Presented by The Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs
We look at Jesper Brodin’s bid to head the United Nations’ premier refugee agency, UNHCR. He argues his private-sector experience could help steer the agency through deep funding cuts and a growing global displacement crisis.
Also in today’s edition: We track U.N. staff moving from New York City to Nairobi, gear up for Brazil’s COP30, update the Aid Transparency Index, and look at development jobs in 2025.
Happening today at 8 a.m. ET: Join us soon for a Devex Pro Briefing to preview the major talking points at COP30. Karen Silverwood-Cope of World Resources Institute Brasil and Marcene Mitchell of the World Wildlife Fund will give insights on what the “implementation COP” means for climate action, equity, and the future of multilateral collaboration. Register now, and if you can’t attend live, we’ll send you a recording.
Surely he should head the Department of the Interior
The United Nations has long relied on the private sector for funding — but rarely to run its agencies. Jesper Brodin, outgoing CEO of Ingka Group, which owns most IKEA stores, wants to change that. Backed by Sweden, he’s running to become the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.
“I am the peacock in the land of penguins,” he tells Senior Global Reporter Colum Lynch. “I am the profile that stands out in the crowd.”
Brodin’s bid comes as the refugee agency faces a “perfect storm.” U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign aid cuts hammered it with a $300 million shortfall and about 5,000 layoffs, part of a wider donor retreat — even as global displacement and the refugee crisis deepen.
He believes his crisis-tested experience at IKEA — guiding the company through the pandemic, financial shocks, and inflation — could help stabilize the agency. “It’s very hard to say no” to the chance to “serve the most needy people on the planet,” he says.
Traditionally, UNHCR’s top job goes to a European, and Sweden’s support comes as it tightens its own asylum rules. Still, it remains one of the agency’s biggest donors, giving more than $136 million this year.
“This is not about stepping in and slashing. It’s about creating an agenda that people believe in,” Brodin says. “I think it would be the wrong approach to get obsessed about getting smaller.” Instead, he wants to “make sure money is moved to where it’s needed on the ground” and prove the agency can “fulfill the mission with less money” while building “something better for the future.”
IKEA has worked with UNHCR for years — from job training for Syrian refugees in Jordan to furniture donations for Ukrainians fleeing war. Brodin wants to build on that model. “I’m sure we can engage the private sector much more in the future than in the past,” he says. “There is a need for orchestration and a way of structurally connecting the dots here.”
“As a business person, I’m happy to meet with people with that background,” he says when asked about Trump. “The voice of the U.S. would, of course, be incredibly important to hear and seek collaboration.”
Read: IKEA chief Jesper Brodin — ‘I am the peacock in the land of penguins’
UN packs up for Nairobi
It’s moving season at the United Nations. As funding cuts bite, UNICEF, the U.N. Population Fund, and UN Women are shifting staff from New York to Nairobi to save money and work closer to the field.
“I’m not going to lie, like I was a little bit nervous,” says Yangsun Kim, a Korean junior professional officer with UNFPA, who moved to Nairobi in August after two years in New York. But she quickly warmed to the city’s vast greenery, national parks, and forests. “In New York, it was really hard for us to call someone in Asia-Pacific areas, but here we are kind of in the middle,” she says. “We don’t have to worry about being jet lagged.”
African diplomats broadly welcome the shift, writes Colum and reporter Ayenat Mersie. “The reform must preserve and ideally enhance the ambition and quality of U.N. engagement in Africa,” Guinea-Bissau’s U.N. Ambassador Samba Sané told the U.N. General Assembly. Rwanda’s former Prime Minister Édouard Ngirente even offered “a long-term U.N. Campus in the heart of the City of Kigali.”
For UN Women’s Alice Shackelford, Nairobi is a “very good duty station for families … I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s got a vision. It’s environmentally friendly. It is connected to nature,” And, she adds, “I mean I’m paying practically three times less for rent here.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres says the relocations are already saving money. “By moving posts from high-cost locations, we can reduce our commercial footprint in those cities,” he tells member states.
