Fourteen years. $777 billion. Forty-eight institutions that feed, treat, shelter, and protect the most vulnerable people on earth — financed by a system so concentrated that a single national budget decision can halve any of them overnight. Every figure below is drawn from primary public data. None of it is hidden. Almost none of it is read.
$68.3B
2024 Revenue
+72%
Growth 2011-24
60.6%
Earmarked
7.8%
Core funding
30.6%
US share 2024
97,736
UN Staff
47.7%
Women
$25.7B
Procurement
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01 — Origin
Where the money comes from
$777B across 14 years. The structural shift from flexible to donor-controlled funding is the defining trend — agencies progressively lose discretion over where resources go.
What you're seeing: UN revenue splits into four types. Earmarked = donor specifies exactly what it funds (restricted). Assessed = mandatory dues set by treaty. Core = voluntary but unrestricted, agencies decide use. Other = fees, interest, in-kind. The red tide rising is earmarking — money agencies receive but cannot redirect.
Revenue by funding type, 2011-2024CEB Financial Statistics
7.8%
Of every dollar that entered the UN system in 2024, fewer than eight cents were the agencies' to allocate. The rest arrived pre-assigned — earmarked by donors to specific projects, specific countries, specific line items. The institutions managing global famine and displacement have less spending discretion than a household budget.
Source: UN CEB Financial Statistics 2024 · Core funding $5.3B of $68.3B total
Earmarked (donor-controlled)
Assessed (mandatory)
Core (flexible)
Other
Earmarked % — 49.6 to 60.6Alert
Core funding % — decliningHistoric low
Contributor types 2021-2024Who gives
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Core funding at historic low: 7.8% in 2024, down from 10.6% in 2011. Agencies have progressively less flexibility to respond to unmet needs.
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Assessed contributions frozen at ~$13.7B since 2011. Zero real growth in 14 years while total revenue rose 72%. Their share fell from 33.5% to 20.2%.
02 — Routing
Which agencies carry the flow
48 entities with radically different funding models and overhead profiles. Acronyms explained below each chart.
Agency acronyms:WFP World Food Programme · IOM International Organization for Migration · UNHCR UN Refugee Agency · UNDP UN Development Programme · UNICEF UN Children's Fund · WHO World Health Organization · FAO Food & Agriculture Organization · UNFPA UN Population Fund · UNRWA UN Relief & Works Agency (Palestine refugees) · UN-DPO Dept of Peace Operations · UNOPS UN Office for Project Services.
Top 10 entities by revenue, 2011-2024Hover legend to isolate
Each line is one agency's total annual revenue. WFP's volatility (huge 2022 spike, 2023 collapse) reflects crisis-driven earmarked funding.
Funding profile by entitySorted by earmarked %
Each agency's revenue split into earmarked/core/assessed/other. WFP & IOM are ~90% earmarked — almost no independent allocation. UNOPS is self-funded.
Overhead ratio — enabling vs programmeSelf-reported
Overhead = share of expenditure on "enabling functions" (admin, management, fundraising) vs direct programme delivery. Small specialised agencies (IFAD, IMO, ISA) run higher overhead as fixed costs spread over smaller budgets. Acronyms: IFAD Agricultural Development Fund · IMO Maritime Org · ISA Seabed Authority · UNFCCC Climate Convention · WIPO Intellectual Property · UNAIDS Joint AIDS Programme.
Revenue per staff member, 2024Efficiency proxy
Revenue per staff = total 2024 revenue ÷ headcount. High values (UNRWA, UNOPS) mean small teams managing large budgets — often pass-through funding or procurement-heavy mandates, not necessarily "efficiency."
Procurement volume vs LDC sourcing %, 2023UNGM ASR
LDC = Least Developed Countries. Bars = procurement volume ($M). Line = % sourced from LDCs. FAO sources 46% from LDCs; PAHO only 1%. Higher LDC % keeps spending in developing economies.
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WFP and IOM both 90.5% earmarked. 2nd and 8th largest entities. Near-zero independent allocation capacity.
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UNOPS: 99.9% self-generated revenue. Runs entirely on project delivery fees — the only entity fully insulated from donor politics.
03 — Concentration & Generosity
Who controls the flow — and who gives most relative to size
Absolute contributions tell one story. Contributions per citizen and as a share of GDP tell another — revealing which countries punch above their economic weight.
Three ways to measure a donor:Absolute = total dollars (USA dominates). Per capita = dollars per citizen (reveals generosity — Norway $221/person vs USA $43). % of GDP = share of national economy committed (commitment intensity). The same country ranks very differently on each.
HHI concentration & US share %Above 1000 = elevated risk
HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) measures concentration. Above 1,000 signals heavy dependence on few donors. The orange line is the US share alone.
Top 5 donor share evolution2013-2024
How the share of the top 5 governments shifted. Japan declining, China rising — the clearest realignment in the donor base.
