Inklings | Who takes charge of humanitarian reform?

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Today: WFP boss to step down, aid reform’s leaderless movement, Palantir and the humanitarian technocracy, and another test for staff duty of care.

On the radar |

Stepping down: Cindy McCain will resign as head of the World Food Programme in three months, citing a need to focus on her health, the agency announced today. McCain “suffered a mild stroke in October”, a press release noted. McCain’s predecessor, David Beasley, was appointed during the first Trump administration in the US. Under the UN’s colonial horse-trading conventions, the heads of WFP (which tends to receive the most humanitarian funding of any agency) have often been Americans with careers in partisan politics, government, or diplomacy. Americans have held the post continuously since 1992.

Who takes the lead on humanitarian reform? A year after the Trump administration started its obliteration of American aid, a shrunken humanitarian system trudges along without a collective end goal in sight. LinkedIn hot takes, thoughtful analyses, and closed-door roundtables weigh in on structural fixes, new models, breaking aid dependency, and national responsibilities and strengths. But it feels like few with power, money, or influence – including the system’s other big donors – want to lead the reform push.

• Reset: The so-called humanitarian reset pushed by UN relief chief Tom Fletcher has been a sort of stand-in for change. But reimagining the system was never its purpose. “The sector has focused heavily on reform, cuts, and crisis management, leaving too little room for the deeper renewal that the Reset requires,” Fletcher wrote after a meeting with heads of big agencies in Rome this month.
• Renew: Humanitarian leaders must “work harder to carve out the space required to reimagine what a smaller humanitarian sector will look like”, Fletcher said. “There will be fewer international organisations in fewer places, each focused on what they do uniquely well.”
• Repeat: That’s largely a repeat of how Fletcher described the state of play last June, when agency heads loosely agreed to some of the elements of the reset. As others have noted, today’s leaders might not be the best stewards for creating tomorrow’s systems.

What do donors want? The World Humanitarian Summit 2026 it’s not. But the United Kingdom announced a “global partnerships conference” for May – with a notably heavy emphasis on “partners” and helping ”exit the need for aid”. Of course, the UK may be an incoherent host for what it hopes will be a major summit: UK aid cuts for 2026 are deeper than Trump’s US cuts, a new analysis found.

• Weird anniversaries: In fact, UK-based NGOs are marking the anniversary of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s choice to cut aid in favour of military spending.
• Redefine: Switzerland, meanwhile, hosts its International Cooperation Forum on 26-27 February. The theme: ”redefining humanitarian priorities in a changing geopolitical environment”. That could provide a new R-word for Fletcher, who’s slated to do a keynote speech.
• Rethink: Belgium has a new humanitarian strategy, with a goal “to rethink humanitarian aid so that it is fairer and more effective” (Full disclosure: The New Humanitarian’s CEO was asked to comment on a draft of this strategy).
• Reaffirm: The European Union is prepping its so-called communication on humanitarian aid – a sort of high-level policy mood board. Voice, the European NGO network, wants it to “reaffirm” EU commitments to humanitarian principles.

The humanitarian technocracy |

Palantir, the big data miners and US military contractor that partners with WFP, is suing a Swiss magazine, Republik, over an investigation outlining how Swiss authorities rejected the firm over the risk that US authorities might access sensitive files. Basically, the firm, which some call an “AI arms dealer”, is suing to get the magazine to publish full counter-responses to claims.

Wordy, line-by-line retorts may be a Palantir thing. For example, it published a post on Medium (!) responding to a separate report from digital rights group EFF that noted how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has used Palantir surveillance tools to hunt people who have migrated to the US. At 1,600 words, the reply is triple the length of the actual report in question (publishing on Medium also seems like a very mid-2010s move).

• Aid wash: The Palantir retort also contains a telling line for humanitarians exploring new partnerships as budgets shrink. In response to a lone link to an Amnesty report critiquing its rights record, Palantir said: “We also actively support humanitarian missions around the world, from fighting human trafficking, to disaster relief, to the defense of sovereign nations.” Ignoring the equating of military aims to emergency response, it’s another sign of how corporations approach their partnerships with humanitarians: We aren’t bad, the narrative suggests, because we partner with those who do good. Corporations often frame their aid partnerships as charity, corporate social responsibility, or social impact. But as Palantir’s statements show, these are transactional relationships, and the market price for humanitarian credibility is being set with each new partnership.

• Philanthrolateralism: Over on the people’s doomscroll app, LinkedIn, researcher Ronny Patz re-ups the term “philanthrolateralism” to describe a vague Microsoft announcement supporting the UN80 reform package. How he describes it: “For relatively small contributions to the UN, sponsoring private corporations and philanthropies get [outsized] global visibility or influence on UN actions.”

End note |

Change rarely happens without accountability, some guy once wrote. That’s been the case when it comes to staff care in the humanitarian sector. Steve Dennis, a Canadian aid worker, was kidnapped and shot in 2012 while working for the Norwegian Refugee Council. He later sued his employer for gross negligence. The case is widely seen as a wake-up call that has forced agencies to pay more attention to staff duty of care – though as Dennis and others note, there’s still a long road ahead.

Another case working its way through a German court could have similar precedent, says Dennis, who is now an advocate for post-incident support. He’s advising Simon Mauchline, who was deployed by the German NGO CADUS e.V. when he was imprisoned and tortured for 48 days in Syria. The case is a test of whether humanitarian groups who expect their staff to work in high-risk areas understand risk, take preventive measures, and offer support, Dennis says. The court plans to hear witness testimony in March. There’s a fundraiser for Mauchline’s travel: Here’s a link.

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