Former UN relief chief says world body's reforms lack vision

Martin Griffiths, the former United Nations emergency relief coordinator, is concerned that the world body is going about its latest reform initiative in the wrong way, prioritizing numerical downsizing targets over forging a clear vision for the future that demonstrates its usefulness. “The U.N. system gets mired in mandates, and it gets mired in competition. We all know that,” Griffiths said in an interview with Devex on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. But he said the current quest for savings is just “about cuts. That’s not about reform. I think that’s wrong.” The remarks come less than two weeks after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres unveiled his UN80 reform plan, which calls for the elimination of 20% of jobs in key U.N. departments, moving back-office staff from New York and Geneva to cheaper cities, abolishing departments, merging U.N. agencies, and reducing the number of mandates, or tasks, it is obliged to carry out. Asked if billionaire Elon Musk’s dismantling of the U.S. aid sector might give it the shock it needed to institute needed reform, Griffiths pushed back. “Do you want to bully your child in order to change them?” he asked. “Of course not. It’s against our humanity.” “There's obvious efficiencies to be done by sharing back offices, by sharing maybe fundraising, by sharing geographical desks between agencies, and in Geneva,” he said. Proposals to merge agencies, like the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, are “fine but it's not the solution. I think because it will increase efficiencies, I'm not sure it will yet increase effectiveness,” he said. “The organizing principle of change now is not about back offices,” Griffiths added. “It's about listening to the people and letting them tell us what to do.” The Trump administration’s imposition of billions of dollars in cuts on foreign aid — and a White House budget proposal aimed at eliminating more than 85% of funding to the U.N. — represents perhaps the greatest threat to the U.N.’s financial sustainability since its creation in 1945. Thousands of jobs have already been eliminated at key U.N. humanitarian agencies, including UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and the International Organization for Migration. More are expected as the world body approaches key budget negotiations over U.N. peacekeeping and the regular budget. In an attempt to accommodate the United States, Secretary-General Guterres and the heads of key U.N. agencies have begun implementing cuts. Griffiths said he has “a passionate view that the new reset, the new vision, should be all about localization.” The humanitarian community, he added, “needs to demonstrate our relevance. That way lies multilateralism. That way lies care for people who need it.” Griffiths voiced particular alarm over a U.S. and Israeli-backed plan to contract a private, newly established outfit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which would coordinate the distribution of aid in Gaza, primarily in the south, in a handful of “secure distribution sites.” Security would be provided by private security contractors. The organization has asked the U.N. and private relief agencies to channel assistance through their hubs. The plan — which mirrors a proposal Israel has privately floated, according to U.N. officials and humanitarian aid specialists — has been sharply criticized by the U.N. and other private NGOs as a vehicle for forcing the mass relocation of Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza. “I don’t want to mince words,” Griffiths said, suggesting the secured base would effectively serve as a kind of military fortress. “It’s absolutely egregious.” Griffiths compared the foundation’s plan to a previous effort — backed by the U.S. military — to supply food, medicines, and other goods via a floating pier on the Gazan shore. That ended in failure, with rough seas destroying the pier, ships running aground, and more than 60 U.S. personnel injured. One soldier was killed. “One of my principal objections is [that] you cannot gain trust between the deliverers of aid and the recipients on a military base,” he said. “It's kind of that simple. Anybody who’s been on humanitarian front-line operations knows that without trust, it doesn’t work, because you’re often drawing people into danger in order to get assistance; you’re putting your own staff in danger.” The U.N., on the other hand, has a plan to massively ramp up humanitarian aid in Gaza if it is allowed to do so by the Israeli authorities, he noted. The plan, which is available on the U.N. website, is designed to provide aid across the entire Gaza Strip and includes a monitoring system to address Israeli concerns about diversion of food to Hamas. The U.N. has more than 160,000 pallets of aid, enough to fill 8,900 trucks, a vast network of aid workers, and distribution sites. The plan, Griffiths said, is a good example of why the U.N. is “relevant.” In contrast, he said, “the [Gaza] Humanitarian Foundation here in Geneva is not even promising to deliver to half the people [in Gaza].”