A (9:07)

Well, I mean one thing to take from that is really that in a lot of cases, despite huge shakeups in United States approach towards aid, we haven't actually seen massive changes in what Congress wants to see funded. Obviously there has been a shift in posture towards the United Nations. Some of these are a little bit lower than they have been historically, but a surprisingly non radical built given the language that's emerged from the White House in the preceding year.

B (9:39)

This portion of this week in global development is brought to you by pivotal, which works to accelerate the pace of social progress for women and young people in the US and around the world. We're proud to spotlight pivotal's Action for Women's Health initiative that awards innovators who are shaping the future of Women's health from North America to Southern Asia.

C (9:58)

Well, hello. I am here with Tanya Adair, president and CEO of Alternative for Girls, an organization empowering homeless and at risk young women by providing critical interventions and support. So, Tonya, thank you so much for joining us today.

D (10:12)

Thank you for having me, Kate. It's a pleasure.

C (10:15)

So can you talk about what inspires your work and what specific challenges you are looking to address At Alternatives for.

D (10:22)

Girls, we really have a history of trying to address every issue and concern or challenges that young women face. This includes exploitation. It includes homelessness, pregnancy prevention, and other adverse childhood experiences. And we're just really inspired by the stories that we hear of success when a young lady has gone on to college and graduates and is doing well. Just recently, just heard of a young lady who came through the shelter program and is now a registered nurse and wants to volunteer at the organization. And there's so many stories like that of girls who have. We've been here for when they needed us most and now they are doing really well. So that's inspiring and letting us know that we're doing the right thing.

B (11:19)

Yeah.

C (11:19)

So you talk a bit about, you know, the great outcomes that you see. And could you talk a little bit more about, you know, in your experience, how does reducing social vulnerability really change health outcomes for girls? And, you know, what differences do you see when girls gain access to safe spaces and mentorship and care?

D (11:40)

If a child is hungry, for instance, they can't focus in school. And if a girl is. Doesn't know where she's going to sleep at night, it's hard for them to be able to even address some of the other exciting things that they want to do in life. And so what we're doing here, we're providing that safe space for them so that they feel comfortable in knowing I have somewhere to sleep, knowing that I have food that I'm going to eat. And all of those experiences, the adverse childhood experiences, the trauma that they faced, really is considered an avenue for unhealthy situations. And so we're addressing those in addressing the health concerns of them by addressing the basic needs that they have, the vulnerabilities that exist when a woman doesn't know that there are certain things that she can do to prevent certain diseases. So the diabetes, diabetes issues, which is really prevalent in the community, for one, if you're eating, just eating what you can every day and not eating healthy, all of that plays a part in the healthy lifestyles of the individuals that we serve. And we try to address those Here by providing nutritious meals. When a woman comes off the street and just needs a place to get food, a place to take a shower, we're addressing all of those needs for the girls and young women that we serve.

C (13:17)

What do you want funders and policymakers to really understand or learn from your.

D (13:24)

Model that access to resources is important. Housing disparities, health concerns, they're all important and things that we are trying to address. And although this award is great, there's the need in our community is so much greater. So we continue to need resources, we continue to need partnerships, we continue to need all that we can to address the needs of the young women and the girls that so need our help. Sometimes we're their only lifeline.

C (13:55)

Yeah. So what is next for afg and how will this Action for Women's Health award really be able to strengthen your work in the communities you serve?

D (14:03)

Yeah, one of the things that we are looking at is addressing our lead her program. So we'll be able to expand that to partner with more organizations and more schools to be able to share that curriculum. We want to set up a training program. We're preparing right now to open an early childhood learning center in the complex that we are partnering with to support the families in the apartment complex as well as the surrounding community. So we'll be able to expand work there and address some of the health concerns that we see with the residents of that complex as well.

C (14:46)

Well, Tanya, thank you so much for sharing more about this really important, critical and impactful work that you're doing. Really appreciate your time.

