Next week will be one of the busiest on the aid calendar year, when the United Nations General Assembly meets for its high-level week. Devex will be there in New York, in force. You can sign up to come along to our events, and keep an eye on all the details here.
In the meantime, we’ve taken our customary look at the state of U.N. finances, and we found something which may be surprising to many. While it’s common knowledge that U.N. funding has come under pressure during the present administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the trend had already begun years before, when the U.N. suffered significant funding cuts.
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Donald Trump has made no secret that he wants funding from the U.S. to the United Nations sharply cut. But even before he rose to the U.S. presidency, it appears that the country was already falling out of love with the United Nations.
In 2023, under the Biden presidency — the most recent year for which we have comprehensive figures — the United Nations saw its income fall in real terms by almost $10 billion. The United States accounted for more than half of that — $5.8 billion, including a $4.4 billion cut to the World Food Programme and around $900 million to UNICEF, as part of a massive retrenchment away from humanitarian aid.
It shows how dependent the U.N. is on the U.S. for its income. Even after a 31.2% drop in spending in a single year, the U.S. contributed more than twice as much to the United Nations as Germany, the next largest contributor.
Read: How United Nations funding started to fall in 2023 (Pro)
+ Tomorrow, we’ll be hosting a look-ahead to UNGA80, exclusively for our Pro members. Join Colum Lynch, our U.N. reporter, at 9 a.m. ET (3 p.m. CET) along with Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group and Elizabeth Campbell of ODI Global Washington, for a discussion of the key issues. Register for it here.
We publish tenders, grants, and other funding announcements on our Funding Platform. Here are some of those viewed the most in the past 10 days.
The Asian Development Bank has approved $135 million in funding to strengthen water security and improve ocean and environmental health in Fiji.
The European Union and the government of the Czech Republic have launched an initiative to increase the resilience of the agrifood sector in Moldova.
The Inter-American Development Bank is inviting companies to develop a multimodal transport master plan for Suriname.
German investment bank KfW has signed a €54.3 million ($63.9 million) deal to promote peace, social cohesion, and sustainable development in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
French development finance institution Proparco has released a $5 million investment to make financing more accessible to disadvantaged populations worldwide.
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Aid cuts have already swept through Washington, leaving thousands unemployed in their wake. But the battle for the future of U.S. foreign assistance funding goes on, and this month, the fight will be on two main fronts.
First, there’s the deliberations over what future aid spending may look like. So far, the U.S. Congress has not fallen in line with proposed plans for a radical reduction in aid spending, and still looks likely to appropriate tens of billions.
However it doesn’t look as if the administration wants to spend it, or has left itself with the resources to do so, after shutting down USAID and proposing controversial State Department reforms — which the Republican Party is now trying to retroactively code into law.
Second, there are attempts to hand back money already earmarked for foreign aid spending, using what’s known as a pocket rescission — a concept already ruled illegal by one judge. That battle is now heading to the Supreme Court.
Last week, I was joined by our in-house experts, Adva Saldinger and Michael Igoe, for a special episode of the Devex podcast, where they attempted to explain exactly what’s going on.
Listen: The US budget deadlock explained
ICYMI: US lawmakers propose sweeping State Department reforms
See also: US foreign aid legal showdown heads to the Supreme Court
Many people are looking to philanthropy as a source of funds as donor money dries up. But there’s one fast-growing source that may not be on the radar — corporate giving.
Between 2019 and 2023, the top 20 corporate givers grew their giving by an average of 87%, according to a recent report from philanthropic adviser The Bridgespan Group.
Part of that is due to donations in kind, especially from pharmaceutical companies. Four of those companies — Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Company, AstraZeneca, and Amgen Inc. — are the largest corporate givers of recent years, typically providing up to $3 billion in any given year.
Read: Corporate philanthropy surges, led by pharma giants
You know what they say: Debt is the only certainty in life.
At least, that’s how it must feel for governments in the global south, who five years ago, during the pandemic, were hit by a sudden pause in the world economy which pushed them into emergency borrowing, followed by a spike in energy and food prices and a sharp hike in interest rates.
One of the worst hit nations, Ghana, has recently done a deal which has led to economic stability, but which highlights clearly the challenges nations face.
In an opinion piece for Devex, Noah Law, a Labour member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, calls for a fresh campaign for debt forgiveness, similar to the one that led to such successful outcomes a quarter of a century ago.
Opinion: Time for a rally in global debt reform
ICYMI: Ghana’s debt deal stabilizes economy, but not living costs
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