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US funding has put the UN relief chief – and the global humanitarian system – on a slippery slope.
The December announcement of $2 billion in US humanitarian funding was embraced in some quarters with cautious optimism. UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher, who negotiated it behind closed doors, frames it as the US re-engaging with the humanitarian system after a year of brutal cuts.
The money will be funnelled solely through UN-run pooled funds. On paper, Fletcher appeared to have been successful in keeping a range of restrictions imposed by the US out of the agreement. But restrictions are set in other ways.
The latest version of the US global gag rule is, in essence, an ideological throttlehold on foreign aid. On top of targeting reproductive health, the new gag rule prohibits gender-affirming care and work covering diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility by organisations receiving US funds – even if they carry out such activities with other donors’ money. As others have noted, an assault on the principles of DEI “is an assault on the humanitarian principles of humanity and impartiality”.
The US agreement will also see the creation of “accountability and impact teams” (AIT) for oversight on the use of the funds. Notably, accountability – a comprehensive concept that also speaks to how accountable humanitarians are to people in crisis – risks being narrowed down to financial control. The AIT teams will look for fraud and aid diversion. To what extent aid corresponds to communities’ expressed needs and preferences is not a priority for this US government.
One country cannot redefine those rules by dictating discriminatory policies, or by putting its QR code on a relief box. Humanitarians must not become the Amazon of emergency relief.
There’s even talk of slapping a QR code on every US-funded relief item. The idea is more complex – and potentially more problematic – than the UN relief chief may realise. One might see it as a step forward from an auditing point of view. But it could also enable the donor to choose recipients based on factors beyond humanitarian need.
Humanitarian principles and practices have a centuries-old history. One country cannot redefine those rules by dictating discriminatory policies, or by putting its QR code on a relief box. Humanitarians must not become the Amazon of emergency relief.
Principled humanitarian action becomes an empty promise if it fails to set and follow through on red lines in funding deals. Transparency and inter-agency consultations around trade-offs and the criteria weighing into compromises are prerequisites. The imperative of saving lives must be considered together with three other core principles of humanitarian action: impartiality, neutrality, and independence. They set the guardrails in reducing the risk that aid will be manipulated for political objectives – in this case, the ideology of a donor government.
So Fletcher is in a precarious situation. Not taking the US funds may not have been an option for him – $2 billion will help humanitarians save more lives than $0, he argues – but what aid groups do with the money can hardly be called principled if the US has its way.
Fletcher must now make the best of an impossible situation. Here is some unsolicited advice for the relief chief, and for other donors:
- First, do not call US-funded emergency relief “principled humanitarian aid” when it is not. The US funding undermines the principles humanitarians are expected to uphold. Key priorities of humanitarian action – such as protection, gender, and strengthening rights – can no longer be addressed if it is up to the US. The US government appears to have negotiated a separate channel at the country level.
- Secondly, make sure that the humanitarian reset – Fletcher’s push for the sector to deliver better responses – is delivered on the ground consistently. Anecdotally, at the country level, the reset is becoming different things for different people. There needs to be real-time engagement and support to humanitarian country teams, as a collective leadership team, and independent monitoring of the changes happening at the country level.
- Thirdly, donors that consider themselves principled must stand up. The US is trying to convince other donor governments to join their special fund. Do not do it. Stay the course and keep the pooled funds as they are. Funding modes co-opted by an unprincipled donor should not be reinforced.
During his first full year in office, Fletcher was confronted with challenges of a magnitude that few of his predecessors had to manage – from a seemingly endless list of crises to the unprecedented donor budget cuts led by the US.
Now in his second, Fletcher faces an additional challenge. The decisions that he, other aid leaders, and donors take today will shape the future of principled humanitarian action for years to come.
