The State Department and the United Nations jointly announced on Monday that they have agreed to a new framework for processing American funding for the global body, streamlining funds directly to countries in need and potentially saving billions in needless bureaucracy.
Given expected savings for American taxpayers of “nearly $1.9 billion dollars” compared to the way the United States sent money to the U.N. in the past, the State Department announced an extra $2 billion funding commitment to be offered directly to countries in need that the administration of President Donald Trump trusts to spend appropriately.
The move follows a prodigious effort by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to repair the federal government’s broken humanitarian aid system, including the shutdown of most programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration has also withdrawn America from some of the United Nations’ most corrupt and dysfunctional bodies, such as the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), UNESCO, and the Human Rights Council. The administration has also distanced the United States from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) operating in Gaza, whose members were implicated in the October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by the jihadist terror organization Hamas.
Despite these moves, the United States remains the largest funder of the U.N. generally and the host country for its main headquarters. In a statement on Monday, the State Department emphasized that America will retain its position as a humanitarian works leader and be better able to serve the needy through the new funding mechanism agreed to in the memorandum of understanding signed with the U.N. on Monday.
The agreement, the State Department explained, “establishes a new paradigm whereby the United States will replace the current unaccountable morass of projectized grants with a set of consolidated and flexible pooled fund vehicles at the country or crisis level.” This paradigm allows for money to be disbursed through “comprehensive country-level policy agreements,” cutting out expenditures related to the involvement of U.N. bureaucrats. It also allows the State Department to better “ensure alignment with American interests and priorities” for the spending involved, according to the statement.
“This means more lives saved for fewer taxpayer dollars,” the department asserted.
“Because of significantly enhanced efficiency and hyper-prioritization on life-saving impacts, this new model is also expected to save U.S. taxpayers nearly $1.9 billion dollars,” the State Department explained. As a result, the United States can pledge “an initial $2 billion anchor commitment to fund life-saving assistance activities in dozens of countries.”
“The U.N.’s web of overlapping humanitarian mandates have long suffered from ideological creep, maddening duplication and bureaucratic inefficiencies, and poor coordination,” the State Department condemned in its release.
In a separate press release, the United Nations confirmed the new agreement and celebrated that it would allow the U.N. to reach its goal of using its programs to “reach 87 million people with emergency assistance.”
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher asserted that, thanks to the deal, “millions more will get that support that they so badly need.” Fletcher appeared to take a dig at the Trump administration, calling 2025 a “a very, very tough year for everyone engaged in humanitarian action,” presumably as a result of the United States spending less money on U.N. programs.
According to the U.N., the new $2 billion pledged would be directed to 17 specific countries, among them El Salvador, Ukraine, Haiti, Syria and Nigeria. Mainstream media outlets objected to the absence of Afghanistan, run by the jihadist terrorists of the Taliban, and “the Palestinian territories” from the list, though they noted that the White House has agreed to help the Palestinians through the peace process in Gaza currently underway. The reports also omitted what appeared to be a close relationship between UNRWA and the jihadists of Hamas and evidence that the terrorists regularly funded themselves with U.N. money.
The announcement of the new funding did not name any particular United Nations agencies that will be tasked with helping disburse the humanitarian funding. Among those omitted are several with controversial recent histories. The World Food Program (WFP), for example, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, has a history of its workers engaging in sexual assault or harassing other female workers. The U.N. “peacekeeper” program is notorious for facilitating child rape and the spread of disease, particularly cholera in Haiti. The W.H.O. also launched an investigation in 2021 of its staffers after locals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) revealed that workers were demanding young women and girls have sex with them in exchange for food and water; the staffers were in the country to fight an Ebola outbreak.
The U.S. funding overhaul precedes a major year for United Nations leadership, as the term of current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whose priorities were defined by his zeal for climate alarmism and opposition to the government of Israel, is coming to an end. Silent campaigns for the position have already begun, with two candidates — International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi and socialist former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet — announcing their intentions to run.
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