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Today: UN80’s humanitarian reset fingerprints, the next UNHCR chief, and the future of the Grand Bargain.
UN80 |
Shortly before UNGA’s just-wrapped high-level pageant, Secretary-General António Guterres quietly fleshed out more details of the so-called UN80 proposals to restructure the UN system. He’s slated to present them before the General Assembly in mid-October.
Some found the headline bits a little underwhelming, especially compared to the grab bag of merger ideas conveniently leaked earlier in the year. Plans to “sunset” UNAIDS, merge UNFPA and UN Women, or smush together UNDP and UNOPS don’t scream seismic change. The proposals for the humanitarian system are even less ambitious.
What are humanitarians to take away? Here are a few suggestions:
The “reset” vibes are all over this: The goals of UN80 go well beyond emergency aid, but there are some familiar fingerprints. For the UN’s humanitarian system, plans to find efficiency gains, to cut duplication and bureaucracy, to triple down on pooled funds, to empower country-level (UN) leadership – it all mirrors the DNA of the so-called humanitarian reset. Elsewhere, there’s even an extraneous “reset” or two, unnecessarily capitalised or mixed in as a proper noun, to describe tweaks to development and peace streams.
That’s no coincidence, of course. As emergency relief chief, Guterres-appointee Tom Fletcher is coordinating UN80 recommendations from the humanitarian corners of the UN system. That’s good news if you like the change-but-don’t-burn-down-the-house vibes of Fletcher’s reform potlatch; less so if you’ve already whipped out the marshmallows.
The added variables are UN member states. Many humanitarian donor governments have had mostly polite words about the reset. The broader community of UN member states includes those who fund aid and those who currently receive it; those who hold power and those who don’t. Some may decide they have more to gain by engaging forcefully in UN80 – and more to lose by not weighing in.
UN80 triples down on pooled funds: The reset’s love of pooled funds gets a wider splash in UN80: “championing core and pooled funding” is now a key bit of the proposed “paradigm shift”. The rationale is clear: Voluntary funding is fickle, slow, and politicised. More money in centralised funding buckets may better protect humanitarian action from donor whims, get cash to where it’s needed more quickly, and perhaps cut the cap-in-hand circus of donor appeals and pledge drives.
But the same critiques of Fletcher’s pooled fund proposals will pop up for the wider UN system. Without broader systems change, funds run and overseen by the UN will entrench money and power squarely in the hands of the UN system, the argument goes. Some NGOs see the pooled fund proposals as a UN “cash grab” – a critique that came up at June meetings to nudge forward the next phase of the reset. Local civil society groups support the concept, but stress that locally or regionally run models must be prioritised.
And there’s the donors themselves. Aid is political, and donors choose how to spend their money for political reasons. There’s also the very real crisis of trust in the multilateral system: Donor rollbacks kicked off long before Donald Trump’s second act. Donors are looking to spend their money effectively; some are actively looking for ways to spend it closer to the ground.
UN leaders know this, of course – it’s a big part of the stated rationale for UN80: “Our vision is to make [core and pooled funding] the most compelling choices,” the proposals state. “This requires funding modalities that deliver clear value, channel resources flexibly, incentivise cross-entity collaboration, and offer adequate visibility for contributors.”
Bigger stickers, then?
The UN has main character syndrome: UN80 proposals still assume the best way forward for the global emergency response ecosystem is with the UN firmly at centre stage. “Local” is mentioned twice in the 45-page document; “civil society” not at all. A few more mentions of “national priorities”, “national challenges”, and “country needs” at least suggest an acknowledgement of the line between supporting or supplanting states.
Few would expect the UN to write itself out of its own script. But the humanitarian response ecosystem is vast and shifting – funders, intermediaries including UN agencies and NGOs, national governments, civil society, diaspora, local communities – and there are other roles the UN can play beyond direct aid delivery.
Instead, there’s a “lack of any structural changes whatsoever”, consultant Damian Lilly, a former UN staffer, writes in a recent analysis: “Despite the massive funding cuts they have endured this year, it is still not in their interest to cede market share to other humanitarian actors, or to each other, through structural changes such as mergers.”
Elsewhere |
UNHCR job opening: Are you a humanitarian leader who understands the refugee community, who inspires people in a time of flux, and who has the political backing of a powerful nation state? Then maybe you could be the next boss at the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. The last day to apply is 6 October. Current high commissioner Filippo Grandi’s term is up at the end of the year.
Acronymage |
UN80 literature offers exciting new adventures in acronymery and enforced brevity. Here are a few standouts:
NHC: The New Humanitarian Compact is the new sales pitch for what (conventional, international, UN-dominated) humanitarian action might look like. Besides being a possible trademark violation (TBD: we’re on hold with our pro-bono lawyers right now), it suggests a system where bureaucracy is trimmed, supply chains are streamlined, UN agencies stop their food fights, and donors are pleased to fill the pool with unearmarked funds.
TAP: Described as the system’s tech “change engine”, the Technology Accelerator Platform is aimed at “modernising how the UN works internally and improving support for member states to harness digital and AI solutions with responsibility and impact”. Will UMOJA emerge unscathed?
USR: Unified Services Roadmap describes a shift to where the UN system’s myriad parallel operations support systems are shared and nimble.
JIU: Speaking of roadmaps, the push for shared services makes an appearance on a long-promised roadmap for the humanitarian reset – a two-pager shared with humanitarian-types in September. The status update for “shared services” across the UN system is listed as “progressing”. But this recent audit of “mutual recognition” – one aspect of reducing duplication – suggests more scepticism when looking at the bigger picture. The audit was done by the UN’s Joint Inspection Unit.
End note |
Forgotten amid the reset and UN80 reform talk is the humanitarian system’s actual reform agenda, the Grand Bargain.
The Grand Bargain brings together donors, frontline civil society groups, big NGOs, and UN agencies in the same room: It may be the closest thing the international emergency aid system has to a representative forum. What better place to hold meaningful and legitimate reform discussions in a year of existential crisis… right?
We’ve been asking that question, and been met with a collective shrug: The Grand Bargain may have representation, but little institutional power; there’s no enforcement lever and often little buy-in from big agencies; its gains have been limited in the face of self-preservation (see UN80, above).
Next week in Geneva, the Grand Bargain will gather for what may be an existential annual meeting. The current iteration is due to wrap up in 2026 – a decade after the Grand Bargain was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit. Its future is a key discussion topic, and some believe it could be put out to pasture – sunsetted, if you prefer.
Have any tips, recommendations, or indecipherable acronyms to share with the Inklings newsletter? Get in touch: [email protected]
