UN Internships: Who Is Eligible, Which Organizations Pay, and What Comes After

One sentence appears, almost unchanged, at the foot of every United Nations Secretariat internship notice: interns are not financially remunerated by the Organization.¹ It is easy to read that line as the policy of the United Nations. It is not. It is the policy of one employer within the system, and on the evidence of the vacancies advertised today it is no longer the majority practice.

The reframe that matters most for anyone considering an internship in an international organization is this: "a UN internship" is not one programme with one set of rules. The Secretariat runs a centrally regulated programme under a single administrative instruction. The funds and programmes — UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, WFP, UNHCR — set their own terms. So do the specialized agencies, from FAO and ILO to UNESCO and ITU, and so do the international financial institutions, the World Bank Group among them. Most of them now pay. The decisive document is never a general policy page or a summary on an aggregator site; it is the individual vacancy notice, read in full.

Why "the UN internship" does not exist

The United Nations system is a federation of separately administered organizations rather than a single employer, and internships expose that structure more sharply than almost any other engagement. The Secretariat and its departments, offices away from Headquarters and regional commissions operate under one instruction. The funds and programmes report to their own executive boards. The specialized agencies are autonomous organizations with their own constitutions, governing bodies and staff regulations. The World Bank Group and the other international financial institutions are further removed again. The guide to how the UN system is organized sets out the distinctions in full; for internships, the practical consequence is that a rule verified against one organization's policy predicts very little about another's.

That fragmentation is not an impression. It was the central finding of the Joint Inspection Unit's system-wide review of internship programmes, which described a fragmented landscape of internship policies with diverse administrative frameworks across the organizations, and recommended a common benchmarking framework to bring them closer together.² Eight years on, the frameworks remain separate, and choosing between them is part of choosing which organization to target.

Where the paid internship came from

The direction of travel is documented and recent. When the Joint Inspection Unit reported in 2018, compensation for interns was the exception: as at December 2017, three funds and programmes — UNICEF, UNOPS and WFP — and six specialized agencies — FAO, IAEA, ILO, UNWTO, UPU and WIPO — provided it. UNHCR's new policy introduced a stipend from June 2018, and the UNFPA Executive Board endorsed the principle in early 2018.² The same review recorded the Pan American Health Organization among the organizations offering unpaid internships; PAHO notices today state that interns receive a stipend and are covered by insurance at the organization's expense.

The reasoning that carried the change was not principally about fairness. Organizations that had introduced stipends reported that paid internships remained more cost-effective than the alternative contracting modalities, and research by the ILO's Youth Employment Programme found paid internships to be stronger labour-market integration mechanisms than unpaid ones. Reputational exposure did the rest.

What the current vacancy notices actually say

UNjobnet's analysis of the live vacancy corpus found 367 internship vacancies open across 88 organizations on 21 August 2026, roughly one in fifteen of all active vacancies on the platform. Of the 365 carrying a full description, 63 stated a stipend or allowance, 146 stated that the position was unpaid, four carried both kinds of language, and 152 — 42 per cent — said nothing about money in any form.³

Counted by notice, the unpaid share looks dominant. Counted by employer, it does not. Seventy of the unpaid notices carry one identical clause — "Interns are not financially remunerated by the United Nations" — published under 24 different Secretariat entity labels, from OHCHR and UNEP to the regional commissions. That is one policy appearing 70 times, not 24 employers each reaching the same conclusion. Setting those labels aside and counting employers rather than advertisements: 21 organizations pay in every notice that states terms, eight state that they do not, and four differ between their own notices. Of the 34 employers that state their terms at all, 21 pay.

Two organizations in the corpus contradict themselves outright. One ICAO notice states that interns will receive a stipend; another states that interns are not paid. One UNIDO notice states a monthly stipend based on duty station; another states that the internship is unpaid. Neither is an error in the reading — both pairs are live, and both come from the same organization's own advertisements.

Silence is the finding, not unpaid

The 42 per cent that say nothing are the practical problem, and the temptation is to read silence as an unpaid position. The corpus shows why that inference fails. All three World Bank Group internship notices in the sample are silent on pay, while the World Bank Group's own programme page describes a paid internship at a competitive hourly salary. Six of UNHCR's eight notices are silent; the other two state plainly that the internship is paid — one policy, two drafting habits. NATO's published internship terms set a monthly allowance for 2026; the NATO notices in the corpus mention none.

The absence of the word "stipend" is not evidence that a position is unpaid, and the absence of the word "unpaid" is not evidence that it pays. Where a notice is silent, the terms have to be established from the organization's internship policy or from its HR office before an offer is accepted — and the internship agreement signed before commencement is what ultimately governs.

