The deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza just over a year ago stunned the world. But some WCK staffers say the tragedy was only a matter of time.
Also in today’s edition: Peter Marocco is reportedly out at the U.S. State Department. Plus, the Open Society Foundations completes its transformation, but there’s one thing it won’t do.
This is a preview of Newswire
Sign up to this newsletter for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development, in your inbox daily.
+ Join us tomorrow at 9 a.m. ET (3 p.m. CET) for an exclusive Devex Pro briefing to explore the World Health Organization’s funding shortfall, the measures it is taking to navigate this financing crisis, and what reforms will mean for its staffing and programs. Save your spot now and submit your questions in advance.
A double-edged sense of urgency?
The email was titled Urgent: Personnel safety concerns and was sent to the leadership of World Central Kitchen last year.
“I have first hand witnessed this organization disregard safety many times in the past,” wrote Brack Watters, a distribution operations manager who’d deployed with WCK to Ukraine, Turkey, Haiti, and beyond, and was now working on the organization’s response in Gaza, in the email. “I feel it is happening again and on a level that is completely unacceptable.”
Twenty-five days later, seven WCK staff in Gaza were dead.
Israel took responsibility for the killings on April 1, 2024, calling them a “grave mistake.” A report commissioned by the Australian government reached the same conclusion, although it also presented a more nuanced picture.
My colleague Elissa Miolene spent months delving into those nuances, speaking to 14 former and current staff members and contractors about whether World Central Kitchen’s renowned sense of urgency to help people in disasters and war zones came at the expense of its own people.
“For this to happen did not come as a surprise to any of us,” says one former staff member who left the organization in 2023. “And that makes it so much worse.”
World Central Kitchen refuted allegations that it suffered from a lax safety culture. "Any suggestion that a lack of training or security protections contributed to the events of April 1 is both malicious and contrary to these undisputed facts,” writes Erin Gore, who became WCK’s chief executive officer in March 2023.
“Our model is unique: when disaster strikes, we move fast to get on location, partner with communities, and dramatically scale operations to fill immense humanitarian food needs,” the organization adds in a statement to Devex.
That’s exactly what WCK became known for: Feeding millions of people while bucking the bureaucracy that often can slow down traditional humanitarian groups. The organization’s vision statement highlights how it shows up “with the fierce urgency of now,” instead of “asking for permission or following systems and bureaucracy that lack urgency and flexibility.”
But not everyone agrees with what two people describe as a tendency to “build the plane while flying it” across the world.
“I love that we move so quickly and usually make the impossible happen,” Watters wrote in his email. “But at what cost.”
Read: What lay behind the deaths of 7 World Central Kitchen staff in Gaza
Background: How 7 deaths changed aid work in Gaza
Gone, but not forgotten
Peter Marocco, who led the Office of Foreign Assistance at the U.S. State Department and was considered the point person for dismantling USAID, has left the State Department, according to The Wall Street Journal, which spoke to a U.S. official who said it wasn’t Marocco’s choice to leave after barely three months in office.
A senior administration official confirmed Marocco’s departure to WSJ. “Pete was brought to State with a big mission — to conduct an exhaustive review of every dollar spent on foreign assistance,” the official says. “He conducted that historic task and exposed egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars. We all expect big things are in store for Pete on his next mission.”
“He is no longer at State,” the official says.
Open questions
When the Open Society Foundations announced a significant, multiphase restructuring in 2021, it made headlines in the philanthropy world and beyond. Now, its dramatic transformation is complete, and it has fully “stepped into a new operating model,” its president, Binaifer Nowrojee, says, admitting that the decision to reduce staff and offices was a “difficult” one.
While OSF had already been moving toward a leaner structure, the foundation has now finalized that transition — cutting staff from around 2,000 to 500 and reducing its global footprint from about 40 offices to 13, my colleague Ayenat Mersie writes.
The new operating model also includes sweeping changes to OSF’s grantmaking. The foundation has simplified its internal processes to make it easier for partners to access funding, enabled multiyear commitments, and expanded core support for organizations in the global south.
“We’re trying to make it better and easier for grantees and partners to access funds,” says Nowrojee. Previously, “every grant, regardless of the risk level or the renewal number of years, would go through 40 touch points and a very strong application process that actually was adding uncompensated complexity to the process,” she adds.
One thing it’s not doing though? Filling the void left by USAID.
“We got a lot of requests to fill the gap left behind by USAID,” Nowrojee says. “We could have taken our whole budget this year and filled the gap. At the end of the year, we’d be back where we started — and we’d have diverted all our funds away from our mandate.”
Instead, the foundation is using its advocacy to push for the restoration of U.S. assistance and encourage other donors to step in.
Nowrojee also described this moment as one of reckoning for the broader development sector.
“There’s always been a lot of talk about aid dependence,” she says. “And so here is the moment now that nobody wanted to actually address: What happens when aid is switched off?”
Read: OSF’s new strategy bets on longer-term, more flexible funding (Pro)
+ Not yet a Devex Pro member? Start your 15-day free trial today to access all our exclusive reporting and analyses, data-driven funding insights, members-only events, the world’s largest global development job board, and more. Check out all the exclusive content available to you.
Letter rip
Democrats are in the minority in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, but they’re still trying to make their voices heard as they oppose the Trump administration’s deep cuts to foreign aid — even insisting the merger of USAID into the State Department could be unlawful.
“As proposed, this plan will overburden the State Department, jeopardize the continuity of programs that save lives and keep Americans safe at home and further undermine U.S. credibility and reliability,” four top-ranking Democratic lawmakers write in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The letter, Elissa reports, came two weeks after the Trump administration delivered a congressional notification to Capitol Hill that laid out a plan to “abolish” USAID as an independent entity, and to subsume select programs into the Department of State.
Last week, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Sen. Brian Schatz, Rep. Gregory Meeks, and Rep. Lois Frankel formally objected to the State Department’s plan, stating the process Rubio had undertaken to reform USAID was unlawful.
But an objection only has legal power if it results in an actual act of Congress, and with Republicans in charge, such an outcome is unlikely.
Exclusive: Lawmakers oppose USAID merger, citing ‘unlawful’ process
Related: USAID’s merger with the State Department — the pros, cons, and questions (Pro)
The way to play ODA
Even after this wave of punishing cuts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, it is likely that total annual global flows of official development assistance, or ODA, will still sit at around $100 billion, writes Adrian Lovett, executive director for the United Kingdom, Middle East, and Asia Pacific at ONE, in a Devex opinion piece.
That’s still a lot of money and it needs to be used wisely, he argues.
For Lovett, there are three paths. One, ODA must be more than just an emergency service. “Firefighting without fire prevention is wasteful and has a deadly cost,” he writes.
“Second, ODA should be a tool for the redistribution of wealth,” he adds, noting that “Mutual international investments in sustainable growth, stability, health, and prosperity are win-win, not zero-sum.”
And thirdly, aid should be “an authentic and contemporary channel of those instincts of humanity: for cooperation, empathy, and partnership.”
“Transactions that are merely tools for extracting power or for gaining geopolitical advantage have no place in this definition.”
Opinion: From cuts to common cause, how do we rethink global development?
In other news
China has pledged emergency humanitarian assistance worth 1 billion yuan ($137 million) to earthquake-struck Myanmar. [Reuters]
Argentina secured a $20 billion IMF bailout package, enabling President Javier Milei to lift most of the country's strict capital controls as part of his economic reform agenda. [PBS]
Researchers revealed in a new study that antimicrobial-resistant infections claimed the lives of over 3 million children in 2022, with devastating impact across Southeast Asia and Africa. [Al Jazeera]
Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.
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.