A (14:56)

Carl, I'll turn to you. Rather than talk about the budget any any further. There's been a lot of development at the United nations over, over the. The sort of holiday period in early this year. Kind of mostly in response to what's happening here at the United States. We've seen the US Withdraw from a number of organizations. We've seen some budget changes. Maybe it's best actually if you just bring us up to date on kind of the key developments in the UN in the last couple of weeks, because there have been several.

E (15:22)

Sure. It's funny how you say it wasn't as radical as we thought. I think we've. Our. Our expectations are much lower than they were before. And I. We've all been anticipating the zeroing out of funding. And so when you see, you know, a significant amount of money, even though it's significantly less than what it was before, you know, people are relieved. I mean, I've been talking to a lot of people in the last couple of days in the aid sector, and they thought it was going to be a lot worse. So one thing I would say is that, you know, the Trump administration pretty much most of the last year has been working on dismantling the foreign aid system and network. And at some point, you know, they need to take ownership and to demonstrate that they can do a better job. And I think you're starting to see elements of the strategy kind of playing out. There have been a number of issues. You mentioned the withdrawal of all of the US From a number of agencies and offices. I get to that. But also, you know, there was over the holidays, the State Department announced this commitment of $2 billion in funds for UN handling of humanitarian assistance. It's a fraction of the kind of 8 to 10 billion that we've seen over the last couple of years. But I think the State Department has made it clear that this could be the beginning of more funding. And so the response from the UN was pretty positive. And that, I think is primarily because they feel like the administration is not going to sideline the un, that they are going to be a central part of their strategy for dealing with humanitarian assistance. There was some concern that given the experience in Gaza where the US turned to a private outfit called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, and also sort of indications that the US would turn more towards faith based, mostly conservative Christian religious groups to oversee a larger chunk of VA delivery, that the UN would be sidelined. This was pretty clear that they've made a judgment that they can't do this without the un so one of the things that the mechanisms that the State Department is pursuing is to essentially change the way that it funds its programs through the UN before you would have all the disparate agencies coming to Washington, developing contacts with the State Department and other departments trying to do fundraising. Big American supported agencies like the World Food Program, UNICEF had all their channels into the administration. They had good relations with Congress. A lot of the funding that went through those organizations is now going to be channeled through the headquarters operation, which is called the Office of the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. And all the funding will be put into that pot and then they will kind of allocate where that money is going to go. So a lot of that money is going to initially, I mean, essentially what this represents is a kind of shift in the balance of power among UN agencies. It's going to be much more centralized. Fletcher, who's the Emergency Relief Coordinator, is going to sort of oversee the managements. But most of the decision on where the money gets spent is going to be on what's called these humanitarian coordinators, the lead humanitarian point people in the field in each country. And they will be working with the donors, including the US to determine where the money is going to go. So they're. The idea is to set up what are called pooled funds. These are funds which are set up for specific crises, specific countries, and it allows countries to put money into this pooled fund, and it gives the UN some flexibility to decide how it's spent. The UN likes this and has supported these pooled funds in the past, but governments have not really bought into it. They'd rather give their money either bilaterally or earmarking specific projects. This would change that dynamic, and that is a sort of development that I think a lot of people in the humanitarian community and the UN approve of. There is some concern that this transition from direct funding for agencies to a central pooled funding account is going to have some serious bumps along the way, and that there is concern that this could be quite difficult and if the numbers don't increase, then it could be quite catastrophic. So a lot of people are kind of intrigued by this development, but they kind of want to see how it develops before they move ahead. I'll take. You mentioned the issue about the withdrawal. I mean, there's. There's been, you know, the Trump administration announced last week that they were going to withdraw from 66 organizations. Many of them are organizations that I'd never heard of before, and no idea whether they do important work or not. But, you know, an institute that is sort of sets rules of the road for dealing with, you know, zinc and lead. There's one that deals with the timber industry, the cotton industry. They're. Half of them are related to the un. Most of the agencies are, you know, pretty. They're really not agencies. They're small offices within the secretariat. So there are things like the office of the Special Representative for children who are in conflict for, you know, sexual crimes, that sort of thing. Also, there's a department called the Department of Economic and Social affairs, which is the department within the UN Secretary that deals with those issues. It has traditionally been led by a Chinese national, usually a former diplomat. And this could be a signal from the US that they're trying to kind of chip away at Chinese influence with the un. But in practice, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's not clear to me when what it would mean for the US to withdraw from these departments, because the US pays into a General regular budget every year, the administrative budget. And the UN decides how that money is spent. So it's going to continue to fund desa, it's going to continue to fund these other departments. And it's not clear what does the US what does it mean to withdraw? Do they just not show up to meetings? And does that make sense that as you know, the this kind of Chinese influenced department with the UN sort of goes ahead on its business without the US trying to influence outcomes? So unclear how the US is going to try and square that circle, but that's going to be something to watch.

