“Digital Future of Development Dialogue,” a UN event, above, was held in September 2019. The UN is pushing to widen traditional pools of funding through digital channels to lift the faltering Sustainable Development Goals, especially in the Covid-19 era. But risks to such an approach abound. ©SUMAYA AGHA/UNDP
Achim Steiner, center, is a longtime specialist who now runs the UN Development Program, based in New York. The current restructuring of the UN may be sidelining Steiner, jeopardizing development work.
As the first effects of Secretary-General António Guterres’s ambitious organizational reform plans become apparent, former and current officials of the United Nations Development Program see the future of the internationally influential agency as uncertain if not in peril.
