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World Bank President Ajay Banga’s decision to join the Trump-led Board of Peace is generating criticism in some quarters, but is it justified?
Also in today’s edition: A U.S. Senator’s different take on the aid narrative.
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Controversial peace
Smart or shortsighted? Banga’s participation in U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has elicited various opinions. On the one hand, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide desperately needed help to the people of Gaza, all with the U.N. Security Council’s stamp of approval. On the other hand, will the endeavor try to solve every world problem under the sun and ultimately sideline the U.N.? And will the World Bank’s reputation for neutrality suffer from supporting what some see as an inherently political — and risky — body?
For its part, the bank says its involvement fully adheres to the rules because it steers clear of politics and focuses on its financial expertise, writes Devex contributing reporter Sophie Edwards.
In an interview at the World Economic Forum, Banga explained that “The actual Board of Peace is the political leadership. ... They are then fed the kind of work we think they can make decisions on. I call us the worker bees, them the deciders.”
That doesn’t fly with critics who point out that the board’s charter doesn’t mention Gaza, is chaired by one man for life, charges $1 billion to become a permanent member, and could undermine the very multilateralism that the bank represents.
“The entire [Board of Peace] structure depends on the World Bank lending its credibility. Without the Bank’s imprimatur, investors would see this as a highly politicized reconstruction effort with no independent accountability,” a senior bank insider tells Devex, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Banga handed over that credibility without conditions.”
Others see a more nuanced picture — and what might have been a strategic dilemma. “I can imagine the awkwardness of saying no when your largest shareholder asks you to sit on a Board of Peace endorsed by the UN Security Council, tasked to ensure peace and help get assistance to Gaza,” says Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development. “I can imagine the additional awkwardness of having said yes as the chairman of the Board of Peace then sets out a far broader ambition for the body that is opposed by many of your other shareholders.”
“Being a successful head of the World Bank clearly requires excellent diplomatic skills,” he adds.
Read: World Bank chief's role on Trump-led Board of Peace prompts questions (Pro)
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It’s ‘not gone’
The refrain since last year — most would say justifiably so — has been that there’s no more U.S. money for global development. Chris Coons, the Democratic senator from Delaware, wants to change that tune a little bit.
Speaking to my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz at the Munich Security Conference, he acknowledged we’re living through a global crisis — “not just of conflict, but of confidence” — noting that “we’re not going to achieve any of the Sustainable Development Goals.”
But all is not lost. “Something that has been missed by most of our allies is that at the very end, the appropriations bill that we passed and [President Donald] Trump signed, funded much more of development, public health, support of food programs, for [the International Organization for Migration] and for the U.N. There is much more money than you would think,” he said.
“If you assume that DOGE [the short-lived Department of Government Efficiency] destroyed all of our development infrastructure and it’s gone, it’s not gone. But to restore it to being healthy, to restore it to being viable, is going to take a lot of work.”
Read: US senator — ‘much more money than you would think’ in US development (Pro)
The surreal got real
That $50 billion foreign spending bill passed by Congress — which gave the development community hope that, as Coons said, the money is not gone — was one of the subjects I discussed recently at an event with my colleagues Adva Saldinger, Elissa Miolene, and Michael Igoe.
All three were on the front lines of the demolition of USAID in 2025, and they shared their reflections on what happened — and what may happen now — in a recent Devex Pro Briefing.
“Strange dream” is how Michael described the initial days of the stop-work order that Trump issued to pause all U.S. foreign assistance. It only got stranger.
It was “bizarre and surreal” to witness billionaire Elon Musk trawl through award databases in a way that was “purely designed to pull out and distort some of the really sensationalist claims about them,” Igoe added, noting that when the stop-work order came down, “it wasn’t just about putting a pause on future spending. It was just shutting down the whole system immediately. That was the sort of wake-up call — the sort of pivot point from which that system really never recovered.”
But it’s showing signs of life. Adva pointed out that Congress may be reasserting its prized power of the purse with this recent spending bill, which defies Trump's wishes for steeper foreign aid cuts.
Whether the State Department has the manpower — or willpower — to push that money out the door is another matter.
“We’re still trying to figure out the lay of the land in terms of how much money will be spent and how many people will be hired, but it seems like, certainly right now, the State Department is having kind of a rethink of, ‘OK, we don’t have enough capacity, and how are we going to rebuild that capacity by the end of the year?’” Elissa said.
“My impression is that folks … are still willing to give the administration some benefit of the doubt,” Michael said. “Administration officials are saying that they want to do this in the right way, and giving some indications to various stakeholders throughout the system that they’re taking it seriously, but … we’re about to find out if that’s genuine and something that they have really wrapped their heads around.”
Watch: The US foreign aid shock of 2025 gives way to a rapidly evolving 2026 (Pro)
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Rash decisions
While some U.S. money seems to be flowing, a lot has still dried up. And that, critics argue, risks harming U.S. interests — those very interests Trump has sought to prioritize.
Michelle Jurkovich, an associate professor in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is one of those critics. In an opinion piece for Devex, she argues that the decision by the State Department to terminate all U.S.-funded food assistance to Afghanistan and Yemen affected millions in two strategically important regions.
“Months later, as the prospect of famine conditions spreads, the consequences of this policy are becoming clear — and they extend far beyond humanitarian concerns,” she writes.
The Trump administration, in part, justified the terminations by saying terrorist groups were benefiting from the food aid, she adds, when in fact it was being provided exclusively to territories controlled by the internationally recognized government in Yemen.
As for Afghanistan, “The foreign policy decision to terminate all U.S.-funded food assistance in Afghanistan at a moment’s notice is equally reckless,” she writes. “The tragic events of 9/11 are a stark reminder that the U.S. has already experienced the catastrophic consequences of ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan.”
“Put bluntly, providing food assistance to the hungry in Afghanistan and Yemen is in the U.S. national interest,” she writes. “It does make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. It is also the right thing to do.”
Opinion: Why ending US food aid to Afghanistan, Yemen threatens national security
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In other news
Zimbabwe rolls out lenacapavir, a long-acting injectable for HIV prevention, making it one of the first countries to do so. [PBS]
The United Kingdom is set to host the Global Partnerships Conference in London on May 19-20. The summit is aimed at building new cross-border cooperation to address global crises. [GOV.UK]
The Trump administration is preparing a new wave of humanitarian cuts that would shut down lifesaving aid programs in seven African countries. [The Atlantic]
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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.
