Closing the UN Mandate-Results Gap: Realigning Incentives for Lasting Impact

​UN entities face a persistent funding gap in delivering normative support and policy advice. By 2023, earmarked contributions accounted for more than 80% of UNDS funding, while core resources made up only 13%. Most of these earmarked funds (70–75%) were tied to specific programmes or projects between 2018 and 2022. Assessed resources are usually allocated to normative support, but they represent only 7% of UNDS funding.²⁸ Moreover, much of the limited core funding is absorbed by oversight and enabling functions, leaving little space to build in-house policy expertise at country level.

​This imbalance has concrete effects. UN-Habitat’s 2024 MOPAN assessment found that low levels of core funding pushed the organisation to expand capacity development and service delivery. Similarly, MOPAN’s 2019 assessment of OHCHR found that its support for compliance with human rights norms at the country level was increasingly perceived as politically sensitive. This undermines predictable Regular Budget funding and complicates engagement with the General Assembly. These trends align with findings that some Member States have marginalised human rights in the UN not only through discursive contestation, but also through behavioural contestation such as compromises on final texts and budgets.²⁹  

​A 2023 study found that current funding mechanisms create incentives for UNDS entities to compete for funding and prioritise programme and project fundraising and delivery over expertise building. This competition over resources is exacerbated by internal incentive structures within UN entities. A recent evaluation found that the performance of Heads of UN entities at the country level is often evaluated in part as a function of the resources they can mobilise for their individual UN entity. As one interviewee put it: “People get promoted for fighting hard to get money for their entity, not for being collaborative.”³⁰

​These pressures shape external partnerships as well. Rather than prioritising relationships with universities, think tanks, or chambers of commerce to strengthen policy advice, UN country offices often focus on partnerships that generate funding or in-kind support.³¹ Taken together, these dynamics show how financial incentives push entities towards single-agency interventions focused on direct support and service delivery.

​Cost-recovery policies significantly affect the UN’s capacity to provide normative support and policy advice. Most earmarked contributions only cover direct programme delivery, so UN entities rely on overhead fees to finance enabling functions such as policy advice, quality assurance, and normative support. These fees vary across the system: the UN Secretariat and specialised agencies typically apply a standard rate of 13%, while funds and programmes such as UNDP, UNICEF, and UNFPA apply a lower common cost-recovery rate of around 8%. UNOPS uses a sliding scale based on project size and complexity. While lower recovery rates help secure earmarked grants, in practice, they leave less scope to finance staff and expertise dedicated to policy advice. Indeed, specialised agencies justify higher rates on the grounds that they must maintain in-house normative capacity.³³ This creates uneven incentives across the system, reinforcing the tendency for some entities to prioritise direct delivery over policy advice. If the UN system is to strengthen capacities for policy advice more consistently, cost-recovery policies will need to be reviewed to ensure that all entities can generate the resources required to sustain these functions.

​The results-based management (RBM) approach has increased the focus on quantitative results information. Two decades after the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, research highlights both gains and trade-offs from RBM mainstreaming. On the positive side, aid providers are now better equipped to monitor and report on outputs and short-term outcomes, and results data are increasingly used for communication and accountability. At the same time, several unintended effects have emerged: a focus on what is most easily measured (“measure fixation”); an emphasis on accountability over learning and policy direction (“sub-optimisation”); and greater bureaucratic rigidity that drives up transaction costs.³⁴

​Monitoring challenges are particularly acute for normative support and policy advice. MOPAN’s assessment of UNICEF found that human rights work and advocacy were poorly captured within its largely quantitative system. Similarly, FAO’s assessment concluded that, despite normative support being a core function, explicit attention to monitoring, evaluation, and learning from standard-setting activities remains weak. WHO’s assessment likewise noted the absence of a comprehensive analysis of whether its normative products are influencing policy and programme improvements.

​At the system-wide level, mainstreaming RBM into country-level planning and reporting has also had mixed effects. The UNDS reform sought to capture the collective contribution of UNCTs through a single results framework aligned with each UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF). While this has facilitated communication and reporting, it has also encouraged UNCTs to frame UNSDCFs in very broad terms to ensure that all entity outputs could be captured. This incentive has undermined the reform’s original intent of producing a more prioritised and strategic UN offer.³⁵

​Financial reporting has advanced but still needs improvement to drive better resource allocation. The UN System-wide Data Cube, launched in 2017, has significantly improved UN system-wide financial transparency, allowing disaggregation by entity, function, location, financing instrument, SDG, and contributor. Yet further development is needed to support a shift toward more normative support and policy advice. While the current standard enables reporting against four broad categories (development assistance, humanitarian assistance, peace operations, and global agenda/specialised assistance), more granular reporting aligned with core functions, such as normative support, policy advice, capacity development, convening, and service delivery, is needed. Improving the transparency of UN financial data, to strengthen accountability and incentivise donor contributions, constitutes a priority for Member States, as reaffirmed in the 2020 and 2024 QCPR resolutions.   

