In addition to funding cuts, Washington is demanding radical reforms at the United Nations and changes in the way humanitarian missions operate. As specifies Euronews, the US State Department said that individual UN agencies will have to “adapt, downsize – or die”.
As part of this “reform”, US funds will be channeled through a centralized mechanism of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which will significantly expand the role of this agency in making decisions on the distribution of humanitarian aid.
“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases are contrary to American values. They contribute to the destabilization of the world by promoting ideas in foreign countries that directly contradict harmonious and stable relations within and between countries,” Euronews quoted the text of the official decree published on the White House website January 2025.
US Secretary of State Mark Rubio said on Monday that under Donald Trump’s administration, “taxpayer money will never be spent on waste, anti-Americanism or inefficiency. He said the U.S. State Department and the United Nations have signed an agreement that “radically reforms the U.S. approach to planning, funding and monitoring humanitarian activities under the auspices of the United Nations.”
“This new model will better share the burden of UN humanitarian action with other developed countries and will require the UN to reduce bloated apparatus, eliminate duplication of functions, and commit to new and effective mechanisms for impact, accountability and oversight,” Mark Rubio said.
Washington’s idea is to stop issuing disparate contributions to different organizations and individual appeals for assistance, and to channel all funds to OCHA, from where they will be distributed according to the needs of the UN. This should dramatically increase accountability and transparency in the flow of money.
The draft reform will help create pools of funding that can be directed either to specific crises or to countries in need. Initially, 17 countries will be allocated, including Bangladesh, Congo, Haiti, Syria and Ukraine. Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories are not on the list.
Euronews notes that other traditional donors are also reducing their aid. This will affect the work of UN services such as the International Organization for Migration, the World Food Program and the refugee agency.
