Amid the rhetoric, the US Department of State’s press release summarises the “new paradigm’ thus: fund vehicles that “will be administered by OCHA pursuant to comprehensive country-level policy agreements that will govern the delivery of UN humanitarian assistance in specific countries of operation and ensure alignment with American interests and priorities.”
The press release notes that the UN failed to deliver on its promise and accuses UN bodies of abandoning their original mandate “of protecting global peace and security – too often espousing radical social ideologies acting to undermine American interests and values, and undermining peace, sovereignty and shared prosperity.” What the press release conveniently left out is – who and what rules the UN? Which countries facilitated the degeneration of human rights to elevate war crimes and crimes against humanity into necessities of human rights? That is what the UN stands for at present, in complete alignment with US foreign policy.
The humanitarian response puts to shame the ideal of humanitarian aid. “At a moment of immense global strain, the United States is demonstrating that it is a humanitarian superpower, offering hope to people who have lost everything,” Tom Fletcher, the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator said in a statement acknowledging the US’s slashed humanitarian aid contribution.
When has the US ever demonstrated that it is a humanitarian superpower? All its humanitarian endeavours have been linked to foreign intervention – USAID was one prime example. How can Fletcher utter such a statement knowing that US funding and weapons render the US completely complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza? The US spent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since 7 October 2023. Can UN officials have the decency to retract statements that hype up $2 billion in humanitarian aid as “hope to people who have lost everything”? Which country made people lose everything in the first place? The $2 billion donor, of course.
But of course, this is how the humanitarian paradigm works, or doesn’t work. In humanitarian terms, the paradigm is a failure. People don’t feed on hope; people need security, access to food, water, hygiene and education. The UN should stop selling hope as a tangible human rights; at least for as long as it supports all forms of international law violations, war crimes and genocide. Recipients of humanitarian aid want dignity, not hope. Dignity is not found in a donation of $2 billion from a superpower whose speciality is foreign intervention in the name of democracy.
For $2 billion, the US has humanitarian officials grovelling and heaping praise is as ludicrous as it sounds. The most unfortunate truth is that the UN is funded by countries that profit from committing crimes against humanity. Therefore, there is no conflict of interest for Fletcher, and many other UN officials who sing the praises of humanitarian donors, to praise the US donation. Using the term “humanitarian superpower”, however, is stretching even the boundless limits of imagination too far.
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