When Diene Keita officially took over the leadership of the United Nations Population Fund in August, the agency was already reeling from U.S. funding cuts and misinformation about its work.
The U.S. terminated funding for more than 40 of the agency’s humanitarian projects, and decided to withhold future funding to the agency based on unfounded and long-disproved claims of it being involved in coercive abortion in China.
UNFPA had anticipated being defunded by the Trump administration — every Republican president has done so since Ronald Reagan — and had started mobilizing resources from other donors prior. But the cuts, amounting to nearly $336 million, were no less brutal. The organization also let go of around 100 of its 6,000 staffers, according to Keita.