The Scoop
One of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations is calling on businesses to help fill the gap left by cuts to government aid budgets as part of a broader “reinvention” of global aid.
David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee and a former UK foreign secretary, told Semafor his group could lose a third of its roughly $1.5 billion in revenues because of the Trump administration’s cuts to programs funded through USAID and the State Department.
With the UK and other European countries also diverting humanitarian budgets to defense spending, “there needs to be a new global bargain about how to address symptoms of political failure, which are humanitarian needs of a high and growing kind,” he said. That would include a bigger contribution from the private sector: “The core of the argument is that if you want to enjoy the fruits of globalization, you need to bear the burdens.”
There is both a moral and a strategic case for companies to offer more support, argued Miliband, who met businesses on the US West Coast this week and said the response from private-sector donors has been “pretty good” in recent weeks.
Companies have a self-interest in helping to address problems governments are retreating from — not just to motivate employees looking to work for companies “doing the right thing” but because an “untended humanitarian crisis leads to political instability,” he said.
The IRC has suspended or terminated more than half of its US-funded efforts since the Trump administration canceled more than 80% of USAID’s programs. “The US has long been the anchor of the global aid system,” providing about 40% of all humanitarian funding, Miliband said: “The anchor has been pulled up.”
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The aid system has been strained by crises from Sudan to Ukraine, with the UN estimating that more than 300 million people are now in humanitarian need, up from 78 million a decade ago.
Organizations such as the IRC have a responsibility to “avoid catastrophism,” focus on solutions, and show they can deliver value for money, Miliband said. Corporate partnerships, encompassing skills and ideas sharing as well as money, have fueled innovations such as the IRC’s Signpost information service, where AI technology has transformed response times, he said.
BCG, LinkedIn, Marriott, and Pfizer are among the IRC’s existing partners, as well as corporate philanthropies such as Google.org, whose early warning technology helped the IRC deliver cash assistance in advance of floods in Nigeria.
“We need the corporate sector to help us invest in solutions, because investing in solutions takes risk, and risk is not something that governments find easy,” Miliband said.
Notable
- Some Trump administration officials have proposed a restructuring of US international aid and development efforts, making them more focused and better placed to take on Chinese soft power, according to Politico.
- Bill Gates is warning Washington that his foundation cannot replace the US government’s role in funding health programs, from childhood vaccination to HIV treatment, Reuters reported.