Name: Is this an existential threat to the UN and the people who depend on its support? | DW News
Uploaded: 2025-06-19T17:10:03.000Z
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For a long time, the U.S. was a leading force in international development cooperation.

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But since Donald Trump's return to the White House, the country has dramatically slashed its contributions.

And in an increasingly uncertain world, many other nations are boosting defense spending at the expense of their foreign aid budgets.

That has left organizations like the U.N. with a funding crisis.

So far, with half the year gone, the U.N. has received only $5.6 billion to fund its global aid programs in 2025.

To put that into perspective, it had originally hoped to raise $44 billion.

That's just under 13% of the original target they've achieved.

The United Nations says it's the biggest funding shortfall in its history, and it's scaling back its global humanitarian aid plans.

Today, we're having to prioritize even further.

Brutal funding cuts have left us with the cruel math of doing less with less.

Even as the world around us remains on fire, and as people die because we don't have the resources to save them.

Damien Lilly is a seasoned humanitarian, spent many years working for the U.N., and is today an independent consultant working on humanitarian peace and security issues.

Today, he joins us from Maputo in Mozambique.

Does this funding crisis pose an existential threat to the U.N. and the people who rely on its assistance?

Yes, I think the funding crisis at the moment facing the U.N. I think is the greatest that it's faced since the start of the organization.

So this is putting millions of lives at risk, and the important work for the U.N. around the world, with many lives put in jeopardy as a result of this funding crisis.

Most affected will be people in the humanitarian crisis around the world, people in war situations, people affected by climate change, people reliant on the U.N. for food assistance that's being cut dramatically, people reliant on the U.N. for medical health services, and even people in protracted conflicts.

This isn't just about the most acute crisis, but also those who have been relying on aid for many, many years and now being put in extreme difficulty.

And no certainty that this is going to change anytime soon.

But in a recent article, you argued that this was a predictable crisis.

Well, I think we've seen the greatest hit to funding this year, but this has been something that's been building for the last few years.

The Trump administration's cut in aid has been the one that's grabbed the headlines.

But if you look over the last few years, it's been the various other governments, the U.K.,

Germany, France, many others that have cut aid.

And so what we're seeing is an acceleration of that trend and the drying up of foreign aid. And it's not going to end anytime soon.

I think the predictions, there's reports out today predicting that humanitarian funding could fall as much as 50 percent by next year.

And so we're looking at half the level of humanitarian aid that we saw only a few years ago. This is a massive, massive shock to the aid system.

This is putting it back 10 years in terms of the kind of assistance that's being provided.

And it's still sending shockwaves through the humanitarian aid system, which is only grappling about the consequences and how it can deal with the situation.

What's the reason for these funding cuts?

aside, it's a different animal in that sense.

But but other countries have, of course, also slashed contributions.

Why? Well, I think the political situation has changed.

I think people in many countries that have been traditional donors of aid and remember that it's very much concentrated in the U.S., Europe that make up the large proportion of aid around the world. And the political situation has changed in these countries.

And I think there's a clear sense of people saying, you know, our problems come first and those people abroad come second.

And populist politics has been on the rise.

And again, this hasn't just happened overnight.

This is something that's been growing in the different politics around the world and how elections have changed that.

There's clearly been shifts in geopolitical situation as well.

This is very much the reason that the U.K.

government gave the shift in their reductions in aid.

They clearly made a straight exchange for cutting aid and giving to defense spending.

And more generally in relation to the U.N., which is seeing a general erosion of support for multilateral institutions such as the U.N.

and a very much a kind of transactional view of international relations.

And this has just relegated foreign aid down the list of priorities, unfortunately.

To what extent would you say that this crisis is one of the U.N.'s own making?

So typically in these situations, when the funding drops, everyone suddenly starts questioning, well, actually, foreign aid doesn't work.

And there's been many people criticizing it.

and saying, well, actually, it's the U.N.'s fault.

I think that's a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it.

I think what has prompted this has been a shift, as I was saying, that has reduced levels of funding, has reduced levels of support.

That said, it has brought some hard truths to the U.N.

that has failed to reform over many years.

There's been clear signs as to the way the organization has been dysfunctional about the way that it's worked in many ways.

And many of these problems could have been addressed earlier.

And so they're being brought to the fore now.

And so there's a lot of criticism and saying, well, why weren't these situations dealt with before? And I think on the one hand, this is true.

But we also need to see this now as an opportunity.

There's an opportunity now to really change the organization, which won't address however much it reforms, it still won't address the funding cuts.

That's what's really putting lives at risk.

But it can make the organization more efficient, more effective and begin to gain its kind of role in the world again.

How can the U.N. be restructured and reformed and, you know, made more efficient maybe in order to stay relevant and carry out the work it was created to do?

So on the one hand, the U.N. is made up by member states.

in terms of the Security Council that has increasingly failed to deal with many crises around the world. We've seen it again with Gaza, Iran now again and many other crises.

They can also be reformed to become more effective.

The Secretary General launched earlier this year in March something called U.N.

80 to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the world body.

And this is attempting to bring about a more efficient and more effective organization.

So some of the proposals being made are moving many parts of the U.N.

from New York, from Geneva to other places in the world, cutting staff, reducing workforces, looking at more common services.

And then eventually they're having proposals for the restructuring wholesale of the organization in terms of actually merging different parts of the U.N.

And I think many people will see that also as welcome.

So there's a lot that could be done to make it much more efficient and effective.

Bottom line then, would you say that this could be a blessing in disguise for the U.N.?

A blessing in disguise in a way, but quite a difficult pill to swallow, if we could put it like that.

I mean, it's it's it cannot be underlined quite how much of a financial impact these cuts in foreign aid are causing the organization.

We're talking about 30 percent cuts to large organizations laying off thousands of staff.

So in that sense, it's a bit of a brutal reality in the way in which it's being conducted in a very arbitrary way, a very forced way, particularly the withdrawal of U.S.

funding. At the same time, it hopefully will be a wake up call to the organization really to reform itself, to look at some of these issues that have been longstanding about how it hasn't been the most efficient and effective organization in that sense.

Yeah, this could be seen as an opportunity to bring about quite fundamental changes to the organization.

Damian Lilly, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.