Funding the United Nations: How Much Does the U.S. Pay?

Introduction

The United Nations is the world’s principal organization for deliberating matters of peace and security, but its work encompasses far more than peacekeeping and conflict prevention. The UN system includes scores of entities dedicated to a range of areas including health and humanitarian needs and economic and cultural development. As a founding member of the United Nations and the host for its headquarters, the United States has been a chief guide and major funder of the organization for nearly eighty years.

The United States today remains the largest donor to the United Nations. It contributed close to $13 billion in 2023, accounting for more than a quarter of funding for the body’s collective budget. Following President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut funding during his first term, President Joe Biden asserted the United Nations’ importance to U.S. foreign policy by restoring funding to several agencies that was paused by Trump. At the outset of his second term, however, Trump is again pursuing a reevaluation of the United States’ engagement with the United Nations, advocating for a reassessment of U.S. contributions due to what he says is the body’s inefficiencies and biases.

How is the United Nations funded?

All 193 members of the United Nations are required to make payments to certain parts of the organization as a condition of membership, per the UN Charter. The amount each member must pay annually, known as its assessed contribution, varies widely and is determined by a formula that considers gross national income, debt burden, and population, among other factors.

These mandatory contributions help fund the United Nations’ regular budget, which covers the body’s administrative costs and core activities such as special political missions, as well as peacekeeping operations. In 2024, the United Nations assessed the United States’ share of the regular budget at 22 percent [PDF] and its share of the peacekeeping budget at 27 percent. However, the U.S. Congress caps contributions to the peacekeeping budget at 25 percent—a limit set in 1995 due to concerns the U.S. assessment was too high—leaving the United States in arrears. China and Japan, the next two largest economies by gross domestic product (GDP), have the second- and third-highest assessed contributions, respectively. Assessed dues also finance other UN bodies, including specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Members can also make voluntary contributions. Many UN organizations, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the World Food Program (WFP), rely mainly on such contributions—considered discretionary funding.

How much does the United States pay?

The U.S. government contributed almost $13 billion to the United Nations in fiscal year 2023 (FY 2023), the most recent year for which complete data is available. Approximately 24 percent of this total was assessed, 75 percent was voluntary, and the rest was revenue from other activities, meaning money from services and investments. 

What funding did the first Trump administration cut?

The first Trump administration sought to pare down or completely eliminate voluntary contributions to many UN programs, targeting peacekeeping operations and several specialized agencies. Trump rejected the globalism of the United Nations and viewed certain programs as contradictory to his administration’s agenda on Israel, abortion, and other policy areas. He also took aim at assessed U.S. funding to the United Nations, focusing on how the United States bears a disproportionate burden in supporting the body.

Following the practice of previous Republican administrations, the Trump administration suspended all funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2017 after expanding a ban on U.S. contributions to organizations that perform or promote abortions as a method of family planning—the so-called Mexico City policy. The following year, his administration reduced funding for the UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the WHO by about 30 percent and 20 percent, respectively. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration froze funding to the WHO and announced that the United States would take steps to withdraw from the body—a decision Biden later reversed.

Trump also tried to cut aid to UN peacekeeping efforts by almost half a billion dollars. While Congress largely rejected the proposed cuts, it agreed in 2017 to enforce a mandated cap on U.S. contributions [PDF] to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN-DPO) that had been waived since 2001. 

For many agencies, especially those that depend on voluntary funding, cuts in U.S. contributions can be painful. For example, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, relied on the United States for about one-third of its budget until the Trump administration halted contributions in 2018. The move led the agency to lay off staff and slash its health, education, and food assistance.

Why did the Biden administration restore funding?

The Biden administration saw the United Nations as an important forum for realizing U.S. foreign policy goals and demonstrating U.S. leadership in the world. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, said at a CFR event in 2024 that the Biden administration had put forward an ambitious set of reforms for modernizing the UN Security Council in particular. These proposals included asking for two permanent Security Council seats to be allocated to African nations.

After his inauguration in 2021, Biden began refunding some of the agencies that saw cuts under Trump. Biden halted the planned U.S. exit from the WHO, with contributions to the agency continuing uninterrupted. The administration also restarted funding for UNFPA [PDF], providing nearly $100 million to the agency in 2021. The funding marked a return to the core-funding levels of the Barack Obama administration. While the Biden administration initially resumed funding for UNRWA, it again paused funding in 2024 following Israeli allegations that twelve UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 attacks by Hamas.  

In FY 2024, as it did the previous year, Congress fully funded its assessed contribution for most UN entities, though it withheld some funding [PDF]. 

What has a second Trump administration done?

In the weeks following his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order calling for a general review of all U.S. funding to the United Nations. As part of the order, the administration announced it will not resume funding for UNRWA. (Congress maintains a formal suspension [PDF] on all U.S. contributions to UNRWA until March 2025.) 

Experts say the pause on UNRWA funding will negatively affect on-the-ground operations for the more than two million people living in the heavily damaged Gaza Strip who rely on UN aid, potentially worsening the region’s humanitarian crisis. 

Additionally, Trump issued an executive order pausing most U.S. foreign aid for ninety days and also announced the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, saying it “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States.” Experts including the head of the UN refugee agency say the order will force UN agencies to scale back their global aid operations.

​​Has the United States sought to cut UN funding before?

Past U.S. presidents and lawmakers have sought to decrease payments to the United Nations. In the late 1990s, for example, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) led an effort to force reforms at the United Nations by withholding U.S. contributions. The United States nearly lost its vote at the General Assembly as millions of dollars in unpaid assessments accrued. The instability ended in 2001 with a compromise between Congress and the United Nations. The deal, struck by Helms and Biden—then a senator representing Delaware—reduced the U.S. share of the UN administrative budget from 25 percent to 22 percent.

Have other nations increased their contributions in recent years?

China has stood out as one of the countries that has boosted its commitments to the United Nations as of late. In FY 2023, Chinese contributions accounted for roughly 5 percent of the overall UN budget and nearly 18 percent of the peacekeeping budget, making it the second-largest contributor behind the United States. Since 2013, Beijing’s contributions to peacekeeping operations have increased threefold, and the country provides more peacekeeping personnel than any other permanent member of the UN Security Council. However, China was just the eighth-largest overall contributor of peacekeeping personnel as of October 2024, providing approximately one third that of the top contributor, Nepal.   

Beyond peacekeeping, the next-largest portion of China’s contributions to the United Nations went to the general body, followed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the WHO. In addition, Chinese nationals have assumed leadership positions in UN agencies. As of February 2025, four of the United Nations’ senior leaders were Chinese nationals [PDF], compared to twenty-two U.S. nationals.