When the Host Turns Hostile: Moving UN Headquarters to Save Multilateralism?

[Elodie Tranchez, PhD, is an international human rights lawyer and a senior lecturer with UNITAR and teaches public international law, including the law of treaties and the law of international organizations at the University for Peace (UPEACE).

Elvira Domínguez-Redondo is professor of law at Kingston University, specialising in international law, human rights and United Nations mechanisms.]

On 4 January 2026, the United States adopted Executive Order 14199, withdrawing from a wide range of international organisations, including 31 United Nations agencies and entities. The decision affects international treaties that require formal withdrawal (e.g., United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), as well as operational and financial disengagement from significant parts of the UN system (on the scope of these withdrawals see Galbraith). These bodies were characterised as “wasteful, ineffective, or harmful” (Rubio, Secretary of State Press Release). Reactions across social media and the press were immediate and overwhelmingly critical (see e.g. here and here). The UN Secretary General, in a statement on 8 January,  vowed that the organisation would continue its mission with determination. 

Like other 2026 global shifts, the United States’ actions have precedents. Washington has long used withdrawal to signal disagreement or force change -such as missing its Universal Periodic Review (2025), exiting UNESCO (1984, 2017, 2025), and the Human Rights Council (2018). and restricting funding to UNRWA (2018, 2024). The logic of these responses remained internal to the multilateral system: the disengagement was a reaction to alleged institutional flaws: politicisation, perceived anti-Israeli bias, or the presence of serious human rights violators on UN bodies. The current rationale, however, is a codified articulation that entire categories of international cooperation are contrary to US national interests. Participation is made conditional on direct returns instead of the pursuit of collective interests, and withdrawal becomes a legitimate expression of sovereignty.

This post argues that when the host State of the UN headquarters openly denigrates multilateralism, the question of location becomes unavoidable: can the kind of global political consensus now urgently required – the kind of founding moment that made the UN possible in 1945 – credibly emerge in a city whose government contests the system it is supposed to host and protect?

Delegitimising Multilateralism as a Host State 

Multilateralism is not sustained by rules alone; it depends on presence. The ability to show up is not only a ceremonial aspect of international cooperation, but a constitutive condition of it. The United Nations is meant to provide the physical and political space -meeting rooms, corridors, side events- that form the basis of the trust that enables agenda-setting, negotiations and coalition-building. As host to the UN’s headquarters in New York, the United States holds a role of immense practical and symbolic weight, providing the space where states and stakeholders can conduct relations on safe, protected terms. That promise depends heavily on the host-state’s adherence to the 1947 Headquarters Agreement in cooperation with the  Committee on Relations with the Host Country, established through GA  Resolution 2819 in 1971. 

New York is now a critical stress test: repeated controversies over visas for delegations, including Palestinian officials travelling to ’s 2025 session, prompted UN experts to warn that the United States was at risk of breaching its obligations. Targeted sanctions imposed by Executive Order on members of the International Criminal Court  as well as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese,  ignored their legal status as protected by the Convention on the  Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (reinforced by the UN Office of the Legal Counsel (1988) and   ICJ Advisory Opinions issued in 1989, 1999, and 2025). During the Sixth Committee’s review of the Host Country report, several states raised concerns about these measures as violations of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Headquarters Agreement. When a host-state’s measures block UN mandate-holders from the Organisation’s principal seat, the headquarters’ neutrality is violated. For civil society and UN experts, whose work relies on being able to travel, speak openly, and engage with UN processes without obstruction or retaliation, these shifts are hard to miss. Coupled with an official position portraying UN entities as undermining sovereignty and wasting resources, it becomes difficult to regard the State as a guardian of the ideals traditionally associated with a “capital of the world”.

Temporarily Moving Functions, Not the “Seat”

From a legal standpoint, nothing in the UN Charter requires the organisation’s seat to remain in New York forever. The decision to establish the permanent headquarters in New York was taken by the General Assembly in  1946. The “New York solution” rests on a reversible combination of a General Assembly determination of the seat and a treaty-level Headquarters Agreement with the host, not on an entrenched Charter provision acting through the Assembly, were to decide otherwise. In other words, the current arrangement maximises protection against being pushed out, but does not lock the Organisation in if it becomes politically and constitutionally untenable to remain.

