Charter

Table of Contents

1. THE DOGE-UN Charter (Introduction)

Many major donor UN member states are closely assessing their resources and scaling back on customary giving. The United States's spending cuts would be the most significant.

The United States announced a 180-day review (by the end of August 2025) of all intergovernmental organizations in which it participates. This is an ambitious task, but our approach will support that effort to review the resources flowing to the United Nations’ accounts and whether they’re valuable. That effort will show if the UN works and whether it works for the US and other Member States.

2. Assessing UN Actions on International Threats

DOGE-UN will assess UN actions on international threats that Americans rank as follows:

  • Terrorism on the US 49%
  • Immigration into the US 49%
  • Drug trafficking 44%
  • Cyberattacks on the US 35%
  • Climate change 33%
  • Preventing another global pandemic 28%
  • Preventing a global economic crisis 27%
  • Protecting human rights globally 27%
  • Preventing disinformation from abroad 22%
  • Securing critical supply chains 20%
  • Upholding democracy globally 20%
  • U.S.-China Relations 20%
  • Iran nuclear deal 18%
  • Russia's invasion of Ukraine 17%
  • The Israel-Hamas war 14%

NOTE: Shares of voters citing each topic as among the top five most important foreign policy issues for the US.
Source: Morning Consult Political Intelligence

With this as DOGE-UN’s first step, the shadow review methodology will then assess the respective UN actions, to the extent that there are actions relating to these American concerns, and assess their effectiveness and efficiency.

3. Assessing Effectiveness and Efficiency

How do we assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the UN bureaucracy?

On any given day, is it doing the right thing, and doing it in the right way?

In bringing tough love to the UN’s doorstep, critics caution against throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

4. The Riddle of UN Value

Here’s the riddle: unlike most enterprises, the UN is not a for-profit business that could depend upon stock and bond market-type indicators to reflect its performance and value year-over-year.

The UN’s “profits and losses" reside only in the minds-eyes of its supporters and detractors alike.

Public rancor has prevailed, instead of a sober assessment of the UN’s future viability and needed reforms.

The UN has been missing in action over Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and other headline news, yet budgets itself north of $20 billion (by safe estimates).

Regardless, public opinion thinks the UN has no profit-centers, only loss centers.

The reality: there are simply no financial metrics to account, unambiguously, for UN-generated profits or losses.

Yes, there is an abiding sense that the UN is somehow net-positive in the ledger of goodwill, and that better stewardship might generate enough continued goodwill net/net to satisfy its critics.

However, these goodwill-generating activities need to be defined in substantive and relevant, non-financial terms, to validate the UN's value proposition to its various resource contributors and stakeholders. Including showing outcomes that align with Member States’ agendas and directives.

DOGE-UN invites all to join this challenge.

Below are our initial recommendations…

In order to find the proverbial baby in the deep bathwater - if the baby is still there. We are searching for it, and if it’s there we will focus on what it needs.

The UN is the world’s hub for cooperation, coordination and collective action to promote peace, security, development, and human rights globally.

It deserves radically-improved stewardship and administration.

So, if it’s worth keeping, let’s find out WHY and HOW best.

5. WHY is the UN worth keeping?

Participation in inter-governmental organizations is a matter of national interest. In today’s world, national interest depends on the quality of the global neighborhood.

Recently US Secretary of State Rubio offered a three-point quick-check test for each foreign engagement to consider. Other countries make the same calculation:

  • Does it make our country safer?
  • Does it make our country stronger?
  • Does it make our country more prosperous?

Thoughtful answers will indicate why participation in inter-governmental organizations is worth keeping.

6. HOW is the UN best worth keeping?

When nations interact well is how a good global neighborhood happens.

“Live and let live”: Eventually, cavemen tired of their “fight-or- flight” instincts. Customs evolved for co-existence.

When everyone makes nice, their surpluses get shared and traded for better quality of living. Cooperation starts between nations - deliberately - to benefit their peoples.

As paths and zones overlap, cooperation needs a few rules-of-the- road. We move up to coordination - among nations.

