Rebeca Grynspan, Unctad secretary general, speaks to the media ahead of the organisation’s 16th intergovernmental meeting scheduled from 20 to 24 October 2025 in Geneva. (Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi)

Unctad meets in Geneva as budget pressures put mission on the line. As the UN’s flagship trade and development conference returns to Geneva, developing nations fight to preserve a robust mandate, while donor countries urge caution amid budget pressures and a shifting multipolar world.

⛈️WEATHERING THE STORMS. The World Meteorological Organization will also be holding a big meeting this week as it celebrates its 75th anniversary, with an extraordinary congress running through Thursday.

VIP guest. On Wednesday, UN secretary general António Guterres will pop in to honour the milestone, while doubling up his visit with a speech at Unctad.

Early warnings. On the agenda is one of his flagship initiatives, the Early Warnings for All – an agency-wide plan with the Red Cross federation to shield everyone from deadly weather and climate disasters – as it hits its midway point on the road to its 2027 goalpost. A spokesperson on Friday said delegates will be “looking at what we need to do to accelerate progress”.

Dark holes. A new WMO report later today will highlight gaps in forecasting, monitoring and detection, with only half of countries having the mere basic capacity to understand water-related weather trends, while satellite data use for hazards continues to remain low.

Last week, devastating storms in coastal towns in Alaska that displaced over 1,500 people drove home the risks of cuts to US weather organisations amid critical shortages of weather balloon coverage in the region, echoing concerns elsewhere about the effects layoffs had on critical climate and weather data globally.

📖Read more: How Trump policy could unravel global climate science

🗳️MP-MEET. This week, hundreds of legislators will be in Geneva for the Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly to consider mounting challenges to international humanitarian law and aid response.

Guns vs aid. Meanwhile, as military spending rises, the IPU published a report warning of the risks to democracies when scrutiny of defence spending is lacking.

Over the past 10 years, military budgets have increased consistently, to a record estimate of $2.7 trillion in 2024. A portion of that, however, has remained off budget and beyond parliamentary scrutiny, threatening to undermine accountability and increase the risk of corruption and misuse of funds, the publication states.

– By Paula Dupraz-Dobias