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Foreign aids through wealthy nations will cause global development systems, the structure of which has taken decades, caused irreversible damage, warned the head of the United Nations development program.
Achim Steiner, whose 10-year service ends as administrator of the UN main development agency of the UN on June 16, said the Financial Times said that the cuts of the US and European governments “a retreat from the commitment to joint investment in our time”.
The US President Donald Trump’s administration actually closed the US Agency for International Development and reduced auxiliary contracts by 92 percent for several years.
Great Britain in February reduced its budget for foreign aids from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of GDP, far away from 0.7 percent, which has been nominally obliged for decades.
Steiner said about the United States: “The biggest donor has absolutely disappeared from the international arena.”
The United Kingdom, he added, decided to “essentially submit a tradition of engagement and to be a strategic partner for many developing countries in the Commonwealth and beyond”.
Other rich nations were after complaints, including the Netherlands, Australia and Switzerland.
Steiner warned that the auxiliary cuts in many countries already had “life -threatening consequences”.
“For example, you see our inability (the world food program) to continue to provide the rations that are needed in refugee camps around the world,” he said.
“You can also see that the United Nations in Sudan are unable to climb in Sudan, where millions of people are sold internally or have become refugees.
“And millions of people … with HIV/AIDS – literally overnight the clinics close, the supply chains are disturbed, and people do not receive antiretroviral treatments.”
The UN itself is hit hard by Trump’s overhaul. The new annual budget proposal in Washington, which was released on May 30th, does not include financing for the core business of the UN.
It would also support the financing of the US agencies, including the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Effecting and Employment Authority, the Palestinian refugees.
The UN Secretariat is now preparing to reduce its budget of USD 3.7 billion to a fifth and to shorten around 6,900 jobs, Reuters, Reuters reported On May 29, citing an internal memo.
That was just a part of job losses that “tens of thousands” should reach in UN agencies, said Steiner.
“These are decisions that essentially weaken the institution and its ability to be one of the backbones for international cooperation,” he said of the broader developmental support.
He said the damage could impossible reversal, even if the budgets would recover later.
“This type of capacity is not something that you can simply type with a project,” he said. “These are not things that you can just start again.”