When bigger threats arise everywhere, nations have gone beyond co-existence, cooperation and coordination to designing and taking collective action to face down challenges shadowing all their doorsteps and thresholds.

A nation-state could refer usefully to the following checklist for assessing the value proposition for participating in an inter-governmental organization:

  • Does it provide an effective way to promote core national interests of a Member State?
  • Does it work efficiently and provide good return on a Member State’s investment?
  • Does it help a Member State achieve soft power goals, in terms of reputation and influence?
  • What are the implications if other Member States assume leadership in the organization in the absence of a given Member State’s voice and funding?
  • Is working through the respective organization, even if less central to a Member State’s national interests, a means to secure leverage in other venues on more critical issues?

7. Practical Steps of Stewardship

As regards the duties of Member States to the United Nations Organization, let’s break down the practical steps of stewardship. The steps are program planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation - and technology innovation…

UN Program Planning

  • Interpret Member-States’ intentions in agreeing to each program, the spirit as well as the letter of each mandate they authorize.
  • Incorporate comparative and absolute advantages of the UN Organization into the planning of each program.
  • Shop the entire UN System (the UN Organization, UN Funds and Programs, its 16 Specialized Agencies, and other associated entities) for solutions, and piggyback on their resources wherever mutually practicable.
  • Incorporate appropriate outside methods and resources in planning each program.
  • Adopt a medium-term timeframe of ten-to-twenty years, to account for uncertainty.
  • Be creatively bold and visionary as to tomorrow’s opportunities, while staying humble mindful of uncertainties over the horizon.

UN Budgeting

  • Adopt a results-based budgeting methodology.
  • Scrutinize budgets year-over-year on the basis of zero-real growth assumptions, in order to incentivize efficiencies.
  • Look for any and all waste, fraud, and abuse.
  • Propose cost-savings and accountability measures.

UN Monitoring

  • Analyze workflows.
  • Gauge implementation of those projects agreed by UN Member-States.
  • Establish metrics, or “in-progress report cards” for real-time monitoring.
  • Create online “money-flow” maps for stakeholders to track the receipt and management of all resources.
  • Incorporate appropriate best practices.
  • Propose suggestions for improved operations.

UN Evaluation

  • Assess results as outcomes, not outputs.
  • Provide cost-benefit analysis of each program,
  • In balance sheet accounting, under the asset category “goodwill,” provide detailed qualitative footnotes for the various non-financial valuation components considered.
  • Propose streamlined processes.
  • Provide guidance for subsequent, appropriate program planning.
  • Publicize findings to the general public in layman’s terms.

UN Technology Integration

  • Modernize the UN administrative culture into the “sharing economy.” (NOTE: Uber, AirBNB and others).
  • Rationalize its duplicative administrative resources into net/benefit performance.
  • Implement information technology (IT) solutions for economically-efficient horizontal delivery services systems, in communication, data management and related common services among the bureaucracy’s many expense centers.
  • Otherwise, the deep state UN will continue jealously and wastefully emboldening its bureaucratic fiefdoms; at the expense of “We the peoples” whom it is meant to serve

8. Other Areas and Resources

  • Strange Behavior
  • Government Accountability Office Reports
  • UN Internal Audit Reports (OIOS)
  • Independent Audit Advisory Committee (IAAC)
  • UN Board of Auditors
  • United Nations Procurement
  • UN Transparency and Accountability Initiative
  • Additional Resources

9. PROPOSALS

DOGE-UN is assessing areas for attention and consideration by all UN stakeholders.

To enable stakeholders to gauge the value-proposition of the UN Organization, as a going concern, advancing the mutual values, interests and policies of UN Member States.

In other words, we have to determine

Does the UN work, and does it work for us, “We The Peoples?”

We abide by the belief that the UN’s value proposition is compelling. So our scope of work is to diagnose measures the UN can take now to increase its effectiveness and efficiency as a leading resource for inter-governmental engagements.

Cooperation, coordination and collective action require substantial inter-governmental machinery. Which is why the sunk investment into the UN enterprise may be worthwhile after serious right-sizing, rehabilitating of the corporate culture, and retooling of processes to actually, properly and fully support all its Member States.