A (21:44)

Okay, I mean, that sounds honestly like posturing rather than actual political change to a great extent, although perhaps we'll see. And the humanitarian development sounds strangely sensible. Without knowing any of the details, it sounds like actually quite a reasonable set of proposals. As you said, a devil could very well be in the detail and we might find that it isn't as sensible as it sounds.

E (22:06)

Yeah, there's also, I mean, one thing I didn't mention, but you know, there is always concern and suspicion that the US will use this process to try and influence the way that money is spent. So, you know, if you have a sexual reproductive health program that the US doesn't like, can they interfere with that process and can they prevent the UN from funding those operations? The whole concept of a pooled funding account sort of suggests that the UN would have broad scope for that. But they're still kind of hammering out the details, the oversight details for how the money is spent in the field with these humanitarian coordinators. So I think there's reason to keep an eye on what sort of agreement comes out of that. I got a hold of a memorandum of understanding between the US and the UN and how all of this is going to play out. And they made it clear that that piece of it wasn't resolved and that they still need to make a decision about that, whether there are going to be any specific conditions. The biggest kind of, most explicit condition in the agreement is that funding cannot flow to terrorist organizations. Earlier, in terms of when the US allocated or pledged the $2 billion, they made it clear that they wouldn't give any of that money to programs in Yemen and Afghanistan because of concerns that it would be diverted to terrorist organizations. So that's something that's of key interest for the U.S. but there are a whole range of other issues that Ava mentioned, climate, other sort of health issues and that sort of thing where the US Might have concerns. And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in reality.

A (23:52)

One thing that intrigues me here.

B (23:54)

Let's jump in with a quick question.

A (23:55)

Yeah, you go ahead.

B (23:56)

In some cases, we've seen in budget language that Congress will say, okay, the US May contribute to this organization at the un but its funding needs to be kept separate. And I wonder if you think we might see more of that sort of the US Saying, okay, we're going to give you money, but it needs to be separate from your general accounts. And so it cannot be used for XYZ purposes.

E (24:21)

So this is what's being negotiated. So in the Memorandum of Understanding, there's something called, in the pooled accounts, they're creating something called a sub account, which will be a sub account within the pooled account, which will be where all the US Money sits. And so they're continuing to negotiate any conditions that apply to those sub accounts. The UN has also offered to provide those to other major donors. If you're willing to give a lot of money, then you can have a sub account. And so there may be specific terms that you can negotiate within that bucket which in or enable you to influence the outcome. You know, the UN for its side has all of these kind of normative issues in terms of protocol, in terms of its independence that it has to abide by. And so that's there. You know, there may be trade offs in that space, but at this point it's not entirely clear how that, you know, what kind of conditions will be attached to the allocations.

