Fragmentation of UN headquarter functions
Ronny Patz
Linkedin 11 February 2026
One of the weirdest developments of UN80 is the increasing fragmentation of headquarter functions, including to Germany, Italy, or Spain. At yesterday's board meeting, Italy reminded everyone that not only are functions moved to Italy, but to two different cities, increasing even within-country fragmentation.
We saw last year what happens when agencies like IOM move functions to Germany (Berlin), and when funding dries up, offices are quietly closed down. I wrote about this last year: https://lnkd.in/dU3nqXfJ
I don't want to argue against relocations per se, but there has never been an honest discussions about how the HQ functions of the entire system should look like, and whether centralization or decentralization are actually useful. So everything happens by competition now, not by cooperation, which is the opposite of what UN proponents talk about.
Statement of Italy to the UNICEF Executive Board
Your Excellency Ambassador Rein Tammsaar, President of the Executive Board, 10 February 2026
Your Excellency Catherine Russell, Executive Director,
We start this 2026 conscious that it shall be a year of reform across the UN system, to adapt to a changed political and financial landscape. UNICEF has demonstrated his willingness to tackle this challenge proactively, engaging constructively with the UN80 process and launching its own “Future Focus Initiative”.
Italy, as an observer State to this year’s board, shares this view directed at the future.
As a long-standing partner of UNICEF, we have consistently supported the agency throughout the years, as confirmed last December by the announcement of an additional 10 million euros grant to the Agency for Child Protection and Education Services in Learning Centres in the Gaza Strip.
Our relationship is rooted in concrete synergies in projects’ implementation, as well as shared strategic priorities for the protection of children worldwide.
It is a synergy which spans beyond the excellent relationship between UNICEF and our government, but also involves the many Italian nationals working inside the organization, as well as the active engagement of Italian civil society and private sector through activism and funding.Your Excellency,
We are now on the verge of further increasing our cooperation by expanding our role as Host Country, with the prospected enlargement of the Florence Innocenti office and the establishment of a new, important UNICEF center in Rome.
Italy will do its best to facilitate the relocation of staff within its national borders and to provide the necessary legal, institutional and operational ground to allow UNICEF to operate in full synergy with pre-existing agencies in Rome, in line with the spirit of the UN80 initiative.
Your Excellency,
We stand ready to continue working with UNICEF and the members of its Executive Board to further strengthen our cooperation to the benefit of millions of children worldwide.
Thank you.
There was a time when organisations were dismantled with drama: commissions of inquiry, funding cuts, political showdowns. Today, the UN has discovered something more elegant. If you truly want to make an institution disappear without anyone noticing, you distribute it.
ReplyDeleteA division to Berlin. A centre in Florence. Another hub to Rome. A liaison office somewhere pleasantly coastal. A “centre of excellence” in every country willing to provide office space, tax privileges and a decent lunch subsidy. No one closes headquarters; they merely become plural.
Fragmentation has the advantage of sounding like reform. Future Focus Initiative has a nicer ring to it. And decentralisation, we are assured, reflects modern governance. The world is now multipolar; surely headquarters should be too.
One might even admire the subtlety. When funding tightens, dispersed units can be quietly folded into the wallpaper. An office in Berlin disappears. A programme in Florence is reconfigured. A Rome centre is reassessed. No grand collapse, just gentle evaporation. Of course, this is presented as cooperation. In practice, it increasingly resembles competition. Member states bid for functions like cities competing for a sporting event.
And then there is accountability. Who exactly is responsible for what? Which city holds which lever? Who answers when strategy dissolves into coordination meetings across time zones? If everyone hosts a piece of headquarters, everyone has skin in the game, and no one can afford to let the structure change too radically. This may, in fact, be the genius of it. Reform becomes structurally impossible because too many capitals now have an interest in the status quo.
As for staffing philosophies, we are often reminded that diversity, equity and inclusion are pathways to excellence. Perhaps they are. But excellence also requires clarity of purpose and unity of direction. An organisation can be diverse, equitable, and inclusive, but still administratively diffuse.
None of this is to argue that decentralisation is inherently wrong. But what is striking is the absence of a system-wide conversation about what headquarters functions are actually for. Strategy first, geography second, would be a novel approach. Instead, the map appears to be shaping the mission.
If the UN were ever to fade from relevance, it may not do so with a bang. It may become so widely distributed that it is nowhere in particular. An organisation present everywhere and of importance nowhere.
But perhaps this is unfair. Perhaps the proliferation of centres will generate unprecedented synergy. Perhaps the multiplication of headquarters will produce unity through complexity. History will tell us which it is. In the meantime, one cannot help admiring the efficiency of a reform process that makes disappearance look like expansion.
Brilliant. This comment is better and more important than the article
DeleteInterestingly, Thomas invokes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as though it were some recent add-on to an otherwise streamlined machine. By definition, the United Nations is an elaborate exercise in diversity, equity and inclusion. It was designed that way in 1945. One hundred and ninety-three member states, multiple official languages, geographically distributed agencies, carefully balanced recruitment formulas. If DEI did not exist, the UN would have had to invent it.
ReplyDeleteFor at least three decades, DEI has not merely been present; it has been central to organisational leadership doctrine across the system. Workshops were held. Strategies drafted. Scorecards updated. Entire departments flourished. It would be impossible to argue that the concept has lacked attention.
And yet, even the most loyal defenders of the UN and its many agencies would hesitate before describing organisational excellence as its defining comparative advantage. Noble purpose? Certainly. Normative influence? Often. Managerial precision and accountability? One senses a more reflective pause.
This raises an uncomfortable and slightly impolite question: can an organisation be so committed to being representative that effectiveness plays second fiddle? At what point does geographic balance overtake competence? When does inclusion become an end in itself rather than a means to institutional strength?
To be clear, diversity is not the villain. The UN, as a global body, cannot credibly function as an exclusive club. But it is possible to elevate process over performance. If every post must satisfy a matrix of nationality, gender balance, political sensitivity and internal optics, merit risks becoming one criterion among many rather than the decisive one.
And fragmentation adds another layer. When headquarters functions are distributed across multiple capitals, Florence here, Rome there and Berlin somewhere else, one wonders whether this is strategic design or diplomatic choreography. It may be equitable. It is less clear that it is efficient.
Perhaps the real genius of the system is that it manages to embody every virtue simultaneously: inclusive, geographically balanced, politically sensitive, and administratively diffuse. No single failure can ever quite be traced to a single decision. Accountability, too, becomes beautifully inclusive.
So yes, DEI may well contribute to legitimacy. But legitimacy without operational excellence is fragile. If the UN struggles with coherence, speed and clarity of direction, it is reasonable to ask if an overcorrection has occurred.
After thirty years of elevating DEI to the forefront of management philosophy, it would not be entirely unreasonable to request some empirical evidence that this has produced an organisation renowned for managerial brilliance. Until then, one might gently suggest that diversity and competence need not be opposing values, but they do require hierarchy. And institutions, like orchestras, only function when someone is actually conducting.