INTRODUCTION

The following points are evolving. By no means an exhaustive listing of DOGE-UN’s subjects-for-review. Nor do they suggest any fixed roadmap for our proposed X-sizing. It’s a work in progress. We’re proposing and pursuing…

STEWARDING BETTER THE UN ORGANIZATION

When international problems appear implacable, it’s easy to blame the UN, make it a scapegoat.

The larger question is how good is the Membership’s stewardship of their Organization internally? Answer: lackluster.

The United States is the first and sometimes only voice arguing for more effectiveness and efficiency there, but this has not changed the altered course of the UN deep state bureaucracy.

There is a science to running and valuing business sectors, but not for inter-governmental organizations like the UN. Our politicians and bureaucrats are supposed to do this, but such work has never been a career-builder for diplomats craving drama and headlines, so little has been done.

The 193 Member States must carry the burden of supervising its own Organization, the United Nations. Its delegates must master the stewardship of the Organization just as much as it focuses its skills and abilities on issues of war and peace. This means real reform inside many foreign ministries, to make such stewardship a priority.

BRINGING TO HEEL THE ROGUE, DEEP STATE UN

In the absence of active, vigilant, daily stewardship, over 80 years the Organization’s bureaucracy has developed a “deep state” throughout the Secretariat. With the servant becoming the master.

Secretariat staff has co-opted management, administrative, and budgetary matters. Making the UN a distressed property, lowering its value, and attracting a host of problems – chief among them China exploiting this situation for its geopolitical advantage.

The organizational culture is a petri dish of quiet contempt for key Member States (principally the US); a membership “Stockholm-Syndromed” to the UN deep state’s bureaucratic entrapments, and the Secretariat’s poor administrative reporting and accountability. While cavalier about its own excesses and shortcomings.

LINKING UN REFORM TO THE 2026 SECRETARY GENERAL SELECTION

Part of the timing for DOGE-UN is to provide resources to stakeholders to modernize and democratize the recruitment, vetting and selection of the next UN Secretary-General during 2026.

The selection process is more art than science and, merits its own deep dive. Right now, stakeholders can scrutinize the incumbent Secretary-General’s job performance. To set expectations of candidates for the next Secretary-Generalship. Who needs to come in with solid administrative credentials, to be effective, efficient, and relevant; things missing from the current Secretary-General’s capabilities.

The symptoms of failure, to deliver desired results and address areas for reform, are many. From the managerial and administrative to the structural and financial.

Over the next 18 months we will provide UN stakeholders actionable material for achieving a robust selection process, of the next UN Secretary-General.

We will also help organize debates among the candidates for Secretary-General, and bring the process out of back-room and into the open.

REVIEWING THE UN CHARTER

DOGE-UN may be reviewing the whole UN Charter, something never undertaken in the Organization’s 79-year history. A Review Conference would assess and prescribe the Organization’s purposes, principles and methods for inter-governmental cooperation into the coming era.

A review is provided for in the Charter’s Article 101, and has been petitioned so far unsuccessfully by several UN stakeholders and advocates, including the Global Governance Forum and Democracy Without Borders.

More immediately, DOGE-UN is moving forward on actions needed sooner.

Faster-Track Proposals

Faster-track proposals in development, for immediate Member State consideration, include …

  • Radically improve procurement practices
  • Establish independent inspections
  • Improve administrative performance-reporting to stakeholders
  • Institute rigorous auditing
  • Launch an Independent Commission of Inquiry
  • Undertake deep cost-cutting & cost-saving
  • Recalibrate dues equitably & lower the US tab
  • Expose the UN deep state and make the UN great again
  • Develop staff through merit
  • Revitalize the moribund General Assembly
  • Enliven the Economic and Social Council
  • Repurpose the Trusteeship Council to resolve Russia/Ukraine, Syria, et al

IMPROVING PROCUREMENT PRACTICES

How the Organization goes about procuring billions of dollars in goods and services for its programs needs immediate attention, and serious scrutiny. It’s alarming.

