Introduction

Faced with stagnating assessed contributions in recent decades, most UN agencies have accepted voluntary contributions as an integrated element of their daily operational planning and management. Consequently, a large part of their development activities has become dependent on a regular supply of predominantly restricted and naturally volatile financial flows. The current global context, in which skepticism of multilateral solutions has been accompanied with an increased acceptance of political narratives based on the “us first” principle, makes it particularly timely to examine what actually drives the allocation of the fastest growing source of the UN’s finance.