Contribution per citizen vs % of GDP — the generosity mapNew angle · population & GDP adjusted
Each bubble is a donor country. X-axis = contribution per citizen (USD). Y-axis = contribution as % of national GDP. Bubble size = total contribution. Top-right = most generous relative to size (Norway, Denmark, Sweden). Bottom-left = large economies giving little per capita (China, India, Brazil).
Contribution per citizen — top 20Population-adjusted
Contribution as % of GDP — top 20Economy-adjusted
Top 30 government donors — total & growth 2013-2024🔴 dominant · 🟢 growing · 🟡 declining
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US = 30.6% of all government contributions in 2024 ($14.3B) — but only $43 per citizen and 0.052% of GDP. Large in absolute terms, mid-ranked in relative commitment.
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Norway gives $221 per citizen — 5× the US — and 0.25% of GDP, the highest of any major donor. Denmark ($135/citizen) and Sweden ($91) follow. Small Nordic economies are the most committed relative to size.
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China gives $1.80 per citizen. India $0.20. Brazil $1.30. Large emerging economies contribute little relative to population — a structural feature of the current donor landscape.
04 — Endpoint
Where the money lands
Top 40 recipient countries. Color: 🔴 conflict · 🟡 donor-country presence · 🔵 recipient. Hover for GDP per capita and UN spend per person.
Why donor countries appear as recipients: USA ($8.4B) and Switzerland ($7.5B) rank high because UN headquarters operations in New York and Geneva count as in-country expenditure — salaries, facilities, services. This is operational spend, not aid.
Top 40 recipient countries — cumulative 2017-2024🔴 conflict · 🟡 donor-HQ · 🔵 recipient · hover for per-capita
60×
Lebanon receives $480 in UN spending for every person living in extreme poverty. Nigeria — with 87 million people below $2.15 a day — receives $8. Same system, same declared mission, sixty times the difference. UN expenditure does not track poverty. It tracks visibility.
Source: CEB Financial Statistics 2024 · World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform 2023
Expenditure by function, 2018-2024CEB
Humanitarian = emergency relief. Development = long-term capacity. Peace Operations = peacekeeping. The mix shifts toward humanitarian over time.
Expenditure by region, 2013-2024CEB
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Ukraine +712%, Mali +406%, CAR +409%, DRC +241% (2017-2024). Conflict escalation maps directly to expenditure spikes with 1-2 year lag. CAR = Central African Republic.
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Lebanon receives $355 UN spend per capita; Nigeria $3. The geographic intensity of UN response varies by factor of 100×.
05 — Human Capital
Who works for the UN — and where they come from
97,736 staff in 2024. The two charts below are mirror images: the left shows each agency broken by the nationality of its staff; the right shows each nationality broken by the agencies they work for.
How to read these: In Staff by Organisation, each horizontal bar is one agency; coloured segments show which nationalities staff it. In Top Nationalities, each bar is one country; segments show which agencies employ them. Country name colours: 🟡 Western donor nation · 🔴 conflict-affected country · 🔵 other. Hover any segment for exact counts.
Staff by Organisation — segmented by nationalityTop 18 agencies · 50 nationalities
Top 25 nationalities — segmented by agency🟡 donor · 🔴 conflict · 🔵 other
Top 20 duty stations — segmented by agency🟡 HQ donor country · 🔴 field/conflict · 🔵 other · Where staff physically work
Duty station = where a staff member is physically posted (not their nationality). Switzerland (Geneva) and USA (New York) dominate because of HQ concentration.
% Women staff, 2018-2024Target: 50%
Gender by staff categoryField Service gap
Field Service (security, logistics in conflict zones) is the most male-dominated category at 28.8% women.
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France #1, Italy #2 in nationality. Italy concentrates in WFP (14%) and FAO (13%) — both Rome-based. The institutional geography is not coincidental.
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Switzerland (83K) and USA (72K) dominate duty stations — exceeding all conflict-zone postings combined.
06 — SDG Alignment
Which goals get funded — and who delivers them
UN expenditure by Sustainable Development Goal (2018-2024). Click any SDG card to highlight its bar. The wheel shows proportional funding. The stacked chart reveals which agency dominates each goal.
SDGs = the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030 agenda). Each number maps to a global target: SDG 1 No Poverty · 2 Zero Hunger · 3 Good Health · 4 Quality Education · 5 Gender Equality · 6 Clean Water · 7 Affordable Energy · 8 Decent Work · 9 Industry & Innovation · 10 Reduced Inequalities · 11 Sustainable Cities · 12 Responsible Consumption · 13 Climate Action · 14 Life Below Water · 15 Life on Land · 16 Peace & Justice · 17 Partnerships.