One example: the Organization decides whatever it wants without consultation or competitive bidding. Internal corruption has become rife in the absence of ny real accountability or consequences.

For more data, see “United Nations Global Marketplace, 2022 Annual Statistical Report on United Nations Procurement”

BRINGING IN AN INDEPENDENT INSPECTOR GENERAL

Oversight in the UN Organization is not independent and needs to be. This can be accomplished within existing authority of the Secretary-General, or through a General Assembly resolution.

REPORTING ADMINISTRATIVE PERFORMANCE TO STAKEHOLDERS

Seeing how the US Pentagon has failed its audits seven years in a row, the UN Organization’s fiscal accountability is equally woeful.

The Secretary-General is the Chief Administrative Officer of the Organization, by the Charter, yet the annual “report to shareholders” only speaks about the world’s ills and pleads for more resources.

10% percent of UN membership foots 92% of its regular budget, but you’re not allowed to press the Secretary-General on aspects of his and the bureaucracy’s performance. Major donors can stand up and demand detailed, results-based reporting and budgeting, now. Without delay.

THOROUGHLY AUDITING THE UN – STARTING WITH UNWRA

A full-on audit of UNWRA funding and accountability for its documented missteps, divertings and other abuses is a prime target. Glaring inefficiencies and derelictions would garner wide media coverage, and put other UN funds and programs on notice to return to their chartered mission, with total accountability for all resources, operations and outcomes.

FORMING AN INDEPENDENT COMMISSION OF INQUIRY

An Independent Commission of Inquiry is essential. To bring light all fraud and mal-intent in the UN’s administrative and program activities

DECENTRALIZING FOR ADDED COST-SAVINGS

This would address the UN Development Program of the UN Organization, based in New York, with its separate budget of approximately $7 billion.

Our position is have UNDP Headquarters situated in an actual developing country. Where it would be close to its subject matter. Some employees would naturally depart, slimming the bloated workforce, and cutting human resource and other administrative costs.

A major developing country such as India or Brazil could officially host UNDP, partly as a matter of prestige. While creating an added benefit, increasing the relevance and footprint of the greater UN Organization.

Decentralizing certain other UN Organization entities away from New York, particularly to countries that might be candidates for permanent UN Security Council membership, would also enhance the global stature of the UN enterprise.

Decentralizing certain functions to lower-cost places, like India or Brazil, could include relocating all the multi-lingual interpretation staff as well.

Other UN administrative efficiencies might be worth adopting, such as virtual sessions that save unnecessary travel expenses, while enabling more geographically diverse participants and exchanges of views.

SAVING OTHER COSTS WITH CONFERENCE SERVICES

Further on cost-cutting opportunities. Major UN global conferences in various country capitals, on a variety of topics (climate, women, development, etc.) has expanded immensely, to include follow-up events every five and ten years.

All these topics could easily be addressed right at the UN General Assembly’s conference facilities in New York. Remember, the Assembly is THE global conference; that meets permanently through annual cycles, and sits at the apex of multilateral affairs. We’re aware of at least 300 specific items needing cost-cutting, and user-friendliness. There’s all kinds of redundancy and obsolescence. Like the Falklands-Malvinas dispute from forty years ago.

When a UN resolution leads to a new program to implement, it rarely includes any sunset provision (something continuously resisted by the Secretariat staff. This needs to happen, and can be built into all programs.

As well, some of the same topics are discussed simultaneously in the Economic & Social Council, the Security Council, or the General Assembly. Every topic should be looked at for valid inclusion in another UN organ.

DEMOCRATIZING THE COST BY RECALIBRATING DUES

The United States is the top UN funder, at approximately 22% of the total regular budget. Then China at 12%, Japan 9%, Germany 6%, the United Kingdom 5%, France 5%, and so on down the line.

In the past, the United States resorted to withholding dues to force changes in UN operations.

However, there’s an unexplored opportunity to equitably re allocate the burden as various countries not only develop but also newly prosper.

