The United Nations Population Fund, aka UNFPA, is sending a big chunk of its New York City staff members packing to Kenya.
Also in today’s edition: USAID fights back as it finds itself in the congressional crosshairs. Plus, we ask: Is there enough evidence that localization actually works?
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Kenya keep up?
About a quarter of UNFPA’s New York staff members will have to get their moving boxes ready to relocate to Nairobi, Kenya, by 2025 — a decision meant to bring the agency closer to the people it helps but one that’s proving unpopular with some staffers.
UNFPA is the U.N. agency focused on promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights. It’s precisely those rights that some staffers worry could be compromised by a move to a country that has regressed on LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. The move would also mean losing access to the powerful corridors of the U.N. Headquarters in New York, where policy is formulated.
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In addition, some staffers could lose their jobs. UNFPA says the restructuring is not a downsizing exercise, but it is already causing people who do not want to relocate to look for jobs elsewhere or take a voluntary early separation, my colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo writes.
Management is defending the decision. Ib Petersen, UNFPA’s former deputy executive director for management, said during a staff meeting in September that the move is in line with changes taking place with other U.N. agencies, which are also shifting “a significant portion” of their headquarters staff out of New York, including to Nairobi, “which will become a real epicenter of the global south.”
That’s cold comfort to some staffers Jenny spoke to, who told her that reviews and available options were not shared with them — only the rationale that UNFPA is a field-based organization, and thus needs to be closer to the people it supports.
“When we asked for an analysis, like share with us the analysis that made you come to this decision, why Nairobi out of other places, why that was decided? And secondly, what was the risk analysis? Because clearly there’s a risk to moving these divisions out of New York, out of the normative center of the U.N. And none have been provided,” one staff member said.
Exclusive: Morale 'very low' over UNFPA New York staff move to Nairobi
Related: The top global development employers hiring in Nairobi (Career)
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What’s in a letter?
My colleague Michael Igoe’s investigation into a troubled $9.5 billion USAID-Chemonics International contract made waves with readers when it came out in November — and it continues to reverberate in the U.S. Congress.
That’s where Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an Iowa Republican and member of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, demanded answers on the problems that plagued USAID’s largest-ever contract. The project aimed to transform the global health supply chains that deliver lifesaving products such as HIV/AIDS drugs and mosquito nets to millions around the globe.
Last week, USAID gave us those answers in a letter that downplayed the issues raised by our investigation, which was done in conjunction with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
“Most of the issues raised in the referenced Devex article refer to the performance during the
start-up period of the Global Health Supply Chain-Procurement and Supply Management
(GHSC-PSM) contract from 2016 to 2018 — not corruption, overbilling, fraud, waste, and abuse,” wrote USAID Assistant Administrator Atul Gawande, who leads the Bureau for Global Health.
Gawande also noted that USAID briefed three congressional oversight committees on the issues raised in the article in November and December last year.
In her questions to USAID last month, Miller-Meeks wrote that the article provided “evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse,” and that USAID and Chemonics “jointly manipulated performance indicators.” She also asked what USAID is doing “to direct funding for projects like this away from expensive Washington DC consultants and to local actors and the private sector?”
Read: No overbilling, corruption by Chemonics in supply chain project, says USAID
ICYMI: 'Too big to fail' — how USAID's $9.5B supply chain vision unraveled
Cold hard data
In the same letter, Gawande promised that all organizations, “no matter where they are located, have an equal opportunity to bid” — a vow that gets to the crux of USAID’s localization promises. But Ingrid Gercama and my colleague David Ainsworth have rolled back to basics to ask: Does localization actually do what it promises?
Advocates say it makes aid more efficient and keeps cash in local economies. But while anecdotal evidence on the subject abounds, we found formal evidence to be startlingly scant — and worse, there’s little effort being made to gather the evidence at all.
One issue, according to ODI think tank research fellow John Bryant, is that there’s no accepted single definition of localization. Another is that, according to a report on the topic from the Humanitarian Advisory Group, donors often don’t require projects to measure the impact of localization.
But some feel the lack of evidence doesn’t actually matter. As one U.N. consultant puts it: “It is a core human right, the right to have a voice. You can't take rights and turn it into a measurable project.”
Read: Does localization actually work? We look for evidence (Pro)
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The new frontier of farming
Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and Web3 for … small farms? Yep, that’s right.
The U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development wants to embrace technologies that could reshape the lives of smallholder farmers in low-income countries — and potentially the future of agriculture. That was the message at last week’s annual meeting of the IFAD’s governing council, which focused on “Innovation for a Food-Secure Future,” where a strategy for its ambitious $2 billion replenishment was approved.
“Our role is to ensure that those frontier technologies are being developed with and for rural people and vulnerable groups,” Gladys Morales, the global head of innovation at IFAD, told Devex contributing reporter Alessio Perrone.
But high-tech doesn’t always have to mean highly complicated. Bhaskar Chakravorti of Tufts University told delegates to think about “small AI” — cheap, easily acquirable, and easy-to-use AI-powered tools such as weather forecasts, early warning systems, or irrigation and plant treatment tips.
IFAD President Álvaro Lario also reminded representatives that innovation goes both ways: “Agri-entrepreneurs in developing countries are some of the most innovative and dynamic entrepreneurs in the world. We don’t bring innovations to them — they bring innovations to us.”
Read: UN agriculture fund bets big on innovation to improve food security
‘Historic measures’
Today, World Health Organization member states meet to negotiate the text of a furiously debated pandemic accord. And flexibilities around intellectual property must feature prominently in any approach for how to handle the next pandemic, writes Boston University’s Rachel Thrasher in an opinion article for Devex.
The U.S. and others are against loosening IP protections for fear of jeopardizing innovation. “What they do insist on, however, are binding commitments by all countries to share all information about pathogens and new variants, which would then be provided to pharmaceutical companies to develop new therapeutics and vaccines,” Thrasher points out.
But she argues that member states need to think beyond parochial interests to break the logjam.
“Historic times call for historic measures. As in wartime, pandemics are a time to call private groups to support the public good," she writes.
Opinion: A global pandemic agreement must include IP flexibilities
In other news
The U.N. Security Council is set to vote Tuesday on a resolution demanding a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, which the U.S. has signaled it will veto. [CNN]
A two-day summit led by the U.N. on how the international community can engage with the Taliban began Sunday in Doha, but leaders of the group have refused to attend. [VOA]
A charity rescued some 80 migrants and asylum-seekers off the Libyan coast over the weekend. [Reuters]
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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.