SDG expenditure, 2018-2024 totalClick card → highlights bar
Each wedge sized by total funding. The dominance of SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 16 (Peace) over SDG 14 (Oceans) and SDG 7 (Energy) is immediately visible.
SDG trend — top 6 goals2018-2024
SDG fastest growth rates2018→2024
Agency contribution by SDG — who delivers which goalStacked · concentration risk
Each SDG bar segmented by delivering agency. WFP = 86% of SDG 2. WHO leads SDG 3. IOM owns 59% of SDG 10. Single-agency dominance is a structural concentration risk.
16
SDG 16 (Peace): +2,118% growth. But 49% is UN-DPO peacekeeping. "Peace" spending is functionally military-presence spending.
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SDG 14 (Life Below Water): $0.93B — 0.3% of SDG spend. Oceans cover 70% of Earth.
07 — Stress Test
US withdrawal — by entity, country, and SDG
Arithmetic on 2024 CEB data. If US contributions were removed, this is the exposure — broken down three ways. Not a policy position; a structural measurement.
How this is calculated: US contribution to each entity (from CEB Government Donor data 2024) ÷ that entity's total revenue (CEB Revenue 2024). The country breakdown traces US-dependent agencies (WFP, UNHCR) to the nations they serve most.
US contribution as % of 2024 entity revenueCEB 2024 · arithmetic only
52%
If the United States withdrew its funding tomorrow, the World Food Programme would lose 52% of its budget. UNHCR would lose 58%. IOM, 55%. These are not abstract percentages — they are the operational capacity to feed, shelter, and move millions of people. A multilateral system this dependent on one member is multilateral in name only.
Source: CEB Revenue by Government Donor 2024 · Arithmetic, not forecast
Countries most exposed via US-dependent agenciesEstimated impact
Countries where WFP/UNHCR (both ~43% US-funded) dominate UN presence would feel a withdrawal most directly.
US contribution trend, 2013-2024Absolute
49.1%
UNAIDS
43.1%
UNHCR
42.8%
WFP
41.7%
IOM
25.0%
UN-DPO
$14.3B
US total
08 — Procurement Hierarchy
$24.9B in contracts — by what was bought
UN procurement classified by UNSPSC code across 20 segments, 75 families, and 40 top items. Two heatmaps: a corner-expansion view and the full 20×20 matrix with true Pareto concentration.
UNSPSC = United Nations Standard Products and Services Code — a hierarchical classification: Segment (broadest, 2-digit) → Family (4-digit) → Class (6-digit) → Commodity/Item (8-digit). We show the top categories at each level, ending with the 25 most-purchased individual items.
Procurement by UNSPSC Segment, 2023$24.9B total
Goods vs ServicesSplit
Top 50 UNSPSC FamiliesFilter by segment below
Top 40 most-purchased items (UNSPSC Commodity level)Item-level detail
The individual products and services the UN buys most. Vaccines and food staples dominate goods; management consulting and air transport dominate services.
Supplier Country × UNSPSC Segment — $M (2023)Pareto concentration
Countries (rows) sorted by total procurement. Segments (columns) sorted by volume. The top-left corner concentrates the most spend — demonstrating Pareto: a small share of combinations controls most volume.
Full procurement matrix — 20 countries × 20 categories ($M, 2023)All combinations · true Pareto
Every supplier country against every UNSPSC segment. Rows and columns both sorted by total volume, so the largest flows sit in the top-left. The Pareto box below reports what share of the 400 cells accounts for 50% and 90% of all procurement — the real concentration of the system.
Top 40 items × buying agency — $M (2023)Item-level concentration
Each row is one of the 40 most-purchased items; each column an agency. Cell colour shows how much that agency spends on that item. Most items have one dominant buyer — UNICEF for vaccines, WFP for food staples — so the matrix is even more concentrated than the country view.
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Management & Business Services = 21.4% ($5.3B) — the UN's largest procurement category is its own administration, larger than pharmaceuticals or food.
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Vaccines = $1.7B, the single largest commodity. Driven by UNICEF, which procures vaccines for 45% of the world's children.
Special Investigation
Five outliers the system would rather you didn't connect
Each of the following emerges from cross-referencing primary datasets. None requires interpretation beyond arithmetic. Each carries its source. Together they describe a system whose structure — not its intentions — produces the patterns below.
71×
The single best-funded Sustainable Development Goal receives 71 times more than the least-funded. The top three goals capture 60% of all SDG spending; the bottom eight share 9%. The 2030 Agenda was designed as 17 indivisible goals. The money treats them as a ranking.
The UN's compensation structure is published by the International Civil Service Commission and updated monthly. This section makes that data readable — not to attack the individuals who work within the system, but because transparency about how the system allocates its resources is the precondition for improving it. Every figure is drawn directly from ICSC circulars, the same documents that govern employment at UNDP, WFP, WHO and every other UN Common System organisation. The UN's own accountability mechanisms depend on this kind of analysis being possible and public.