A (25:23)

Okay, we've now got a number of different kind of competing visions here for how aid might be allocated. We've certainly got one from the White House and one from Congress, which are not entirely aligned. Then maybe we have a view from the United nations, which is not entirely aligned with that of the United States as well, although they do seem to be coming more into alignment as time goes by. Avar coming to you, how different do you think the kind of vision for aid is across these institutions?

B (25:52)

I think one. I mean, the answer is I don't really know. And I think the answer is because I think the administration's position on foreign assistance is evolving. It spent a lot of the last year saying we don't think the current system works. We're going to take it apart. And I think the question is now what do they see value in and what do they build to sort of carry that out? And I think the place that we've obviously seen the most developments is in the global health space where they've really moved forward. But I think there are real questions. Now, one of the people I was speaking to this week said that this budget bill is really sort of the new baseline right for foreign assistance. It's sort of the place where you can say, okay, now we think there is a future for the United States engagement assuming the administration's on board with some or most of this bill. And that is an assumption. I think there are people who are still questioning, right, what comes next. So Congress can say this, but will the administration spend it? And I think one of the things we've heard from the director of the Office of Management and Budget is that they think Congress's appropriations are more Rusvat has said it's more of a recommendation, even though the law says that Congress has the power of the purse. And so I think one of the interesting things here and one of the things I've heard from people is by putting forward this bill, Congress is sort of asserting its power of the purse. It's saying this is what we think will needs to be done. And one of the things that's perhaps a bit different, people are saying, well, why would this be any different than this last year where the administration ignored the will of Congress? Last year we had a full year continuing resolution. And so at least what some people have told me is that that was viewed by Republicans in the administration as basically just a continuation of Biden's budget. It was essentially the budget the government was operating on last year because Congress couldn't agree to something, was the same budget as it had in fiscal year 2024. And so this represents sort of the budget of this Congress. So maybe it will have more weight with the administration. Presumably there's some sort of administration buy in or at least agreement that this bill could move forward if they get to this sort of bipartisan compromise. But I think the real sort of questions moving forward, assuming this bill gets across the finish line, is both will this money be spent and and actually really can it be spent? Does the State Department, which will have to administer a lot of this, actually have the capacity to do it? And one of the people I was speaking to this week told me, like, very frankly, if we have this bill, but the current capacity and staffing at the State Department, there's no way it can be implemented effectively. So I think that's one thing that, you know, we really need to be watching is how is the State Department looking at this and scaling up? Another person I spoke to said, look, a lot of this year isn't single. A lot of this money isn't single. Year money. So it might be money that could be spent over two years. So that might mean that we're not seeing all the answers come about immediately and the staffing might happen slower than some people might like. But I think that's really one thing to watch. How, how is the State Department going to implement these programs? And I think, you know, one outstanding question is how much will they do bilaterally on their own and how much might they say, perhaps especially on humanitarian aid, we really don't have the capacity to do this. We're going to pass on our funding, maybe with more different structure, more strings, et cetera, to the United nations to carry out? I think those are open questions and we just don't know. But some of those, you know, a lot of those questions were perhaps a little bit more hypothetical before we had a budget bill to sort of look at. Now I think you could really look at it and say, here's what we need to implement this effectively.

E (29:25)

Yeah, I just had One thing I wanted to say is that, you know, I think like, part of the danger of like having such low expectations leading up to some of the announcements is that things don't look as bad as we thought. But you know, it's important not to lose sight of how bad, how much pain has been inflicted by the cuts and how much pain will continue to be inflicted by the cuts. We're talking about a far dramatically more reduced foreign aid community. We're talking about many life saving programs involving particularly around sort of politically sensitive issues like sexual reproductive health, which have been dramatically cut. And we had, along with the US offer of the 2 billion was a warning to the UN which is that there is more to come, both in the terms of prospects for more money, but in terms of prospects for more cuts. I think the line was the UN is going to have to learn how to shrink, adapt or die. And so I think part of why, I think the UN has been publicly so overwhelmingly complimentary about the US decision to restore some level of funding is that they feel much more, it's much more of a kind of test for them to prove to the Americans that they can achieve the kind of things that the Americans want them to achieve. And so I think that's going to be very important also. I mean, there's one sort of funny little provision in the agreement which is that the UN is going to have to kind of provide regular reports detailing and crediting the Americans for the number of lives saved by, by US funding. I don't think they do that for, for Others. But, but anyway, I think one thing.

