UN appeals fall flat in face of Trump's budget steamroller

Last month, Amy Pope, director general of the United Nations’ migration agency, flew to Guatemala to highlight a program that by all accounts aligns with a key priority of the Trump administration: keeping migrants from leaving their homes and heading to the United States. Guatemala’s national “Return Home Plan,” which had been funded by the U.S. and other countries, is designed to encourage Guatemalan migrants to return to their homeland. “More people are returning to Guatemala than leaving,” Pope said on a video posted on social media. “Our job is to make sure that coming home is the start of something better,” she said. The Guatemala visit is one of the latest actions by the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, to assure its survival at a time when its biggest donor, the U.S., is slashing hundreds of millions in funding while demanding that the checks it does write explicitly advance conservative initiatives that align with the Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. IOM has been hit earlier and harder than many other U.N. agencies, in part because it is so financially dependent on the U.S. — which provides more than 40% of its budget — and its money is in voluntary contributions for specific programs. Once the money stops, the programs stop. In the past several weeks, it has feverishly scrubbed its website of references to diversity, equity and inclusion, and highlighted the work it does to facilitate the return home of refugees from Haiti and Latin America. “Amid rising demand for return assistance across Latin America and the Caribbean, IOM is expanding efforts to help migrants return home, reintegrate, and rebuild their lives,” Pope said. Those assurances have done little to stave off Washington’s chainsaw foreign aid cuts. Since the Trump administration first announced its freeze on U.S. foreign aid, IOM has been forced to layoff 3,000 workers supporting the U.S. refugee resettlement program. More recently, the migration agency began reducing some 20% of its staff, more than 250 employees, at its headquarters in Geneva and an undisclosed number in the field. More dismissals are coming. For many U.N. observers, the migration agency is the U.N.’s canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of the draconian aid cuts that are reverberating across the U.N. system in the coming weeks and months. A range of other assessed costs — from the U.N.’s $5.6 billion a year peacekeeping enterprise to the U.N.’s $3.9 billion regular budget — will be sharply scrutinized in the months ahead as budget negotiations approach and the U.S. completes a 180-day review of international agencies. The U.S. is required to pay 22% of the regular administrative budget and more than 25% of the peacekeeping budget. “Looking ahead, all eyes will be on negotiations for the UN regular budget for 2026, that will get under way in October,” Ian Richards, president of the U.N. Geneva Staff Union, wrote on LinkedIn. “Pressure for cuts will come from many directions and Secretary General Antonio Guterres will need to spend the next few months explaining the value of the UN system to a skeptical world population that currently takes the benefits of international organizations for granted.” IOM’s response is being closely watched by other U.N. agencies, increasingly feeling the full weight of Washington’s foreign assistance retreat, to assess whether the steps it is taking to accommodate U.S. demands can beat back further cuts, and if it can find alternative sources of funding to survive. Can it ultimately serve as a potential model for weathering the Trump administration’s assault on international institutions, or will it ultimately serve as a cautionary tale for other U.N. agencies considering how far they must bend to Washington’s whims to secure its continued financial backing? So far, U.N. communications officials have counseled their colleagues not to follow IOM’s example by sanitizing their websites to meet U.S. demands, explaining that it won’t work, according to an official who heard the warning. The press will figure it out, and your agency will only be embarrassed. “Please don’t scrub your website,” is the message. Some U.N. observers warn there could be little benefit to accommodating the U.S. in the unlikely chance it will spare them from harm. “I think ‘keep your head down’ works if what you’re trying to avoid is arrows over a wall,” said one humanitarian worker. “Keep your head down does not help if what’s coming for you is a steamroller, and what’s coming is a steamroller.” Everything on the table The move comes as the wider U.N. family is grappling with perhaps the greatest financial crisis since the organization's founding at the end of World War II, threatening a wide array of programs that counter disease, environmental degradation, human rights violations, disasters, terrorism and conflict, much of it underwritten by American taxpayers. In 2023, the U.S. contributed nearly $13 billion to U.N. programs. It was billed more than $1.5 billion alone to the U.N. peacekeeping budget