Stronger capacities are needed for policy advice and the HDP nexus 

​At the country level, the demand for policy advice varies widely. In the least developed countries, many governments continue to expect UN entities to provide direct support and service delivery. Others want UNCTs to step back from small projects that NGOs can do and instead focus on policy advice. Even when this shift is clearly required, Resident Coordinators often struggle to identify and leverage the necessary expertise across the UN system.³⁶  

​Many entities face trade-offs between developing policy expertise and maintaining operational capacity. Credible policy advice requires in-house expertise deployed over extended periods to build trust with national authorities. This demands different systems and skill sets than those used for direct support and service delivery.³⁷ To fill gaps, entities often rely on short-term consultants. While efficient, this limits their ability to establish long-term credibility with senior stakeholders.³⁸ As one report observed: “To support countries with high-level policy advice, we need experts, good experts! The UN’s labour force – driven by our project funding – is very unbalanced towards project-based and/or programmatic support. Policy experts in – often extremely specialised areas – are much harder to find in our organigrams. Reconsidering the future of the UN’s labour force will require time, but now is the time to start making a gradual shift. “³⁹

​At the regional level, the UN’s five Regional Economic Commissions (RECs) offer additional policy expertise. Yet UNCTs face obstacles in accessing these resources. RECs have mandates to work directly with national authorities without being integrated into the UNCT’s Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, and funding modalities remain unclear on who should cover the costs of deploying regional expertise at the country level.⁴⁰

​In the humanitarian sector, entities are reinterpreting their mandates in light of the localisation agenda and the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus. The 2024 MOPAN assessment of UNHCR found that the organisation had expanded its capacity development and policy advice since 2018. WFP has likewise increased its development engagement with national authorities to strengthen its role in the nexus. However, this shift raises concerns about competition and mandate overlap. The 2024 MOPAN assessment questioned whether WFP has the skills, resources, and business model required for resilience and development work. A 2023 study similarly found that, in protracted crisis contexts, humanitarian and dual-mandate actors often expanded into the “grey zone” between humanitarian and development pillars rather than handing over or partnering with development agencies.⁴¹

​From concepts to practice: Functional integration 

​While UN entities have made progress in promoting integration across thematic areas, integration between functions has lagged. The 2030 Agenda, with its interlinked SDGs, calls for integrated solutions, and tools such as the Common Country Analysis aim to identify synergies and trade-offs across goals to inform UN Cooperation Frameworks.⁴² Yet the UN has not developed any system-wide guidance on how to integrate its core functions, including normative support, policy advice, capacity development, and direct support and service delivery.

​Some conceptual foundations for functional integration do exist. The Independent Group of Scientists, in a 2023 report, urged Member States and the UN system to embrace major transitions to accelerate SDG progress. It highlighted key levers such as governance, finance, science and technology, and capacity development, which can only be deployed effectively through integration across UN functions.⁴³ Building on this, the Secretary-General proposed an organising framework structured around six transitions.⁴⁴ These frameworks point in the right direction, but they have yet to be translated into system-wide guidance or operational practice.  

​Table 2 illustrates potential synergies between UN functions. Yet in practice, such synergies are rarely articulated or systematically monitored, making it difficult to assess how effectively they are realised.

​The 2024 MOPAN assessment of FAO illustrates the difficulties of articulating, monitoring, and implementing integration between functions. FAO’s guidance documents emphasise that linking functions should “make maximum use of comparative advantages” and “facilitate constant two-way feedback.” In practice, however, no system is in place to monitor, evaluate, and learn from these linkages. Efforts to connect global-level normative support with country-level capacity development and service delivery remain a work in progress. Similarly, the SDG 13 contribution evaluation found that “most field-based projects do not work on policy development” and recommended additional funding to institutionalise learning into policy and strengthen enabling environments.

​Other UN entities face comparable challenges. MOPAN’s 2025 assessment of UN Women found that while its normative role is well integrated at headquarters, this support remains fragmented and inconsistent at the country level. WFP presents another case: despite strong policy frameworks for normative and cross-cutting issues, evaluations show a mixed record in practice, suggesting a persistent challenge in translating organisation-wide commitments into tangible field-level action.