Trump's cuts are a wake-up call to the UN: It's time to fix the politics of aid

Trump’s cut to foreign aid funding has delivered a financial blow to the UN that may finally be the existential push towards substantial reform it desperately needs. As the largest aid spender in the world, the US has announced it will scale back 87% of its contributions to UN agencies. 

A cascade of UN agency cuts has since followed. Global programs for aid coordination and delivery are looking at 20-30% budget and staff reductions, including the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the UN Secretariat itself. 

This sudden contraction, affecting all corners of the system, provides an underlying financial imperative to achieve long-standing goals of systemic UN reform. To this end, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has set out a survivalist UN80 Initiative, outlining a large-scale, structural overhaul to merge programmes, cut inflated jobs at the top, and make admin cheaper. 

Although aimed at targeting inefficiencies across the staggering 3,600 overlapping mandates of UN agencies, UN80 is a fundamentally bureaucratic approach to what is ultimately a political crossroads of the humanitarian sector. 

Despite emphasis on 'workforce streamlining', 'efficiency enhancement' and 'budget reprioritisation', Guterres' proposed changes go beyond paper-pushing. They will have far-reaching and tangible consequences for the survival of the most vulnerable communities across the world. 

UN80 should instead be seen as an urgent opportunity to fight against increasing violations of international law and political exploitation of the UN aid system. This requires a broader acknowledgement that aid in itself is political, and it always has been. If the humanitarian sector wants to save more lives with less, then it must look at how its work and founding principles have been curtailed during the world’s most deadly, protracted crises.

It could not be clearer than in the aftermath of a single foreign policy decision that the capacity of the UN to deliver its humanitarian directives is determined by politics. One change of president will rip postnatal care from women, remove abilities to forecast catastrophic flooding, and spread our deadliest diseases, including HIV and TB. 

UN agencies depend on voluntary contributions, mostly from a handful of key political countries who, as international donors, are not altruistic but act on their policy positions. Although a state acting in the interest of its citizens is not a bad thing, the question remains: where are the safeguards within a UN system designed to deliver life-saving aid and protect human rights for all?

Across Syria, Sudan, and Ethiopia, aid has been weaponised to produce famine and siege. Now a demonstrated wartime tactic of aid denial, there is almost zero accountability for belligerent actors. As Israel ended its three-month siege on Gaza, for instance, UN staff have had to stand by while aid is now dripped through a humiliating and inhumane mechanism operated by private security contractors.

For a long time, there has been an assumption that the politics of the UN is restricted to the New York skyscraper, home to the Security Council and General Assembly. The agencies of WFP, WHO, UNHCR, or OCHA, on the other hand, have been seen to operate in a sacred vacuum of humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence, driven by liberalist ideas of international cooperation. 

The UN at a crossroads: Reform or decline

But the resilience of the UN aid programming is also dependent on the political choices embedded in its operational architecture. Agencies may share common governing rules, but their approaches to aid in politicised conflicts are not always the same. 

As seen in contexts of aid denial during earthquakes in Syria and Myanmar, the basis upon which UN agencies will deliver life-saving assistance is laced with their varying interpretations of international law and their willingness to cooperate with non-state authorities in areas of need. WFP has been much stricter in its requirement for sovereign state approval for cross-border aid in protracted crises than the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), for instance. 

A significant structural change of the UN80 Initiative has included merging OCHA, WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, IOM and WHO into a single humanitarian entity. Although streamlining operations, particularly in aid delivery, their varying legal offices and risk management will be reduced to one. 

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The problem this presents is exemplified by the proposed single UN Agency for Refugees, which will amalgamate the differing legal frameworks of UNHCR and IOM. A ‘strategic reassessment’ of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has also been put on the table, with the risk of being dissolved under UNHCR. 

Although UNHCR actively promotes the right to return for refugees, important questions remain over the commitment of a new joint agency that will also incorporate IOM’s clear distinction between refugee and migrant rights. As the protection of Palestinians falls under increasingly severe Israeli and US pressure, there needs to be a clear mandate for the humanitarian principles these new merged agencies are willing to protect.

At a minimum, UN80 and its proposed structural changes must include an analysis of potential consequences for contexts of aid denial, such as Gaza.

Ideally, alongside bureaucratic reforms, there should be a strategy set out by UN leadership with tangible steps it will take to defend humanity amid an increasingly hostile environment to international aid, including unified positions on international law and its defence. To protect the political vulnerabilities of today’s UN system from exploitation, reform cannot simply be a product of cuts, it must be designed with principled safeguards.

The scope of global change required in the coming year cannot be understated. There is a danger that as staff and management teams are drowned in the administrative and logistical details, agency mergers, and programme defunding, structural changes will produce unintended political ramifications only visible in the worst crises. To outline what it is to fight for humanity in today’s world, amid today’s conflict, we cannot ignore the political consequences of a bureaucratic system.

Ellen Clarke is a humanitarian research consultant specialising in conflict, coordination, and climate. Based in Amman, her work has examined the international response to the Syria crisis and resource politics in the MENA region.

Follow Ellen on Bluesky: @ellenmclarke.bsky.social

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.