GENEVA: The Trump administration has pledged US$2bil to what it says is an overhauled, more efficient United Nations (UN) humanitarian fund, in a contribution that is a fraction of what it paid in past years.
The money will be used to create an umbrella fund that should ensure money doesn’t get stuck on earmarked projects and improve accountability, Jeremy Lewin, a state department official for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, told reporters Monday at a briefing here.
At the same time, Lewin said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as Ocha, needs to draw more from private donations and other donors and become less reliant on the United States.
Lewin stressed that the US$2bil is not the full extent of the US annual budget commitment, which depends on what Congress approves.
While he described the pledge as a “huge commitment,” he said it reflects a more pragmatic approach for a UN humanitarian system that “had grown beyond its britches.”
Contributions to Ocha are separate from mandatory contributions to the larger UN. The United States typically funds 22% of the UN’s regular budget, but has yet to pay the more than US$800mil it owes for this year as well as some arrears for previous years.
Although the Ocha pledge is less than in past years, UN under-secretary-general Tom Fletcher said at the briefing that he welcomed the US contribution as it would save lives and was preferable to the zero total expected just a few months ago.
Fletcher said the agency had become too reliant on the United States.
“The United States is still the country that’s writing a US$2bil cheque, and at a time when we have so many challenges at home,” Lewin said.
“Millions of people are going to get life-saving support.”
The humanitarian funds pledge follows the Trump administration’s controversial shuttering of Usaid, the US foreign assistance agency, earlier this year – a process that chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that “no rational person” could think was a good one. — Bloomberg
