The White House did not support extending World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley’s term by one year, according to reporting from Axios.
Get the inside track on how agriculture, nutrition, sustainability, and more are intersecting to remake the global food system in this weekly newsletter.
Beasley, who was nominated for a five-year term by former President Donald Trump in 2017, is a former Republican governor of South Carolina and has bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers consider him an effective messenger for the importance of robust global food assistance funding. Senators from both parties intervened to encourage President Joe Biden to keep Beasley in his job at a critical time, Axios reported.
Spokespeople from WFP in Washington and WFP USA declined to comment on the report.
Beasley told Congress last month that “the house is burning down” and that WFP is about $10 billion short of what it needs to appropriately meet global needs. The agency is already cutting rations for vulnerable people and now finds its costs up $71 million per month due to the impact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is having on global food and fuel prices.
Beasley has also been making the rounds in the private sector, traveling recently to the Milken Institute’s Global Conference and the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland, to advocate for more funding.
According to Axios, the Biden administration faced pressure to install a Democrat as the WFP head, a position over which the United States has informal control. Foreign Policy reported in March that António Guterres — the secretary-general at the United Nations, which officially makes the appointment — had decided to extend Beasley’s term by another year. The move came shortly after the beginning of the Ukraine invasion and heightened a growing global food crisis caused by conflict and rising prices of basic staples, fuel, and agricultural inputs.
WFP won the Nobel Peace Prize under Beasley’s leadership in 2020. He is known for traveling to conflict zones where the U.N. agency feeds some of the world’s most vulnerable people, increasingly affected by conflict, climate, and lingering effects from COVID-19. His robust fundraising efforts included an extended back-and-forth over Twitter last year with Elon Musk, as Beasley attempted to convince the billionaire to donate $6 billion to help eliminate global hunger.
But Beasley has also ruffled feathers in the U.N. and the Biden administration. Last fall, Beasley attempted to engage in what Foreign Policy characterized as “unsanctioned” diplomacy with the collapsed government of Sudan as he attempted to reconcile the country’s leadership amid the crisis. One think tank analyst reportedly called Beasley’s efforts “ham-fisted and damaging,” while a diplomatic source anonymously complained that Beasley’s mediation efforts were “net negatives for U.S. diplomacy.”
About the author
Teresa Welshtmawelsh
Teresa Welsh is a Senior Reporter at Devex. She has reported from more than 10 countries and is currently based in Washington, D.C. Her coverage focuses on Latin America; U.S. foreign assistance policy; fragile states; food systems and nutrition; and refugees and migration. Prior to joining Devex, Teresa worked at McClatchy's Washington Bureau and covered foreign affairs for U.S. News and World Report. She was a reporter in Colombia, where she previously lived teaching English. Teresa earned bachelor of arts degrees in journalism and Latin American studies from the University of Wisconsin.
