2026 Report of the Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group

In 2025, the world faced converging crises: new conflicts, climate shocks and sharp cuts to development financing, threatening to destabilize countries and reverse hard-won progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Across 160 countries and territories, the UN development system led by UN Resident Coordinators (RCs) are ensuring that countries stay the course on sustainable development. Through policy support, directing investments and delivering programmes, UN teams are helping countries protect development gains and deliver results for people.

Since 2019, Resident Coordinators have let the UN country teams, bringing the UN together to offer tailored policy support, build partnerships and mobilize SDG financing to accelerate the 2030 Agenda aligned with countries's needs and priorities. In 2025, this work fully embraced the Secretary-General’s UN 2.0 vision: a modern, more agile, data-driven and responsive UN, fit for the challenges ahead and ready to deliver the Pact for the Future.

Sharp reductions in Member State contributions combined to create a severe funding crisis, forcing difficult decisions on the UN's presence and operational capacity across the globe.

As the 2030 Agenda enters its decisive phase, the RC system is a critical mechanism to boost countries’ SDGs acceleration.

In 2025, RCs were fundamental to: 

1. Align UN entities behind national priorities.
2. Facilitate partnerships and policy shifts to scale up development support.
3. Bridge humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding action in crisis settings.
4. Promote transparency and accountability for results.
5. Reduce duplication and boost efficiencies.

Resident Coordinators are providing stronger, more strategic leadership in countries, with coordination capacities tailored to the specific needs of least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing States and countries facing complex challenges. 

From climate action to job creation, social protection, digital transformation and sustainable development financing, Governments and partners are increasingly turning to the RC system and UN country teams to help turn global commitments into practical national action.

Resident Coordinators are mobilising financing and bringing together governments, businesses, civil society and other stakeholders around shared sustainable development goals. 

The RC system's results in 2025 underscore both its impact in bringing coherence, continuity, and results, and the urgency of adequate resourcing for the system, which cannot be overstated. Adequate and predictable financing for the RC system is essential to a coherent, responsive UN development system. 

As the footprint of UN entities contracts due to funding cuts, RCOs become an increasingly important backbone. The RC system cannot and should not substitute for agency mandates or implementation functions, but rather enable, leverage and coordinate system-wide expertise across country, regional, and global levels.

Eight years since its inception, the Resident Coordinator system is undergoing budget-neutral recalibration, strengthening core coordination functions, tailoring capacities to country needs, reconfiguring regional support for faster and more targeted assistance and streamlining data and oversight capacities to enhance accountability to Member States.

RCs and their Offices are supported by the Development Coordination Office (DCO) regional and headquarters teams. In 2025, they helped RCs maintain a coherent UN offer by connecting national priorities to financing and expertise, supporting governments to navigate cross-border risks, and providing surge support when needed.

DCO regional teams are located in Amman, Bangkok, Istanbul, Panama and Addis Ababa (Including sub-offices in Dakar and Lusaka in support of 54 countries in Africa). DCO's headquarters is in New York.

Where is the RC’s role particularly valuable?

• In providing tailored support to the specific needs of country groups such as Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, translating global commitments and frameworks into practical, context-specific action at the country level.
• In complex and crisis-affected contexts, the value of the RC system lies in its ability to bridge humanitarian response and long-term recovery and development by convening UN entities, governments, international financial institutions and partners around shared strategies.
• In advancing a more efficient UN presence, RCs support the establishment of common premises, common back offices, business operations strategies and shared services that reduce costs and free up more resources towards the people we serve.