Devex Newswire: Is the World Food Programme ignoring charges of racism?

Does the World Food Programme have a racism problem? Some employees tell us the agency isn’t interested in finding out. Also in today’s edition: Things are not just getting worse for U.K. aid — they’re getting a hell of a lot worse. Plus, the competition to lead the Food and Agriculture Organization is a ho-hum slam dunk. Race blind? WFP was praised for taking action against sexual harassment in the wake of a 2018 survey that raised some red flags. But that same sense of urgency appears to be lacking when it comes to racism within WFP’s ranks, according to several current and former staff who spoke to my colleague Rumbi Chakamba. The 2021 WFP Global Staff Survey found that over 1,500 staffers, or 8% of those surveyed, said they had experienced racism during the last year, while another 12% said they had witnessed their colleagues being treated unfairly because of race. “I've lived it,” says one staffer with over three decades of experience at WFP, adding that the racism is subtle, not in-your-face blatant. “There's no such thing like, ‘Okay, you are African, you are Black.’ No, no, no, they won't say that. But [you] know that it's because you are not part of the club,” he says. WFP says that while it does not record employee data based on race or ethnicity for privacy reasons, general data about countries of origin show that since 2020, it has hired 2,669 employees from developing countries compared to 442 from developed countries. But a senior employee says WFP tends to “hide behind” the phrase “developing countries.” “What they are hiding behind is that a blue-eyed blonde Serbian will be considered as developing,” he charged. “They hire people from a developing nation but they have not hired enough Black people, they have not hired enough Asians and hired enough Arabs.” With David Beasley on his way out as executive director and Cindy McCain about to take over, the employees Devex spoke to say they hope she confronts the issue head-on. Read: Has WFP failed to tackle racism in its ranks? Some employees say yes FAO sure The White House’s selection of Cindy McCain, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies in Rome, to run WFP didn’t come as a huge surprise to many in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the contest to head the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization appears even less riveting. Qu Dongyu is FAO’s incumbent director-general and is likely to remain in the post unless Tajikistan’s Dilshod Sharifi pulls off a miracle upset in the July election. My colleague Teresa Welsh tells me that’s unlikely to happen. Qu was hardly a shoo-in during the last election in 2019. There were concerns that Qu — the first Chinese national to hold the position — would be influenced by Beijing and that China used its expansive Belt and Road Initiative to curry favor with low-income voting countries. Qu won but those suspicions have not abated during his tenure. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its domino effect on global food prices, Western leaders have expressed fear that Qu has taken pains not to blame Moscow, a Chinese ally. But Qu, who came to the job with impeccable credentials, also has his defenders. Teresa writes that some countries report being happy with FAO’s technical expertise and refusal to bow to politics under his leadership. Sharifi, by contrast, has almost no agriculture or U.N. experience. One observer tells Teresa that his chances of defeating Qu are “zero.” Read: Here's who's running to lead the Food and Agriculture Organization (Pro) + Not a Devex Pro member yet? Start your 15-day free trial of Pro today. Parting shot The outgoing WFP executive director took a swipe at China on the BBC and Twitter by pointing out that between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S. and China, the former gave WFP $7.2 billion while the latter parted with just $12 million. “China has had much success in lifting millions of its own people out of hunger. Next step? Help the world!” Beasley, a prolific fundraiser for the food agency, tweeted. Domestic squabbles U.K. aid has had it bad in recent years — and it’s about to get much, much worse, at least for those outside the country’s borders. That sounds counterintuitive, given that foreign aid is ostensibly meant to go to foreign countries, but the United Kingdom is now spending more at home than abroad. My colleague William Worley reports that around £1.5 billion ($1.85 billion) may be cut from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s portion of the aid budget next year due to extensive spending by the Home Office to house refugees inside the U.K., including at hotels because of a dysfunctional asylum system. It marks the second year in a row that FCDO’s aid budget will be almost 20% lower than planned. The government says in-house refugee costs count as official development assistance under OECD rules, but critics say that’s a cop-out. “No-one could possibly justify these allocations on development grounds,” Ranil Dissanayake of the Center for Global Development tells Will, noting that London expects to spend between three times and five times more aid within the U.K. than bilaterally in all of Africa. Read: UK aid budget 'totally transformed' as another £1.5B cut looms Big bets Ukraine is getting a $15.6 billion relief package courtesy of the International Monetary Fund board. The massive deal, announced Friday, is the first reached by the fund with a country actively at war and required a rules change at the international organization, my colleague Shabtai Gold tells me. The board's approval will allow the immediate disbursement of $2.7 billion to Kyiv. The funding should help mobilize additional financing for Ukraine from international partners, including the World Bank. Notably, the IMF said the four-year agreement was designed to help Ukraine gain accession to the European Union “in the post-war period.” Opinion corner • There are at least 81 climate funds but who knows how much they’re actually spending, Philippe Le Houerou writes, arguing it’s time to pull the curtain back on this opaque system and consolidate funds instead of adding to the pile. • Michael Jarvis and Justin Sylvester write about “green colonialism” and why achieving net zero with renewable energy should not come at the expense of poorer, rural communities. • The upside: The movement for aid transparency has led agencies to release more data. The downside: Taxpayers often can’t access it, argue Haley Swedlund and Bernhard Reinsberg. In other news IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva urged member countries to increase their commitments to a fund that offers interest-free loans to the lowest-income countries, as the fund’s demand approaches nearly $40 billion. [Reuters] World Bank’s outgoing president David Malpass expressed concerns over the transparency of China’s lending to low- and middle-income African countries, citing instances of countries struggling to repay their debt. [BBC] U.K. researchers are developing a technology that can serve as an early warning system for new diseases and future pandemics as it tracks genetic changes in respiratory viruses globally. [The Guardian] Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.