EXCLUSIVE: A group of former United Nations officials fed up with its inefficiency launched “DOGE-UN,” an investigative effort that will highlight waste by the world body.
The effort, similar to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will culminate in a report online ahead of the 2026 secretary-general selection, in hopes that the next leader will prioritize making the agency run more efficiently.
“Why stop at this country’s federal agencies?” said Hugh Dugan, a longtime member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. and former National Security Council adviser on international organizations.
“We need to centralize our understanding of our cash flow to and from the U.N. and the results we’d like to see from our participation in international organizations,” he told Fox News Digital.
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Dugan is working with a group of former presidents of the U.N. General Assembly who meet regularly to discuss agency issues. He’s recruited “insiders and outsiders who used to be insiders” to identify where the U.N. is ineffective at its mission and where funds are going to waste.
“Unfortunately, the mindset there over the years prefers to look at outputs over outcomes,” said Dugan. “How many meetings did we hold, how many pencils did we buy, instead of outcomes. Like, was there an opportunity to get peace underway more quickly in conflict settings, or to what extent are we ameliorating the rate of hunger in the world?”
U.N. headquarters in New York City (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Dugan says his team will ask two questions: “Is the U.N. working?” and “Is it working for us?”
The U.N. has an Office of Internal Oversight Services, but unlike the inspectors general for other government agencies, that office is internal, not independent, Dugan pointed out.
Last month, a former high-ranking U.N. official was ordered to pay back $59 million the agency lost in deals he made with a British businessman who gave him interest-free loans, a Mercedes and other gifts for his sons.
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“Usually, there is no consequence for bad behavior, and that’s a rare thing that they caught this one,” said Dugan.
He recalled the U.N.’s oil-for-food program, where former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein siphoned off more than $10 billion through illegal oil smuggling, according to a 2004 CIA report.
“I’m hoping this will serve to really crack open this dark chamber there that seems to just perpetuate itself on the goodwill of the charter, but actual performance is not serving the peoples of the world.”
Founded with a mission to promote global peace, development and respect for human rights after World War II, the U.N. relies on the U.S. for about a third of its budget. President Biden increased U.S. financial contributions to the U.N. and its sister agencies, boosting it from $11.6 billion in 2020 to $18.1 billion in 2022.
The U.S. gave about three times as much that year as the next-highest contributors, Germany, at $6.8 billion and Japan, at $2.7 billion.
That amount of funding gives a new administration wiggle room to withhold funds to the U.N. if its global interests do not align with those of the U.S., a notion some Republicans have already pushed for.
President-elect Trump will be in office when the international body elects its next secretary-general in 2026, and the U.S. will have veto power over any candidate.
Delegates attend a U.N. Security Council meeting.
Biden sharply increased the budget of the U.N. during his presidency. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The U.N. particularly relies on the U.S. for global aid programs.
In 2022, it provided half of all contributions to the World Food Programme, and about a third of all contributions to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the International Organization for Migration.
Dugan said his report would also highlight ways to prevent China from “hijacking” the U.N. “deep state” to divert aid for its own Belt and Road Initiative.
China doubled the number of its nationals employed at the U.N. to nearly 15,000 from 2009 to 2021.
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Musk and Ramaswamy outlined their efforts for DOGE in a Nov. 20 Wall Street Journal op-ed: “The DOGE Plan to Reform Government.”
They said they would focus on driving change through “executive action based on existing legislation” rather than “passing new laws.” They would work to claw back regulations put forth by government agencies that were never passed by Congress, backed by newfound authority under the Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), which stated agencies can’t impose regulations that touch on major economic or policy questions unless Congress allows them to do so.