Dues are calculated on an elaborate formula, based on each country’s GDP in absolute U.S. Dollar terms. But a US dollar in another country often buys more of the same good or service there than it does in the United States. Adjusting US dollar purchasing power into “purchasing power parity” (or PPP) value would allow for a recalculation against the relative wealth between countries, on a comparable affordability basis.

If the UN Organization were to establish PPP as the methodology for billing its members, the US share of the UN regular budget could decrease an estimated 5% to 10% for every year after. China and India, classified as developing countries, who while they have their dues discounted, have launched costly lunar missions and modernized their economies in ways competitive to some sectors in major developed economies.

A compelling argument for PPP is the fact that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank both use this approach in their official reporting. Both are officially associated with the UN Organization, as subject matter experts on global wealth. PPP is their “go to” metric. Changing UN Member State billing along this line would require agreement by the UN General Assembly.
(Note: a majority of its members would see their bills increase proportionately).

RE-ELEVATING UN MEMBERSHIP VIS-A-VIS THE UN DEEP STATE

This proposal would effect a sea-change, reviving UN relevance and spirit and reclaiming control from the rogue administrative state that is and has been plundering it.

Democracy is under attack in the world and within the walls of the United Nations Organization. The UN deep state has visibly subverted the democratic exercise the UN General Assembly is meant to be.

Another area of immediate attention and action is the internal dynamic between the Secretary-General running the Secretariat, and the President of the UN Member States’ General Assembly. The Secretary-General’s role is to work with respect to this President, by allocating sufficient and necessary resources to that Office.

Member States elect a President annually to oversee the entire Organization and its heavy agenda. Meaning the President has the highest protocol ranking in the Organization (and the Secretary-General serves as the top employee). Yet only $250,000, 0.007% of the UN’s $3.6 billion program budget, is allocated for the President’s work by the UN deep state, thus choking off the voice of the General Assembly, of “We The Peoples.”

Less than $250,000 is allocated to pay for the President’s $5 million budget that funds basic staffing, travel, and occasional diplomatic breakthroughs. (This while the Secretary-General takes trips to the Arctic and Antarctic to eyewitness glacier melt and use them as selfie-backdrops for his climate change manifesto). Just to keep his doors open and the lights on, the President has to fund-raise off the books.

We see a burning need for a reordering of the relative status of the President of the General Assembly and the Secretary General. The President is elected annually and democractically. Unlike the election of the Secretary-General long since done, Pope-like, behind a shroud of secrecy.

Likewise, whenever its ingenuity has been most needed, the UN deep state only pronounces pompously, prescribes pitifully, and reluctantly performs to stay in place. And when it does act, it misses the target repeatedly: think Syria, Russia/Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and emerging threats like hybrid warfare.

As US President Trump is doing with US Federal workers, the Secretariat staff should be compelled to (1) return to their offices from two days per week to full time, (2) stop working remotely and stealthily from cheaper economies while still raking in the forty percent cost-of-living allowance for New York based work, and (3) stop overspending UN Organization resources in the months right before the fiscal year end.

To underscore: it’s called the United Nations, not the United Secretariat.

What else to do?

Other measures are returning the Office of the President of the General Assembly to the C-Suite (38th floor) of the Secretariat. Under existing authority. Properly support made this Office without ad-hoc fundraising to meet office expenses.

DEVELOPING UN STAFF THROUGH MERIT

The UN Organization has to develop the best human resources talent available. Interference in this must be ended. Next, suspend all training and indoctrination programming that second-guess the authority of the UN Charter on principles of human rights and the dignity of each individual. As a moral platform, alone, the Organization as a whole must model this for all.

By definition, the United Nations already embodies the principles of diversity, inclusion, and equity. They are hard wired into the UN Charter.

  • Diversity: all cultures are at the table
  • Inclusiveness: The Organization is the world’s only universal membership forum for political discourse, among other aspects
  • Equity: Ultimate actions are taken on the “one country, one equal vote” basis in the General Assembly; where all other UN entities derive their legitimacy.

In each and every action the bureaucracy must abide by the letter and spirit of the Charter. Paramount are fairness principles and purposes intrinsic to the UN Charter. Without prejudicing the efforts of all the employees of integrity, as they strive to live this example to the world.

