The stark fiscal predicament in which the United Nations finds itself is triggering pushback from staff and a pullback of services. It all adds up to anger, recriminations, fear, and painful choices at the world body.
Also in today’s edition: U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick to head up a key aid agency faces congressional scrutiny.
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Axing for trouble
UNICEF is facing severe economic headwinds, like almost everyone else in the business of helping people. It’s also facing internal backlash for the way it’s dealing with those headwinds.
UNICEF would impose at least 25% cuts in its core budget, fold programming in its seven regional offices into four so-called Centers of Excellence, and phase out its work in high-income European countries, among other changes, under a restructuring plan dubbed the “Future Focus Initiative.”
Critics want the agency to rethink that future.
While they agree cuts are inevitable and necessary, UNICEF staff representatives and regional heads have urged the agency’s leadership to pursue other, less disruptive means to rein in costs, my colleague Colum Lynch writes.
UNICEF’s senior management has administered the reform with a “troubling absence of strategic coherence, transparency, and governance, alongside disparities in how offices are being treated,” according to an internal memo by representatives of staff associations at seven regional offices, seen by Devex.
They contend the cuts have had the least impact on senior management, even though staff increases at UNICEF’s New York City headquarters outpaced job growth in the agency’s regional and country offices.
The bad blood reflects suspicions within the larger U.N. system among the rank-and-file that those at the top are making cuts that prioritize their own survival, Colum writes.
“We are forced to admit that our Global Management chose a path that has inflicted unnecessary harm, stress and anxiety on staff. These choices have expanded uncertainty, eroded trust, undermined morale, and placed the organization at reputational and legal risk,” the internal memo stated. “We believe this constitutes more than poor judgment — it could border organizational negligence.”
Scoop: Funding cuts at UN children's agency fuel intense staff pushback
ICYMI: Trump and the future of the UN (Pro)
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The kids aren't all right
The ripple effects of cuts to the U.N. Population Fund, or UNFPA, are being felt by pregnant women and girls around the world.
At a reproductive health clinic in one of the poorest parts of Madagascar’s capital city of Antananarivo, my colleague Sara Jerving spoke to two nervous, pregnant 16-year-olds, Finoana and Tina. They each walked about 40 minutes to the clinic — it’s the only free one of its kind within a three-mile radius — because they couldn’t afford to pay for services at a clinic closer to home.
The free clinic is part of a global network of programs and health facilities supported by UNFPA — and it’s this kind of work in low-resource settings around the world that has been halted or could be impacted in the future due to U.S. budget cuts.
Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 eliminates family planning funding entirely. The White House is also asking the U.S. Congress to claw back funds previously approved by lawmakers for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. This includes eliminating funding for UNFPA.
“This devastating decision will force thousands of health clinics to close,” the organization wrote after the initial onslaught of cuts in February.
For Misa, a midwife at the clinic, providing free reproductive health services to this community is critical.
“If it’s not free, they will not come. There will be a big increase in childbirths here,” she said. “There will be a big increase of abortions, mothers’ deaths, and teenage pregnancies.”
Read: UNFPA and the human fallout of US aid cuts — a $335 million gap
ICYMI: Trump budget request and rescission plan slashes global health funding
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Black in
The nomination of Benjamin Black, Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, took one step forward yesterday as he testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about what the agency might look like if he is confirmed.
That vision is critical because DFC could be among the few agencies that survive Trump’s foreign aid purge, given its Republican-friendly focus on mobilizing private investment and countering China.
Black — the managing director of investment firm Fortinbras Enterprises and 40-year-old son of billionaire investor Leon Black — touted DFC’s “dual mandate” of advancing economic development and strategic foreign policy priorities, and he told lawmakers he does not believe the two are in conflict.
Black also voiced support for reauthorizing the agency — something Congress is pushing to do before DFC’s seven-year legal mandate expires later this year, my colleague Michael Igoe writes.
He faced mild cross-examination from Democrats on the committee, who asked for — and received — assurances that Black would recuse himself from potential conflicts of interest, ensure that career staff retain important roles at the agency, and uphold DFC’s due diligence standards.
Read: Trump's DFC nominee stresses 'dual mandate' of US development finance
The future is fatalistic
It’s been a tough few years for aid, delegates heard at the Concordia Europe Summit in London yesterday: Since the start of the decade, in the world of emergency aid, need has tripled and funding has all but halved.
Delegates heard from heavyweight panelists — ministers, ambassadors, and the mayor of London — about how the world was going to look in the coming years. While some speakers proposed bright ideas about how we might adapt, one insider questioned how realistic they were. We need to accept that it simply wasn’t possible, they told my colleague David Ainsworth. You can’t fill this gap.
However, even if you can’t fill the gap, you can turn to more efficient solutions, panelists said, such as cash transfers, which supporters say are an efficient way of delivering emergency aid, or local organizations, which can deliver more cheaply and efficiently.
For most of the summit, however, the global south faded into the background. The primary focus areas were energy, artificial intelligence, and security, especially the developing disconnect between Europe and its neighbors to both the east and west — Russia and the United States.
Some speakers, though, railed against the strategic blindness of Europe and the U.S. when it came to other powers outside this axis, and the long-term harm caused by inequality — within and between countries. If you don’t feed hungry people in Sudan, they’ll leave the country and head to where there’s food, experts said. If you don’t fix problems when they’re far away, they have a way of ending up on your doorstep.
Wouldn’t it be nice?
With the U.N. Ocean Conference in Nice, France, underway this week, Jérôme Bonnafont argues that the gathering marks a “last-chance opportunity” to forge binding international agreements that could save our seas.
“While we can map the surface of Mars, 70% of our own planet remains a mystery — and it is in peril. The ocean that feeds 1 in 3 people worldwide is choking on plastic, its fish stocks decimated, its very chemistry altered by climate change,” France’s ambassador and permanent representative to the U.N. in New York writes in an opinion piece for Devex.
Bonnafont outlines three critical gaps that world leaders must address: governance of the lawless high seas, financing for ocean protection, and the shocking reality that we know less about our ocean depths than distant planets.
“The delegates gathering in Nice aren’t just negotiating policy; they’re deciding whether billions of people will have food security, whether coastal cities survive rising seas, and whether the planet’s climate system remains stable,” he writes.
Opinion: The ocean is in peril. In Nice, we have a chance to protect it
In other news
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio via cable on Tuesday ordered the abolishment of USAID’s global workforce by Sept. 30. [The Guardian]
Médecins Sans Frontières has permanently shut down its hospital in Ulang in the Upper Nile state of South Sudan due to violent looting and has suspended support in 13 primary health facilities in the country. [MSF]
U.S. charities are preparing to slash their distributions by as much as 20% after Trump’s budget proposal includes a new tax on investment returns from endowments. [Financial Times]
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