Read: UN staffers depart Manhattan's urban canyons for Kenya's leafy capital
Related opinion: Why the UN’s recent Africa relocation news matters
See also: Top UN official defends reform agenda as genuine, despite skepticism (Pro)
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Road map to nowhere?
It’s just four days until the official U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP30, begins, but many are heading to Belém, Brazil, early for the leaders summit, which kicks off today, my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz tells me. Flights to Belém from Lisbon, Portugal, which I can’t imagine are typically packed, are full of young climate activists wearing thematically appropriate T-shirts and mid-30s professionals wearing their best shoes and pulling out their laptops. Jesse even spotted Norway’s environment minister at the gate.
This year’s COP is expected to be a bit different than last year’s — there’s no finance target to root for or headline agreements. This year is advertised as the “implementation COP,” where all the ideas of the last 15 years get “action plans.”
In line with that theme, negotiations will start with the new Baku to Belém Roadmap in hand, a plan to take the $300 billion in public finance of COP29 and supersize it into $1.3 trillion. The plan has just been released, but experts are already saying that it “falls short of presenting a concrete action plan to scale up qualitative public finance.”
The plan is expected to come out today, but experts who have seen the report say that it “falls short of presenting a concrete action plan to scale up qualitative public finance.”
ICYMI: COP30 presidency calls for shift from climate pledges to implementation
Don’t miss: Food and climate at COP30 — 5 things to watch in Belém
The opt-in transparency index
Earlier this year, we brought you news both of the closure of the Aid Transparency Index and of its subsequent revival as a paid-for service. Now, Publish What You Fund, the U.K. nonprofit that produces the index, has published a list of the 14 organizations to be included in the 2026 edition.
The list, however, does not include many of the world’s largest donor agencies, including the principal agencies from the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, Germany, and Canada.
The index has historically tracked the quality of data submitted to the International Aid Transparency Initiative by 50 of the largest bilateral and multilateral development agencies. It was funded first by philanthropies and then by IATI itself.
After IATI pulled funding for the 2026 edition, PWYF initially announced it would not be able to produce the index. But after consultation with donors, the nonprofit decided to relaunch the index as a paid-for service.
The publicly listed participating organizations include the World Bank, UNICEF, and French development agency AFD. Two large philanthropies will also take part, but they have not yet been named.
Gary Forster, CEO of PWYF, says that his organization would continue to monitor agencies that did not participate, and would call out when it sees standards of transparency slip.
Background: How the Aid Transparency Index rose from the dead
Senioritis
The global aid job market has taken a serious hit. According to the Devex job board, total listings are down about 25% in 2025 compared to this time last year. But some roles are feeling the squeeze more than others.
A new report, published exclusively for Devex Career Account members, shows just how uneven the impact has been. Senior positions — especially project directors and chiefs of party — have seen the steepest drop, plunging from 630 postings last year to just 105 this year.
Meanwhile, the jobs that are being advertised tend to be shorter-term, temporary, and more junior than before, writes Business Editor David Ainsworth.
Geographically, the picture isn’t much brighter. Kenya and Ukraine have been among the hardest hit, while the United Kingdom stands out as a rare exception — it’s managed to keep job numbers almost steady. And although U.S. listings are sharply down, they’re still roughly in line with declines elsewhere.
Download the report: How aid cuts hit development jobs in 2025 (Career)
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In other news
Prince William announced the five winners of the 2025 Earthshot Prize in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yesterday, awarding £1 million each to initiatives tackling climate, air, and ocean challenges around the globe. [BBC]
A Climate Analytics report says the world can still limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 if governments rapidly phase out fossil fuels and scale up renewable energy. [The Guardian]
The U.S. will share a draft U.N. resolution with the Security Council, proposing a two-year transitional government and international stabilization force in Gaza as part of President Donald Trump’s peace plan. [Reuters]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