The Secretariat programme: the rules where they are strictest

The Secretariat regime is worth setting out in detail, both because it is the largest single programme and because it is the one most often mistaken for the system's rule. The governing instrument is administrative instruction ST/AI/2020/1, issued on 3 February 2020, which superseded ST/AI/2014/1 and remains in force.¹

Status is the provision most often misread. Interns are classified as type I gratis personnel. They are not staff members, which places them outside the Staff Regulations and Rules and outside the entitlements that attach to an appointment — a distinction set out alongside the other engagement modalities in the guide to UN contract types. The instruction sets explicit limits on the role: interns are not to be engaged as substitutes for staff against posts authorized for mandated activities, may not represent the Organization in any official capacity, may not perform supervisory functions, may not exercise certifying or approving authority, and may not take part in selection processes for other candidates. Those limits define the difference between an internship and unpaid substitution for staff work.

Eligibility turns on academic standing at the time of application. An applicant must either be enrolled in, or have completed, a graduate school programme, or be enrolled in, or have completed, the final academic year of a first university degree at minimum bachelor's level. Both routes are open, so the programme is not restricted to postgraduates — a point that also shapes which degrees open the most doors.

The provision few applicants anticipate is the family bar. Under ST/AI/2020/1, the children and siblings of serving staff members are not eligible to apply at all. The definitions are deliberately wide: "child" covers a staff member's child, stepchild, and son- or daughter-in-law, and "sibling" includes half-siblings and stepsiblings. Applicants related to a staff member in any other way may be engaged, provided they are not assigned to the same work unit and not placed under that staff member's direct or indirect supervision. Two further conditions are frequently discovered late: proof of valid medical insurance covering the entire internship period at the duty station, and a medical certificate of good health before starting.

A Secretariat internship runs for a minimum of two months, extendable to a total of six, full-time under the supervision of a staff member. Flexible arrangements are permitted where the receiving entity agrees in writing, in which case the intern must still complete the equivalent of two months full-time within a six-month window, with attendance recorded. There is no right of transfer between offices, and where a transfer is agreed the clock does not reset.

Location is constrained by a provision that is easy to miss: the programme is not offered at any Secretariat duty station designated as a non-family duty station. Since the definition of a receiving entity includes special political and peacekeeping missions, that single rule removes much of the field from the map. It also explains the concentration: in the 2022–2023 biennium, ten duty stations accounted for close to 90 per cent of all Secretariat interns, led by New York at 20.6 per cent, Geneva at 12.9 per cent and Nairobi at 12.0 per cent.⁷

Where terms differ most across the system

Pay is the difference applicants notice first, but it is not the only one, and the others are easier to get wrong.

Duration. The Secretariat's two-to-six months is not a system-wide standard. WHO runs internships from six to 24 weeks. The ILO sets three to six months, with fixed start dates on the 1st or the 15th. One UNIDO notice provides for a duration of up to twelve months subject to prior agreement.

Eligibility. WHO requires applicants to be at least 20 years old and to have completed three years of full-time university study, and admits recent graduates within eighteen months of completing a qualification. The ILO requires enrolment in the final year of a master's or higher programme, or completion within the preceding year, and applies no age limit. The World Bank Group accepts final-year undergraduates as well as master's and doctoral students, and asks for citizenship of a member country. Language requirements vary in the same way, and are set out in the guide to UN language requirements.

How applications are made. Some organizations advertise individual internships continuously; others open a roster once or twice a year and select from it, as the ILO does each April and October and as the World Bank Group does in two annual cycles. The mechanics of each portal are covered in the guide to the application systems of international organizations, and the application form itself is often the P11 or an agency equivalent.

Where the work is done. Remote and hybrid internships, introduced across much of the system during the pandemic, have persisted, and several organizations prorate the stipend for them. UNFPA sets the stipend by the intern's agreed place of work rather than the hiring office's duty station, which for a home-based arrangement is not the same thing — a pattern consistent with what the vacancy data shows about remote and home-based UN work more generally.

The World Bank Group and the international financial institutions

The World Bank Group sits inside the UN system as a specialized agency by relationship agreement, but its employment framework is entirely its own: its own grade structure, its own staff rules, and an internship programme that has been paid throughout the period in which the Secretariat's has not. The programme, now advertised as WBG Pioneers, is described by the institution as a paid internship at a competitive hourly salary, open to final-year undergraduates and to master's and doctoral students who are citizens of a member country, and recruited in two cycles a year rather than continuously.⁶ Placements run in Washington, D.C. and in country offices. For anyone weighing the Bank against a UN organization, the wider structural differences — grades, pay lines and career architecture — are set out in the guide to comparing grades across international organizations, and the institution's live vacancies and profile sit on its World Bank organization page.