Still, a distinction must be drawn between formally relocating the UN’s legal “seat” and temporarily shifting specific political functions. A formal move of the headquarters out of New York would require a fresh General Assembly decision revisiting resolution 100 (I) and designating a new host city, followed by the negotiation of a new headquarters agreement with that State and the orderly termination or replacement of the existing treaty with the United States. Such a step would politically amount to a re-founding moment, and the prospect remains, for now, remote.​​

By contrast, temporary relocation of key functions fits comfortably within existing practice. The General Assembly already has discretion over where to convene particular sessions and summits, as demonstrated in 1988 when it decided (Res 43/49) to hold plenary meetings on the question of Palestine at the United Nations Office at Geneva after the host State refused a visa to Yasser Arafat. Special or emergency sessions have likewise been convened in Geneva, as was done for the ‘Geneva 2000’ special session. More recently, in August 2025, several major UN agencies, including UNICEF, UNFPA, and UN Women, were considering relocation to Nairobi by 2026. While the UN Secretariat publicly denied that any such move had been finalised, emphasising that discussions remained driven by operational considerations rather than political decisions, the episode is nonetheless revealing. It illustrates the broad latitude enjoyed by the Secretariat to redistribute staff and operational units across duty stations.​

Against this backdrop, the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, referred to above, acquires particular importance. Created to monitor how host-State policies affect permanent missions, delegations, and Secretariat staff, it remains the perfect forum not only to record patterns of obstructions or intimidation, but also to suggest practical answers to such behaviour. This could include recommendations that, in the current circumstances, the General Assembly or its President explore convening regular sessions, emergency special sessions, or joint debates away from New York, and that the Secretariat consider provisional relocation of sensitive units to alternative duty stations. Such a functional shift could meaningfully rebalance the system’s centre of gravity without a dramatic announcement that the UN is “leaving” New York, while quietly reducing the leverage of any single host State over access, visibility, and the safety of those who depend on the UN’s political space.

Conundrum: Continuing the Walking Dead or Confronting the System from Other Headquarters

The shift in the U.S. detachment from institutionalised multilateralism is unfolding against a broader backdrop of illegal uses of force and escalating threats of further force. The most serious recent violations of international law involve extrajudicial killings of crew members on boats suspected of narcotrafficking in  Venezuela, the capture of its president and his wife in an operation in which an indeterminate number of people were killed (Uriburu and Arato provide an overview of the main legal issues), and proclamations of annexing Greenland by whatever means necessary. The erosion has moved beyond the political realm, edging towards a constitutional one: a dismantling of the background guarantees that once allowed states and other actors to argue, negotiate, and cooperate within a shared legal and political space.

Yet, the UN is not collapsing. Calendars remain full, meetings run late into the night, and resolutions are adopted, with society events crowding the margins of every session. Multilateralism persists, but as a practice sustained by habit, rather than conviction in the protective force of its rules. Attempts to reform the UN Security Council have demonstrated two things. First, there is a growing consensus on the need for UN reform, drastically different from the views of its founding members. Second, the impossibility of such reform due to legally ingrained obstacles that prevent their modification. Latest initiatives, such as the Summit of the Future and the Pact for the Future, cannot repair the constitutional crisis created. It is time for a new global and political consensus that no institutional reform can achieve. 

Institutional background guarantees remain necessary for any new consensus to be negotiated without coercion, respecting equal participation and shared frameworks. The open contestation of multilateralism by the host State makes it unavoidable to reconsider whether New York can continue to serve, in present conditions, as the almost exclusive anchor for the UN’s political functions. If functional relocation is to move beyond isolated precedents and become a coherent response to the current U.S. posture, it will require deliberate political choices by both Member States and the Secretariat. The question is therefore not legal feasibility but political initiative: who among the UN leadership and Member States will take the lead?