By Simon Lewis and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – The State Department’s top aid official said on Thursday that $1.8 billion in new humanitarian aid to be provided by the U.S. through the United Nations would be used in line with the Trump administration’s foreign policy interests.
The new funding pledge came on top of $2 billion in funding the U.S. announced in December under a new mechanism designed to make aid funding and delivery more efficient and increase accountability as the U.S. and other developed nations have slashed aid spending.
Jeremy Lewin, a former staffer of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency who has been performing the duties of undersecretary for foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs and religious freedom, said that 92% of the U.S. assistance provided through the mechanism had gone to “hyper-prioritized” countries, which the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has determined are the most in need.
U.S. assistance was “focused on the places where we have a foreign policy interest, where it aligns with the president’s interest,” he said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump.
The list of countries receiving funding from Washington, the largest single donor to OCHA, was expanded to include Venezuela and Lebanon, but does not include certain countries where U.S. interests do not align with the priorities of OCHA, Lewin said, adding that the funding through OCHA was not all of the money the U.S. gives to humanitarian causes overseas.
“By avoiding those countries, we’re not doing a disservice to the humanitarian sector,” Lewin said. “We’re allowing us to focus on the areas where we overlap, and we don’t think that there needs to be some compromise in their principles … while also allowing us the sovereign right to invest in places where it aligns with our national interest.”
OCHA chief Tom Fletcher, speaking alongside Lewin, said the UN was retaining its principles of neutrality and impartiality while reforming its humanitarian system for a time when funding is declining and 300 million people around the world need support.
Before the latest U.S. announcement, OCHA had raised $7.38 billion from 65 member states toward its goal of raising $23 billion for this year, he said.
InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based NGOs, welcomed the U.S. announcement.
“Based on the evidence that we’ve had so far, there’s strong alignment between the countries the U.S. wants to do this life-saving work with and (OCHA’s) hyper-prioritization, and that’s very good news,” CEO Tom Hart told Reuters.
Separate to its humanitarian commitment, Washington owes around $4 billion to the U.N., including $2.4 billion for current and past peacekeeping missions, $43.6 million for U.N. tribunals and the rest to the organization’s regular budget.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said on Thursday that in January the U.S. had paid $159 million of the amount it owes to the regular budget, “and we will have an additional substantial charge towards our regular budget coming soon.”
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Mark Porter)
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