The Joint Inspection Unit grouped the Bank with the other international financial institutions — the Inter-American Development Bank, the IMF — as established examples of paid internship practice, and cited them as reference points for the UN system rather than the other way round.² The corpus adds a caution that applies to the whole category: every internship notice from an international financial institution in the August 2026 sample, the World Bank Group's included, was silent on pay. In this part of the system in particular, the notice is not where the terms are published.

What the internship leads to, and the restriction that follows it

Section 5.3 of ST/AI/2020/1 provides that interns may not apply for or be appointed to any position in the Professional and higher categories, or at the FS-6 and FS-7 levels in the Field Service category, during the internship and for the six months immediately following its expiry. The restriction originates in General Assembly resolution 51/226 and applies to several other categories of non-staff personnel, not to interns alone.

Its scope is consistently overstated. It is drawn by category and by employer: it does not reach General Service posts, does not reach Field Service posts below FS-6, and — because it is a Secretariat instruction — does not bind the separately administered funds, programmes, specialized agencies or the World Bank Group. Some organizations set no equivalent at all and say so; WHO states that interns and former interns are free to apply as external candidates to any vacancy open to external candidates for which they are qualified.⁴ Others are broader than the Secretariat: current ICAO notices bar former interns from any post in its Secretariat, and from any other remunerated employment with the organization, for six months.

Set against that, the pipeline argument is real. The Secretariat engaged 21,943 interns between 2014 and 2023 — an average of just under 4,400 per biennium — with an average engagement of about four months.⁷ The programme is also more diverse than its reputation suggests: 156 nationalities were represented in the 2022–2023 biennium, a majority of interns came from developing countries for the first time, and women have consistently been two thirds or more of the intake. For those weighing entry routes, the internship sits alongside — and often before — the structured early-career programmes described in the guides to the Young Professionals Programme and the Junior Professional Officer scheme, and alongside the rosters and talent pools covered in the guide to the hidden UN job market.

Where the reform stands

The Secretariat's unpaid model has been under formal review for several years, and the destination has not been reached.

In resolution 77/278 (2023), the General Assembly directed the Secretary-General to treat the internship programme as an integral part of human resources reform and to bring forward a comprehensive review, including proposals for a support scheme for interns and for repealing the six-month restriction on post-internship employment.⁸ The resulting report proposed a centrally funded and managed financial support scheme, to be implemented from 1 January 2026.⁷

The proposed design is instructive because it is pegged to an existing mechanism rather than invented: a monthly stipend set at 10 per cent of the monthly total of the daily subsistence allowance for the duty station for in-person internships, half that for remote or local arrangements, together with travel arranged under the Secretariat's travel policy, medical insurance under the organizational policy, and a one-time technology allowance for remote interns. The Secretary-General estimated the annual cost at 12 to 15 million United States dollars.

The Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions supported the principle, recommending that the Assembly approve a centrally administered paid programme with a ceiling on assessed contributions, complemented by voluntary contributions and structured as a three-year pilot from 2026, with means-tested allocation to be examined as part of the pilot review. On the six-month restriction it was more cautious, taking the view that repeal should await a fuller assessment of the pilot's impact.⁹

As at August 2026, neither proposal has been adopted. Consideration of the review was deferred to the resumed eightieth session, and the Fifth Committee's record of resolutions and decisions for that session shows no proposal on human resources management.¹⁰ The practical consequence for applicants is simply stated: the rules in force are the rules in ST/AI/2020/1, and the terms in a current notice are the terms on offer.

Misconceptions and clarifications

"UN internships are unpaid." True of the Secretariat, and untrue of most of the rest. Of the 34 employers whose current notices state their terms, 21 pay a stipend or allowance, including UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNFPA, UN Women, WFP, FAO, IOM, IFAD, PAHO, WHO, the ILO and the World Bank Group.

"UN internships have been paid since 2021." Equally wrong in the other direction. The Secretariat continues to advertise unpaid internships for periods running into 2027. Stipends are a feature of particular organizations' policies, not of a system-wide rule.

"A notice that says nothing about pay is an unpaid internship." The single most costly inference in this subject. Forty-two per cent of current notices say nothing, and the silent group includes organizations whose published policy is to pay.

"An internship blocks any UN job for six months." The Secretariat restriction covers the Professional and higher categories and FS-6/FS-7 posts. It does not cover General Service positions, and it does not govern recruitment by separately administered agencies, funds, programmes or the World Bank Group.

"Interns are UN staff." In the Secretariat, interns are type I gratis personnel and expressly not staff members. The distinction determines entitlements, insurance and recourse.