B (31:18)

I would just jump in, I totally agree with you column. I think that there is sort of a, oh, oh, this is better than we thought. Like, we're excited about this, but I think there's, there still are outstanding questions. Could there be rescissions? Will this actually be the money that's, that's out the door? And, and given all that was torn apart in the last year, even if there is money for some of that stuff, how is it rebuilt? Rebuilt, right. Like there, there is money in this bill for programs that were dismantled, for contracts that were canceled, and so things don't restart overnight and the damages is still done. I think, I think a lot of the people I'm talking to are trying to sort of approach it from a positive perspective. Okay, this isn't, this is better than we thought it might be. So let's see how we can rebuild and work with the State Department. And I know that the State Department is having consultations and I think I'll be really interested to see how things move forward. But I think there is still a risk out there of even if this bill goes forward, do we see rescissions? Do we see the administration saying we don't want to spend this money even though Congress has allocated it?

E (32:22)

It's also against the backdrop of this major, which we haven't talked about, this major liquidity crisis at the UN and in peacekeeping. Over the years, particularly under the Trump administrations, the US arrears have been growing to astronomical levels, over $1.5 billion. And the reason for that is that there is a dispute between the UN and the US over what percentage of the peacekeeping budget the US is responsible for. The US won't pay more than 25%, but it normally gets assessed for somewhere north of 26, 27%. So all that starts to add up over the years, and none of this resolves the question of how that liquidity crisis can be addressed. Also, up until today, during the year 2025, the US never paid a penny of its dues to the UN regular budget and only a fraction of what it owed on the peacekeeping budget. So, you know, this will kind of indicate that money is coming, but, but, you know, the money tends to come late and, and never as, as, as much as, as the US Is charged.

A (33:36)

Yeah, I think this is very much a legacy of the fact that early on last year, the United States kind of launched into this scorched earth policy with international aid that actually it looks as if large chunks of the administration didn't really own or particularly support, but they kind of stood by it because they didn't want to look as if they just let Elon Musk run amok. And now they're kind of trying to row it back, but they're dealing with a vastly reduced capacity to actually do so. And I think genuinely this administration is less favorable towards aid than previous administrators, pretty much any previous administration. So we're seeing something that initially looked like a calamity, then it looked like a disaster, and now it merely looks very bad. And people's expectations have been changed so much that they're kind of seeing that as a win. The key question for me also is do they actually have the capacity and the skills and the will and the wherewithal to deliver what they have now decided that they would like to deliver?

B (34:39)

Well, Congress has decided what they want the administration to deliver. Right. I think there is still an open question about whether that's what the administration actually wants to deliver on.

A (34:48)

Yeah, as you said earlier, there must be some level of buy in in order for to see this document in the first place. But yes, I think it is still a very open question whether the administration is going to fight to try to deliver less, whether they're going to actually take this and agree to it and move forward with this level, or whether they're going to try and make further cuts and use, as you mentioned, further cuts and rescissions. But even if they do want to deliver it, I'm sceptical about the ability of the State Department to actually build the internal capacity, just the staffing to get all of this done. And it will be interesting to see whether they make an attempt. And then as you say, maybe we see some of this money delivered next year as they, as they actually ratchet back up to some sort of sensible level. And if they don't, it's not clear how the money actually goes out of the door. It just remains for me to say thank you very much to my guests and to all of our listeners and we hope that you have a good week. We will continue to keep you updated and keep an eye out for future episodes of this week in global development. Thank you so much.

B (35:48)

Thanks, Dave.