By Mohammed Chiraz Baly
The writer is a staff representative and former General Secretary of the CCISUA staff union federation. He is also a data analyst at UNCTAD focusing on investment financing in developing countries.
GENEVA, Switzerland | 3 September 2026 (IDN) — At the end of a Secretary-General’s term, questions are asked about legacy. For Kofi Annan it was the Balkans and Timor Leste. For Ban Ki-moon, the Paris Agreement. For Antonio Guterres it could have been the independent system of resident coordinators.
Resident coordinators, together with the staff of their offices, represent him in developing countries and get various development and humanitarian agencies, known as UN country teams, to work more effectively together within limited resources.
Until 2019 they were employees of UNDP. This had advantages. They could use its funding and programmes to push agencies to work together. However, it brought concerns about a lack of neutrality and that the Secretary-General’s official representative was representing UNDP more than say UNICEF or UNHCR. This led to some soul-searching after events in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
One of Guterres’s first actions was to move resident coordinators out of UNDP and into a new body called the Development Coordination Office (DCO), placed under the management of his deputy, Amina Mohammed.
This meant less funding around which UN country teams could coalesce. However, resident coordinators would provide independent analysis showing agencies in country teams the gaps and overlaps in their work with respect to their host governments’ priorities. Their leadership could nudge donors and multilateral development banks towards development targets being pursued by the government.
A Reform That Was Starting to Work
There was criticism at the start, but seven years on, the new arrangement was starting to prove itself.
Surveys of UN country teams between 2022 and 2025 showed increasingly positive ratings of resident coordinators’ leadership. “Economic analysis and solutions” was the most improved of the five core functions, rising from 66 to 81 percent. An OIOS evaluation looked further at the functions within resident coordinators’ offices and described their economists as “critical enablers of joined-up analysis”, with “severe repercussions where these were absent”. The Secretary-General himself found economic development analysis to be a “critical function” in resident coordinator leadership. There were examples of multilateral development banks directing funding to more socially-impactful sectors and agencies improving their cooperation as a result of this analysis.
Buoyed by these results, Guterres asked the General Assembly to consider including the resident coordinator system, in effect a core part of the UN, into its regular, assessed budget. This would reduce dependence on a voluntary trust fund.
The General Assembly for its part asked for a review of the system, including a proposal that would tailor the staffing of each resident coordinator office to the needs of the country; it requested an “office-by-office” review.
That review never took place. Instead, the Secretary-General’s staff in his final weeks, have embarked on their own massive, and puzzling, restructuring of resident coordinator offices, whose likely impact will be to downgrade and de-skill the system’s capacity and leadership. The restructuring is being conducted at pace, before the General Assembly meets this fall.
It was designed by an adviser who spent five years at the UN in one country, and who prior to that worked for a US government contractor and before that in various NGOs. Its main features are as follows.
A One-Size-Fits-All Restructuring
First, instead of conducting an office-by-office review and tailoring staffing to the needs of host countries and capacity of country teams as requested, it will structure offices in 101 of 132 countries according to a one-size-fits-all template.
Second, the main feature of the standard template is to downgrade and dilute economic development capacity and leadership across the resident coordinator system. This is being done through the abolition or downgrading of international and national economist and data officer positions. This, despite the importance of the role and despite a finding that agencies had been reducing their own field economist positions in deference to economists in the resident coordinators’ offices.
Third, the restructuring plans to internationalise all office management positions, known as head of office in UN parlance, which will add to costs and reduce national ownership. As foreseen it also risks duplicating the resident coordinators themselves.
Fourth, a large number of staff will lose their jobs and careers, even though the restructuring is cost-neutral. The most heavily affected will be national professional staff. The restructuring will lose in-country capacity, which will only harm the UN’s ability to support and be an honest broker for host governments. Staff have been waking up in the morning this week and seeing their jobs advertised online by DCO. Much of this is against the UN’s own staff rules.
Fifth, when asked how lost capacity and leadership will be replaced, the answer from the restructuring’s designer is that regional commissions and entities like UNCTAD will fly in experts for a couple of days or advising instead, or that people can use AI. These organisations are cash-strapped, have specialised mandates, and have other priorities than providing ongoing support to governments on issues that cut across many agencies’ mandates. Resident coordinators would also prefer qualified experts working for them in duty station than provide travel agency services for others.
Sixth, while national and mid-level staff at country level are being culled, more funding is moving to headquarters functions, 75 director-level jobs are preserved and a seventh ASG position is being created.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Staff Pay the Price for an Unclear Process
Staff report human resource colleagues admitting that the situation is unclear and fluid.
The organisation has promised to be “human centred” and “transparent” while unnecessarily laying off staff.
It is making vague commitments to reassign impacted economists to other functions, mainly to office management. However, some resident coordinators may have their own favourites in mind and are delaying the availability of these positions so they are not included in the roster and are instead advertised separately. Other positions are being excluded through a process called “opt-out”, which is hard to understand.
Questions on how many positions are available and where, have been left unanswered except to say that the Secretary-General’s staff are still making up their mind.
National staff, such as data and partnerships officers or heads of offices, are not being reassigned to other functions despite UN rules requiring this.
Meanwhile, a promise to hold a townhall with the restructuring’s designer was delayed for weeks. And even now, staff are unclear about the rationale for the restructuring.
And finally, despite the restructuring exercise meeting the legal definition of downsizing, the downsizing policy has not been triggered. This avoids DCO having to provide the kind of supportive measures to staff that were for example seen at OCHA and OHCHR.
Staff morale is poor and crucial work isn’t being done.
This unnecessary upheaval must be paid for, financially as well as in terms of lost capacity and effectiveness.
The reassignment of international staff could cost in the region of $2.5 million, if for example 50 staff need to change duty stations. National staff will need to be paid indemnities, which adds to the total.
This bill will either be picked up by other UN agencies, the General Assembly or one of the voluntary donors like Germany, Norway or Sweden.
A Legacy That Guterres Can Still Protect
Of course, this isn’t to say the resident coordinator system is perfect and shouldn’t be changed. That’s why member states asked for a detailed review.
But that review was supposed to be country-by-country and result in a proposal tailored to national circumstances to which the General Assembly could also provide its input, not a one-size-fits-all template being sold as a fait accompliwith new staff already recruited and existing staff shown the door. By the Secretary-General’s own admission, in his report to the General Assembly, this review did not happen.
And instead of building on the resident coordinator system’s identified strengths, it is systematically dismantling them. This is hardly the kind of evidence-based and data-driven decision-making the Secretary-General has been promoting through UN80 and UN 2.0.
This reform to the UN’s development pillar isn’t taking place in a vacuum. It comes at the same time as a proposal to merge UNDP and UNOPS and to merge UN Women and UNFPA and at a time when resident coordinator offices are being asked to do more.
Member states have been giving their views on those reforms. Soon they will take a position on the resident coordinator restructuring. They may wish to consider whether this fait accompli is an appropriate response to their request, whether it improves the development pillar or weakens it, whether it strengthens resident coordinator leadership or lessens it, and whether this reform should be settled by an outgoing administration leaving a potential liability for its successor, who will then have to reverse the changes at further cost.
Antonio Guterres still has an opportunity to leave a legacy in the form of a stronger resident coordinator system. Halting this harmful and needless restructuring, begun by those under him, would be the right step. [IDN-InDepthNews]