Geneva — The United States on Monday announced a $2 billion pledge for UN humanitarian aid under the administration of President Donald Trump – Reducing US foreign aid He warns UN agencies that they must “adapt, shrink or die” in chaos Time for new financial realities.
These funds represent a small fraction of what the United States has contributed in the past, but they reflect what the administration believes is still a generous sum that will maintain America’s position as the world’s leading nation. The largest humanitarian donor.
“This new model will better share the UN’s humanitarian workload with other developed countries and will require the UN to reduce bloat, remove duplication, and commit to strong new mechanisms of influence, accountability and oversight,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media.
This pledge creates an umbrella fund through which money will be distributed to agencies and priorities, and is an essential part of it The United States demands radical changes Throughout the United Nations, which has alarmed many humanitarian workers and led to this happening Sharp cuts in programs and services.
The $2 billion is just a sliver of the traditional United States Humanitarian funding for programs coordinated by the United NationsWhich has reached $17 billion annually in recent years, according to United Nations data. US officials say that only between $8 and $10 billion of this amount was provided in the form of voluntary contributions. The United States also pays billions in annual dues associated with its membership in the United Nations.
“The piggy bank is not open to organizations that just want to go back to the old system,” Jeremy Lewin, the State Department official responsible for foreign aid, said at a news conference Monday in Geneva. “President Trump has made clear that the system is dead.”
“Individual UN agencies will need to adapt, shrink or die,” the State Department said. Critics say Western aid cuts have been short-sighted and targeted Millions go hungryDisplacement, illness and harm US soft power All over the world.
The move caps a year of crisis for many UN organisations, including refugee, migration and food aid agencies. The Trump administration has It has already cut billions of dollars in US foreign aidThis prompted agencies to cut spending, aid projects and thousands of jobs. Other traditional Western donors have also reduced their expenditures.
The US pledge to UN aid programs – the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid and the largest recipient of US humanitarian funds – is embodied in a preliminary agreement with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, run by Tom Fletcher, a former British diplomat and government official.
Fletcher, who spent the past year lobbying US officials not to abandon UN funding completely, sounded optimistic when the agreement was signed in Geneva.
“It is a very important historical contribution,” he told reporters. “A month ago, I expected the number to be zero.” “So I think, before worrying about what we don’t get, I would look at the millions of people whose lives will be saved, whose lives will be better because of this contribution, and start there.”
Even as the United States withdraws its aid contributions, needs have swelled around the world: famine was recorded this year in parts of conflict-torn regions. Sudan and GazaFloods, droughts and natural disasters that many scientists attribute to climate change have claimed lives or pushed thousands from their homes.
The cuts will have significant impacts on UN affiliates such as the United Nations International Organization for MigrationThe World Food Program and UNHCR. They have already received billions less from the United States this year than they received under annual allocations from the Biden administration — or even during Trump’s first term.
Now the idea is that Fletcher’s office, which aimed to improve efficiency, would become a funnel for US and other aid money that could be redirected to those agencies, rather than sporadic US contributions to a variety of individual appeals for aid.
When asked by reporters if the “adapt or die” language used by the United States concerned him, Fletcher said: “If the options are adapt or die, I choose adapt.”
US officials say the $2 billion is just an initial outlay to help finance OCHA’s annual appeal for money. Fletcher, pointing to the upside-down landscape of aid, Already reduced demand this year. Other traditional UN donors, such as Britain, France, Germany and Japan, have reduced their aid allocations and sought reforms this year.
“The UN’s humanitarian reset should deliver more aid with less tax dollars – providing more focused, results-based assistance consistent with US foreign policy,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said.
In essence, the changes will help create pools of funding that can be directed either to specific crises or to countries in need. 17 countries will be targeted initially, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Syria and Ukraine.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also welcomed the announcement, saying that “every dollar counts.”
Afghanistan and Yemen were not included on the list of the world’s most desperate countries, with US officials citing the diversion of aid to the Taliban and Houthi rebels as concerns about resuming contributions.
Also not mentioned on the list were the Palestinian territories, which officials say would be covered by money from Israel Trump’s Gaza peace plan is not yet complete.
The UN project, which has been months in the making, stems from Trump’s long-standing view that the global body had great promise but had failed to deliver, and – in his view – drifted too far from its original mandate to save lives while undermining American interests, promoting extremist ideologies and encouraging wasteful and unaccountable spending.
“No one wants to be a recipient of aid,” Lewin said. “No one wants to live in a UNHCR camp because they were displaced by conflict.” “So the best thing we can do to reduce costs, and President Trump understands that and that’s why he’s a peace president, is to end armed conflict and allow communities to return to peace and prosperity.”
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Lee reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed from New York.