The UN development program UNDP will relocate a substantial part of its headquarters from New York to Germany, the organization said on Tuesday. Around 300 of the more than 400 employees are to move to Bonn and around 100 to Madrid, Spain. A small part will remain in New York. UNDP had previously transferred staff to its regional offices. The organization said the move was “part of ongoing efforts to adapt to a changing financial and development landscape.”
UNDP, like the UN system as a whole, is under financial pressure. It has received less money for years. In addition, the USA is withdrawing from several UN organizations. UNDP is also affected by the global withdrawal from development cooperation, with particularly drastic cuts by the USA under US President Donald Trump. In order to respond to the financial crisis in the UN system, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has already presented reform plans, including moving away from centralization in New York.
Patrick Rosenow from the German Society for the United Nations. V. (DGVN), sees this as the main reason for UNDP’s decision, as Bonn and Madrid are significantly cheaper than New York. “The appropriate infrastructure, international connections and administrative experience are already in place.” Bonn is already a UN location with several organizations as well as the UN Volunteers Program, which is part of UNDP. At the end of November, UN Women opened its global office there. Proximity to European donor countries is also likely to be a factor. Germany is the largest contributor to the UN development program.
However, an argument in favor of a shift to locations in the Global South, such as the regional offices or the UN location in Nairobi, would be that this is where the UNDP’s central tasks lie.
In the coalition agreement, the federal government declared that it wanted to strengthen the UN location in Bonn and seek additional settlements. “For Germany, this not only means an economic location advantage, but also a stronger political presence in central UN structures and more informal proximity to important decision-makers,” says Rosenow. For Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan, the decision shows: “Germany’s role in global development policy is growing.”
Germany’s contributions are falling
Since 2022, however, Germany’s financial contributions to development cooperation and the UN system have been falling, including in the last approved budget for 2026. At the same time, Germany’s importance is increasing as the USA is creating even larger gaps. Germany is the fourth largest donor to the regular UN budget and, behind the USA, the second most important supporter of UN peace missions and organizations combined.
Recently, however, fewer and fewer resources have been spent on the core financing of UN organizations, which they can use freely. Instead, states – like Germany – are shifting their spending into earmarked contributions that pursue clear goals, so that, for example, more money flows into the reconstruction of Ukraine.
The German Evaluation Institute for Development Cooperation (Deval) criticized this in a June report last year. “Stable and appropriate core funding is necessary so that multilateral organizations can fulfill their original mandates independently and not merely act as implementing organizations on behalf of individual states,” commented Amélie Gräfin zu Eulenburg von Deval.