Presented by the Global Remission Coalition
Between U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent rescissions package and his proposed fiscal 2026 budget, the United Nations is stuck between a rock and a hard place as it stares down a devastating double hit to its finances.
Also in today’s edition: How funders can avoid having their contributions swept up in projects that don’t align with their values.
+ Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman is joining us today at 12 p.m. ET (6 p.m. CET) for an in-depth discussion on the foundation’s recent $200 billion commitment and its 2045 sunset. There’s still time to save your spot. We’re also taking your questions, so be sure to email them to us at editor@devex.com.
UN unhappy
The Trump administration has launched a fusillade of budget bombshells at the United Nations that has the world body scrambling for cover.
First, Trump’s rescissions package is going to claw back more than $1 billion in U.S. funding to the U.N. for everything from peacekeepers to human rights promotion to nutritional supplements for children, my colleague Colum Lynch writes.
Second, a proposed budget for the fiscal year ending September 2026 making its way through the House appropriations committee envisions even deeper cuts, capping peacekeeping funding at about $560 million, a roughly 54% cut from the $1.2 billion budget for 2025. A package of funding for international organizations would drop from about $1.54 billion to $310.2 million. It would also prohibit funding for several U.N. agencies that are unpopular among Republicans, including UNRWA, the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees.
Other agencies in the rescissions crosshairs include those that have traditionally enjoyed some U.S. support, including UNICEF, the U.N. Development Programme, and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The U.N., meanwhile, has pursued its own reform effort, titled UN80, with the goal of slashing some 20% of funding across the U.N. secretariat. Officials had hoped this reform initiative — which Trump’s U.N. nominee Mike Waltz praised during his Senate confirmation hearing — might stave off more draconian U.S. cuts.
But the far-reaching rescissions package signaled that the White House and Congress would press ahead with cuts, even before a formal 180-day State Department review of U.N. programs had been completed.
“I don’t think this will have an immediate impact as the U.N. had planned for this outcome in its spending allocations,” Ian Richards, the head of the U.N. staff union in Geneva, tells Colum.
But he says it demonstrates that the U.N.’s “efforts to impose a 20 percent haircut across the whole secretariat … are not making inroads with the U.S.”
Read: White House budget cuts harm UN programs it says it supports
Divisive goals
In a U.N. maneuver that should surprise no one given the long-standing Republican opposition to the agency, the U.S. has withdrawn from UNESCO — the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that seeks to promote peace through education, arts, sciences, and culture.
In particular, UNESCO’s focus on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals drew the ire of the administration. Heaven forbid the U.N. work to achieve the SDGs, but that’s apparently not how the U.S. government sees it.
“UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy,” said Tammy Bruce, the State Department’s spokesperson.
Casual observers may be confused by accusations of UNESCO’s “globalist, ideological agenda.” The agency is best known for designating world heritage sites, from Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. to Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe.
But the withdrawal reinforces the Trump administration’s view that the SDGs are contrary to its interests. Another grievance is UNESCO’s 2011 decision to admit Palestine as a member state, which the U.S. said propagated anti-Israel rhetoric in the organization.
UNESCO’s director-general, Audrey Azoulay, says that the agency wasn’t surprised by the State Department’s announcement, and that the reasons the U.S. withdrew from UNESCO were the same as seven years ago.
“However regrettable, this announcement was anticipated, and UNESCO has prepared for it,” Azoulay says, adding that in recent years, the agency has undertaken “major structural reforms” to ensure the U.S. now represents just 8% of its budget.
Read: US withdraws from UNESCO, stating it has an ‘outsized focus’ on SDGs
Rights wrong
Foreign assistance has a lot of steps. By the time a large donor’s money moves through intermediaries and trickles down to on-the-ground projects, things can get lost in translation.
That appears to have been the case when the Open Society Foundations gave a small grant to Christian Aid to implement a women’s economic inclusion project. But part of that money went to a downstream implementing partner, the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone, a conservative group opposing abortion rights.
Why is that a problem? Well, the optics of a group campaigning against abortion rights receiving funding from one of the world’s most prominent human rights donors aren’t exactly great.
“We are grateful that this matter has been brought to our attention,” an OSF spokesperson tells us. “This grant has been closed and we are committed to investigating and implementing due diligence efforts to ensure as far as possible that our grantees are aligned with our values and our commitments to human rights, including reproductive rights and freedoms.”
Dr. Ramatu Bangura, co-CEO at women and girls’ NGO Purposeful, tells Devex contributing reporter Amy Fallon that funders must vet grantees and partners to ensure ideological alignment. That includes “deep conversations” with grantees — visiting their work, asking questions, and closely observing activities
“It’s a call to social justice-focused grantees or grantee partners to be really clear about what their commitments are to their communities that their grantee partners serve, what their commitments are to human rights and social justice, and to be clear any other group that they will move resources to also align in that way,” Bangura says.
Despite the OSF oversight, some things in the system worked well.
The funding was discovered by the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Social Change after Christian Aid submitted the information to the International Aid Transparency Initiative, a voluntary initiative that seeks to improve aid transparency.
Claire Provost, co-founder and co-director of IJSC, noted it was a “huge transparency success” that Christian Aid was so open about its funding.
Read: Are donors accidentally funding groups not aligned with their values? (Pro)
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Intelligent adoption
This era of aid cuts will force development organizations to do more with less. But this is also an era of burgeoning artificial intelligence. Combining the two is “a powerful solution hiding in plain sight,” argues Jocelyn Cheng of ImpactAgent in an opinion piece for Devex.
“A Harvard Business School study found that consultants using AI had significant increases in productivity, completing 12% more tasks, 25% faster, and with a 40% increase in quality. Still, 92% of nonprofits feel unprepared for AI implementation. This skills gap represents both the sector’s greatest vulnerability and its most immediate opportunity,” she writes.
“Meanwhile, the for-profit sector is racing ahead — two-thirds of companies are actively implementing at least 10 AI pilots. Organizations dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing challenges are themselves being left behind by the technological advances that could amplify their impact,” she adds, outlining four ways development organizations can successfully adopt AI.
Opinion: Development organizations need an action plan for AI adoption
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In other news
The World Health Organization has condemned the Israeli military attacks on its staff residence and warehouse in Gaza on Monday, while a group of over 100 aid organizations has urged governments to take immediate action as people face mass starvation in the enclave. [BBC and Reuters]
The United Kingdom will cut its contribution to the World Bank’s International Development Association by 10%, or a reduction of some $2.7 billion, but plans to make early payments to help offset the impact. [Bloomberg]
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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.
