UN Warns Military Spending Undermines Global Peace

Global military spending has been on the rise for more than 20 years. In 2024, it surged across all five global regions, reaching a record high of USD 2.7 trillion. Yet this growth has come at the cost of diverting financial resources away from sustainable development, which the United Nations warns is putting further strain on an “already stretched financial context.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday that member states must prioritise diplomacy and multilateralism to safeguard global security and development. His new report, The Security We Need: Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future, details the conditions that have enabled increased military spending alongside a reduction in global development financing.

Military expenditure rose as governments sought to address global and regional security concerns through military strength and deterrence. Some nations boosted their spending to counter “external risks of conflict spillover.”

The report shows that military expenditure grew from 2.2% to 2.5% of global GDP between 2022 and 2024. Over 100 countries increased spending in 2024, with the top 10 accounting for 73% of global expenditure. Europe and the Middle East recorded the sharpest increases, while Africa accounted for just 1.9% of the total.

The USD 2.7 trillion spent is equivalent to USD 334 per person worldwide—seventeen times more than global spending on COVID-19 vaccines, thirteen times greater than total official development assistance (ODA) in 2024, and 750 times the UN’s annual budget.

The report warns that development financing is lagging. The SDG financing gap stands at USD 4 trillion and could rise to USD 6.4 trillion. Rising military budgets have reduced allocations for education, healthcare, and clean energy. While military spending generates jobs, civilian sectors create significantly more: USD 1 billion generates 11,000 jobs in the military, compared with 17,200 in healthcare and 26,700 in education.

At the launch, UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu said global military spending revealed a “systemic imbalance, where militarisation is prioritised over development.”

Guterres stressed that “lasting security cannot be achieved by military spending alone,” adding that “even a fraction” of military budgets could close vital gaps in education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Excessive spending, he said, “fuels arms races, deepens mistrust, and diverts resources from the foundations of stability.”

The report outlines a five-point agenda, including prioritising diplomacy, linking arms control with development, improving transparency, reinvigorating development finance, and promoting a human-centred approach to security.

Just before the report’s launch, news broke of an Israeli strike targeting Hamas members in Doha, Qatar. Guterres condemned it as a “flagrant violation of Qatar’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” adding: “It lays bare a stark reality: the world is spending far more on waging war than on building peace.”