for 2024-2025. “These cuts will make the world less healthy, less safe, and less prosperous,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned. Even before the current crisis, the U.N. was already running cash poor, the result in part of a U.S. and Chinese practice of paying their U.N. dues late in the year, and a bulging $1 billion-plus U.S. debt to the world body, due to its policy of capping peacekeeping payments at 25%, even though it is billed a larger percentage. “Resources are shrinking across the board — and have for a long time,” Guterres said at a press encounter at U.N. headquarters. “For at least the past seven years, the United Nations has faced a liquidity crisis because not all member states pay in full, and many also do not pay on time.” The full extent of U.S. cuts remains unclear. But the sweeping termination of U.S.-funded contracts has already taken a toll. The UN Refugee Agency — which is not included in the list — is bracing for layoffs of 5,000 to 6,000 employees, a quarter of its global workforce, in response to drastic U.S. funding cuts that put “millions of lives at risk.” UNICEF is planning large layoffs in April or May, according to a well-placed senior humanitarian. The World Health Organization, UNAIDS, the U.N. Development Programme, and the Food and Agriculture Organization have been singled out with some of the largest cuts, according to a list of terminated programs produced by the Trump administration. WHO — which imposed a hiring freeze and cut back on travel since Trump announced plans to withdraw from the health agency — estimates it will run a $600 million shortfall in 2025. “Everything is on the table, including merging divisions, departments and units, and relocating functions,” WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in an email to staff viewed by Devex. “Despite our best efforts, we are now at the point where we have no choice but to reduce the scale of our work and workforce. This reduction will begin at headquarters, starting with senior leadership, but will affect all levels and regions.” Downgrading due diligence? The U.S. funding cuts coincide with a broader foreign aid retreat by other key donors, particularly in Europe where other wealthy countries have been scaling back their aid budgets, forcing the U.N. to reach out to wealthy nontraditional donors, such as China, and the Gulf States, which have traditionally distributed assistance bilaterally. For IOM and other U.N. agencies, that has required a greater effort to expand the pot of private sector money. In February, the U.N. migration agency’s private-sector partnership division quietly revised its rule for engaging with companies: Businesses with “direct involvement or complicity in systematic egregious human rights abuses” would no longer be included on a list excluding them from working with the agency, according to an internal document reviewed by Devex. Nor would outfits involved in the distribution or manufacturing of tobacco products, or those who had systematically failed to demonstrate a commitment to U.N. principles. IOM would still vet entities potentially linked to human rights abuses and controversial businesses, including the tobacco, alcohol, and arms industries, but it would do so on a case-by-case basis, giving senior managers greater discretion in determining suitable private sector partners. “The language has softened,” said an IOM official, who spoke to Devex on condition of anonymity. “Moving something out of exclusionary and into sensitive sectors suggests it’s no longer an automatic deal-breaker. This opens the possibility of partnership with problematic sectors if senior leadership agrees.” A spokesperson for IOM countered that claim, saying the agency has not lowered its standards: “We categorically reject any misrepresentation of our internal policies or any suggestion that this revised policy compromises IOM’s enduring commitment to human rights or the protection of people on the move," the official said. “In a complex global environment, broad exclusions are not always effective. Our approach ensures that all potential partnerships are assessed through a principled, case-by-case due diligence process.” "In mid-2024, IOM conducted a comprehensive review—prompted by constructive feedback from Member States, field colleagues, and partners—which led to a revised Due Diligence Policy,” the official added.” The aim was to strengthen IOM’s risk assessment framework, align with UN system approaches, and ensure more rigorous, transparent, and consistent procedures for engaging with private sector actors.” Not a chainsaw In an effort to forestall more cuts, Guterres and other senior U.N. officials have cobbled together a series of reform initiatives aimed at persuading the U.S. and other donors to keep the checks coming. Those reforms are unlikely to bring about the kind of wholesale cuts the Trump administration has been seeking. “It will not be a chainsaw,” one senior UN official told reporters at a background briefing at U.N. headquarters. The reform project — dubbed the “UN80 Initiative” because this is the U.N.’s 