"A postgraduate degree is required." Enrolment in, or completion of, the final academic year of a first university degree is sufficient under ST/AI/2020/1, and the World Bank Group likewise accepts final-year undergraduates.

"Interns have no recourse if something goes wrong." Access is limited but not absent. Under General Assembly resolution 78/248, interns and other non-staff personnel may use the Office of the Ombudsman and Mediation Services and may request a management evaluation, while remaining outside the jurisdiction of the Dispute and Appeals Tribunals.¹¹

"A family connection to a staff member helps." For the children and siblings of serving Secretariat staff, it is a bar to eligibility rather than an advantage. Several other organizations, the ILO among them, apply comparable rules to close relatives of their officials.

A note on scope

This guide describes internship practice across the United Nations system and the World Bank Group as it stood in August 2026, drawing on the governing Secretariat instruction, system-wide oversight reports, individual organizations' published programme pages, and the terms stated in vacancies advertised on UNjobnet. Because each organization legislates for itself, no statement here should be carried from one employer to another. Corpus figures are a point-in-time measurement of what notices say, not an audit of what organizations pay, and they are refreshed periodically. Specific arrangements at each Secretariat duty station are announced through information circulars, and terms are set by the receiving entity. The authoritative statement of terms for any given opportunity is the vacancy notice together with the internship agreement signed before commencement; where the two appear to differ, the employing organization's HR office or policy portal governs.

Key takeaways

• Internship terms are set organization by organization. The Secretariat's rules describe the Secretariat and predict little about UNDP, WHO, the ILO or the World Bank Group.
• Most employers that state their terms now pay: 21 of 34 in the August 2026 corpus, including the large funds and programmes and the World Bank Group.
• Forty-two per cent of current internship notices say nothing about pay. Silence must be resolved against the organization's policy before an offer is accepted, never assumed either way.
• The Secretariat programme runs two to six months, is unpaid, is unavailable at non-family duty stations, and treats interns as type I gratis personnel rather than staff.
• Duration, age and enrolment criteria, application cycles and remote arrangements all vary across the system as widely as pay does.
• The six-month post-internship restriction is a Secretariat rule. Some organizations impose none; a few impose a broader one.
• A centrally funded stipend scheme and the repeal of that restriction have both been proposed for the Secretariat, and neither had been adopted as at August 2026.

Related reading

• A complete guide to the UN system: agencies, funds and programmes
• How to read an international vacancy notice: what is actually mandatory
• The UN Young Professionals Programme (YPP): a complete guide
• Junior Professional Officers (JPOs): how the programme really works
• UN contract types decoded: FTA, TA, continuing and consultancy
• Comparing grades across international organizations: UN, EU, World Bank and beyond
• The real UN application timeline: from vacancy to offer

The internship remains one of the few entry points to the international system that is open on academic standing rather than professional experience, and it is widening: the money that was exceptional in 2017 is now the majority practice among the organizations that say. Until the Secretariat's own reform is settled, the discipline is unchanged — identify the employer, read its notice in full, establish the terms in writing, and treat that organization, not the system as a whole, as the source of the rules.

Current internship vacancies across the UN system and international organizations on UNjobnet →

Sources

1. United Nations, "United Nations internship programme," administrative instruction ST/AI/2020/1, 3 February 2020. policy.un.org. ↩
2. Joint Inspection Unit, "Review of internship programmes in the United Nations system," JIU/REP/2018/1, 2018. unjiu.org. ↩
3. UNjobnet analysis of the live vacancy corpus, snapshot of 21 August 2026: 367 active vacancies classified as internships across 88 organizations, of which 365 carried a full description. Classification is based on the pay language present in each notice. Figures are a point-in-time measurement and are refreshed periodically. ↩
4. World Health Organization, "Internship programme." who.int. ↩
5. International Labour Organization, "ILO internship programme." jobs.ilo.org. ↩
6. World Bank Group, "WBG Pioneers internship programme." worldbank.org. ↩
7. Report of the Secretary-General, "Review of the United Nations Secretariat Internship Programme," A/79/566/Add.1, 30 October 2024. docs.un.org. ↩
8. General Assembly resolution 77/278, human resources management, 2023. docs.un.org. ↩
9. Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, "Review of the United Nations internship programme," A/79/746, 28 January 2025. docs.un.org. ↩
10. United Nations General Assembly, Fifth Committee, resolutions and decisions of the eightieth session. un.org. ↩
11. General Assembly resolution 78/248, administration of justice at the United Nations, 2023. docs.un.org. ↩

Last reviewed: August 2026. This guide is general information rather than official HR or financial advice — entitlements should be confirmed with the employing organization's HR and the governing UN instructions.