Why this matters
All data on this page is already public — published monthly by the ICSC and available at icsc.un.org. What has not existed, until now, is a single place where it is aggregated alongside the programmatic data from CEB Financial Statistics and expressed in terms that allow comparison. The purpose of transparency is not indictment. It is improvement. A system that cannot see its own cost structure clearly cannot reform it.
Source: ICSC circulars — freely available at icsc.un.org · CEB Financial Statistics — unsceb.org/data-download
Methodology and limitation: Salary costs below are computed by applying ICSC-published scales (Jan 2025) to CEB HR Statistics headcount at each duty station. This produces a structural floor estimate, not a payroll figure — actual costs are higher (steps, dependants, allowances, pensions). This section is explicitly labelled as illustrative modelling. The comparison with programme reach uses CEB expenditure data, not salary data, and is therefore primary.
ICSC Professional salary scale — net base (USD, Jan 2025)Tax-exempt · same worldwide
Net base salary after staff assessment, before post-adjustment. Identical at every duty station — from Geneva to Juba. The post-adjustment multiplier (next chart) creates the real-world divergence.
Source: ICSC/CIRC/PAC/601 — Salary Scale for the Professional and Higher Categories, effective 1 January 2025
Post-adjustment multiplier by duty stationICSC CIRC/PAC/617 · May 2026
The same P-4 step VI salary of $92,000 base becomes $178,480 in Geneva (+94%) and $93,840 in Juba (+2%). The multiplier compensates for cost-of-living — but when 83,000 staff work in Geneva vs 26,000 in South Sudan, the aggregate cost effect is structural.
Total annual remuneration — P-4 step VI by locationSame grade · very different cost
Base + post-adjustment + hardship allowance where applicable. A P-4 in Geneva costs the organisation 1.9× more than the same grade in Juba — before education grants, relocation, or pension contributions.
$490K
The cumulative extra cost to the organisation of a D-2 Director transferring from New York to Geneva over a 4-year assignment — beyond what the same person would cost staying in one place. Assignment grant, education grants for two children ($60,000/yr), rental subsidy differential, post-adjustment increase: all individually justified, collectively significant, systematically invisible in any public financial statement.
Source: ICSC Booklet on Salaries, Allowances and Benefits (Feb 2025) · Cartablanca Labs calculation from published tables
Annual benefits package — D-2 with family, GenevaICSC published amounts
Source: ICSC Booklet — Salaries, Allowances and Benefits, February 2025. Education grant: up to $30,000/child/year (primary through university). Pension: employer contribution 15.8% of pensionable remuneration (UNJSPF). All figures from published ICSC tables.
$15.60
After overhead, the entire UN system — $68.3 billion in 2024 — delivers the equivalent of $15.60 per person living in poverty per year (at the $5.50/day threshold, 3.5 billion people). A D-2 Director's annual post-adjustment benefit in Geneva alone ($24,000) exceeds the per-person programme spend of an entire country. This is not a critique of individuals. It is a structural observation about where the money stops.
Total revenue 2024: $68.3B (CEB) · Overhead 20% (CEB enabling functions) · Poor population 3.5B at $5.50/day threshold (World Bank 2023) · Post-adj: ICSC PAC/617
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Geneva vs Juba: 1.9× cost differential for the same grade. 83,000 staff-years accumulate in Switzerland; 26,000 in South Sudan. The aggregate post-adjustment premium of the HQ concentration is structural, not marginal.
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Education grant: up to $30,000 per child per year, pre-university. A D-2 with two children in Geneva international schools receives up to $60,000/year in education benefits — four times the per-capita programme spend in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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The Noblemaire Principle: UN salaries for Professional staff are legally set by reference to "the highest paying national civil service" — currently the US federal General Schedule. This is not a bug: it was designed to recruit globally. But it means the floor for UN compensation is the ceiling for most national civil services.
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This section is explicitly illustrative. Actual payroll figures are not publicly available at the agency-station-grade level. The numbers above apply published ICSC scales to published headcount counts. They are a structural floor, not a payroll audit. The primary data comparison (CEB expenditure) is exact.
09 — Transparency Gaps
Where the data is missing
Absence of data is itself a finding. These are measurable gaps between declared standards and what is observable.
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44% of expenditure time series unclassified by function. $290.6B (2011-2017) has no humanitarian/development/peace breakdown.
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Procurement vendor data siloed from financial flows. The donor→agency→vendor chain is untrackable from any single public source.
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Private donors 16× less granular. 6,132 non-government records vs 101,193 government records.
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Only 6 of 48 UN entities independently assessed for transparency (PWYF ATI 2024). PWYF = Publish What You Fund, an independent aid-transparency watchdog.
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Palestine under 3 names: $12.7B fragmented across "Palestine", "Occupied Palestinian Territory", "State of Palestine".