80th anniversary — presented U.N. member states with three proposals, according to Guterres. It details administrative cost-saving efficiency measures, such as reducing the number of conferences and meetings. It will review the mountain of mandates governments have approved to determine if they are necessary. And it will conduct a “strategic review” of potential structural changes to save costs. “We must ensure value for money while advancing shared values,” Guterres said. “We have been investing in Nairobi, creating the conditions for Nairobi to receive services that are now in more expensive locations. And UNICEF will be transferring soon some of the functions to Nairobi. And UNFPA will be essentially moving to Nairobi.” In the meantime, the U.N. chief has circulated guidance to the U.N. community on how to respond to Washington’s increasingly intrusive demands, citing its distribution of lengthy questionnaires aimed at testing the organization’s support for U.S. interests. “If you’re compelled to respond, it is important to ensure that in the cover message the entity indicates that the survey is completed on a voluntary basis and without prejudice to privileges and immunities of the concerned entity,” according to the guidance, which was reviewed by Devex. “It may be preferable not to answer each individual question but to provide a collective response on those issues on which it is possible to comment.” Guterres added that “caution should be used and response should not be rushed. When responding entities should be mindful not to create a bad precedent which would impact their future work, as well as the United States as a whole. The entities should show a willingness to work with donor States to address their concerns about any specific programmes or project within the applicable entity’s legal framework.” Wreck or rescue Some delegates and observers are debating whether Guterres' reform is bold enough to meet the moment, or pointless in the face of an administration that means to dismantle an international system led by the United Nations. “The Secretary-General is now jogging to keep up with events, but a lot of UN members wish he would break into a sprint and get ahead of the U.S. with a big set of proposals for overhauling the organization,” Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, told Devex in an email exchange. “There is a lot of skepticism that the UN initiative will go far enough, fast enough.” “There are basically two schools of thought at the UN about how to handle Trump,” Gowan said. “One is that you can buy off the new administration with a bunch of reforms designed to cut costs and satisfy U.S. interests. The other is that the U.S. will simply pocket these reforms, and continue to bash the UN system regardless. The real underlying question is whether the U.S. wants to change the system or wreck the system and nobody knows the answer.” In the meantime, the U.N.’s semi-autonomous relief agencies are taking their own steps to survive the funding crunch. On March 20, Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, told staff in an internal email that he had ordered a reduction in force policy to reduce the size of the refugee agency, which currently employs nearly 20,000 people worldwide. UNHCR, he said, would be present in fewer places, creating a need to explore new ways of operating in places without staff. “Shrinking the size of our workforce will unfortunately not be sufficient, alone, to reduce our expenditures,” he wrote. Other measures include reducing the period staff are granted special leave pay between assignments to six months from nine months. “Let me be frank,” he explained. “There is no doubt that the next few months will be very difficult. We have no choice but to take decisive action which will leave no part of our organization or our work untouched. Refugees will be impacted. Our operations will be impacted. Many colleagues will be impacted.” “This is a defining moment for the humanitarian community,” Tom Fletcher, U.N. emergency relief coordinator and under-secretary-general in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, wrote in a March 10 memo to the heads of U.N. agencies. “We face a profound crisis of legitimacy, morale and funding. … We need to shift power to our humanitarian leaders in country.” Fletcher, meanwhile, unveiled his own reform initiative, which he dubbed “The Humanitarian Reset.” More funding, he said, would have to be directed away from headquarters to field operations, prioritizing purely lifesaving programs, battling disinformation, and making the case, including to skeptical audience, why their work is vital. We need to “build fresh arguments and allies, locally and globally,” he wrote. “The attack will be that we are wasteful, divided, bureaucratic. We will need to be — and demonstrate that we are — efficient, united, independent and saving lives.” The U.N., Fletcher said, would have to stop “work that we have invested in” and be “ruthless” in ending turf wars among the U.N.’s highly independent agencies. “With resources slashed, our defining mission must be saving lives.”