REVITALIZING THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The Office of the President of the General Assembly is the only current locus of reform. It has a Revitalization exercise that has prioritized: (1) Strengthening the role of the Office of the President and (2) Improving the selection process of the Secretary-General for increased vetting of candidates and improved outcomes. Member States have a springboard with this to elaborate other reform priorities while supporting the President’s reform leadership initiative. Delegations should increase their profile and activities in this effort.

REPURPOSING THE TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL

The UN Organization’s Trusteeship Council has been dormant, after accomplishing its work administering post-WWII trust territories, ones that have since achieved independence or degrees of autonomy. Given the disputed nature of territories in the midst of interstate conflict, perhaps the Trusteeship Council could be fashioned as a place for “escrowing” disputed territories. Taking such political hot potatoes off the table could slow the continuing impact of war on civilians and property, and provide conditions for resolution, monitored by relevant and legitimate coalitions of UN Charter-abiding parties. Other subject for such an “escrow” agent role could include regions undergoing statelessness due to a failed-state situation and leadership vacuums. Like the regime breakdown in Syria. This reform would require Membership negotiation and agreement and possibly amending the UN Charter.

ENLIVENING THE UN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL

The UN’s Economic and Social Council is mainly a coordinating body, designed to hold “family reunions” of the many entities of the United Nations System (the UN Organization, UN Funds and Programs, 16 Specialized Agencies (e.g., the World Bank, the WHO, the IMF, etc.), and other associated inter-governmental bodies).

Although meeting for nearly 80 years, The UN Economic and Social Council it has yet to steer those actors into any efficient collaboration or coordination of their mutual operations around the world.

ECOSOC leadership must figure out how to sell the “sharing economy” model of cooperation, and incentivize them to change their patterns of interacting with each other to mutual advantage, instead of hoarding information, resources and boasting rights in silo fashion as is the case now.

10. EPILOGUE

As the largest funder of inter-governmental organizations, the US has to realize that without exercising full, stringent oversight, and the expertise and willingness to champion ongoing reform and the relevance of multilateral mechanisms, allies will not step up to take action. And no needed reforms will happen.

In our eyes, US mastery of stewarding inter-governmental organizations is a national security priority, and for Member States should be an international security priority.

So, DOGE-UN proposals for UN reform hinge on the United States highly engaging its stewardship of the UN Organization. By acting as its best friend and best critic. This will require improving the US Government’s capacity for recruiting, training, and developing a cadre of dedicated multilateral, specialist practitioners.

Fully engaged participation in an effective and efficient and honest UN Organization will serve each Member State’s national values, interests and policies, while being true to the UN Charter’s purposes and principles for peace, security, development and human rights.

The near eighty-year experiment of the UN Organization has shown that an inter-state order does better through freedom, rather than through co-option. That the voice of Member States need to be heard, and followed, for the sake of an open, rules based liberal international order. The value of this order is not easily quantified but must obtain some form of valuation.

This DOGE-UN initiative proceeds on the basis that the time has long come for total accountability, effectiveness and efficiency of the United Nations Organization.

And we invite all those who want to support this pivotal effort.

Thank you

11. References and Additional Information

[1] https://www.newsmax.com/hughdugan/united-nations doge-reform/2024/11/26/id/1189435/
[2] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/un-doge-waste efficiency?msockid=0da4d832785c62712fbfcd7a799863b3
[3] https://thespectator.com/topic/buying-power-china-co opts-un/
[4] Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) purposes

  • Reduce Wasteful Spending: DOGE seeks to cut billions from the federal budget by identifying and eliminating wasteful expenditures.
  • Eliminate Unnecessary Regulations: The department aims to remove outdated and burdensome regulations that hinder business operations and economic growth.
  • Increase Government Efficiency: By streamlining government processes and reducing the size of the federal workforce, DOGE hopes to make the government more efficient and cost-effective.
  • Decentralize Government Accountability: DOGE aims to empower citizens by making government spending and decision-making more transparent and accessible

[5] Ibid.
[6] www.uncpga.world

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