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There's a stark contrast between soaring global military spending and the urgent need for sustainable development funding.
With military expenditures reaching $2.7 trillion in 2024, a small fraction could eradicate extreme poverty, hunger, and finance climate adaptation in developing countries.
UN urges a shift towards multilateralism and human-centered investments for lasting peace.
The relentless rise in global military spending is undermining progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the United Nations warned in a new report.
Military expenditures across the world surged to a record high in 2024, reaching $2.7 trillion, after rising consistently for a decade, the UN stated, citing an analysis by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This is a 9 per cent increase from the previous year, the steepest rise since 1988 during the Cold War.
To put this figure in perspective, 2024's global military spending is equal to the total gross domestic product of all the countries in Africa, which, ironically, accounted for less than 2 per cent of this expenditure, despite being home to 20 per cent of the world's population.
At this rate, military spending could rise to $6.6 trillion by 2035, the SIPRI report projected.
The UN analysis found a direct link between budgetary focus on defence in more than a 100 countries in 2024 and the world’s faltering progress on the SDGs.
A $4 trillion annual shortfall in SDG financing, projected to grow to $6.4 trillion by 2030, is exacerbated by the diversion of funds to the military, the UN Secretary-General noted in the report The Security We Need: Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future published on September 9, 2025.
For specific targets such as poverty eradication, healthcare, education and climate finance, this diversion is proving to be very expensive. Just about 10 per cent of the 2024 global military spending annually could close the extreme poverty gap and fully vaccinate every child in the world.
With a slightly larger share of 15 per cent, all the people in low- and lower middle-income countries could be provided with basic healthcare, and all the developing countries would have sufficient climate adaptation fund for a year, the UN highlighted in the report. “The wealthiest countries are spending 30 times more on their militaries than on providing climate finance for the world’s most vulnerable countries.”
In 140 low- and middle-income countries, every person would be able to access safe water and sanitation with merely 5 per cent of the global military spending done in 2024. This would also cover the initial annual costs of adapting to climate change in developing countries. Only 3.5 per cent of the amount annually could eliminate world hunger by 2030.
Military spending also indirectly undermines development by constraining economic growth, deepening gender inequalities, fuelling environmental damage and hampering climate adaptation, the UN noted.
Despite vast sums poured into military, the authors observed that global security remains elusive, the intergovernmental body highlighted. Rather than enhancing safety, higher global military spending destabilises world order by spiralling arms races and deepening mistrust among nations.
The UN urged the international community to make “a fundamental recalibration of global security and development strategies”. It advocated for a shift from militarisation towards diplomacy, international cooperation and human-centred investments.
The report also called for integrating military expenditure into disarmament discussions and promoting transparency in defence budgets to foster trust and fiscal responsibility.
Rebalancing priorities towards sustainable development and multilateralism is not merely a moral imperative but a concrete strategy for lasting peace, the UN stressed.