The header image for the Inkling's newsletter entry of 13 March, 2025. On the top left you see Inklings written in a serif font with an ink bleed effect and underlined with a burgundy-coloured line. On the bottom right we see a list of the main topic: The problem with aid salaries and aid cuts.
GENEVA
This is another edition of Inklings, where we explore all things aid and aid-adjacent unfolding in humanitarian hubs, on the front lines of emergency response, or in the dark corners of aid punditry.
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Today: Salaries are a lightning rod, not all staff cuts are created equal, and what’s up with the humanitarian reset.
On the radar |
When Nhial Deng heard that the World Food Programme would again be cutting food rations from Cox’s Bazar to Kakuma, it hit a nerve. Originally from South Sudan, Nhial lived in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for 11 years. WFP’s money troubles didn’t start with US President Donald Trump’s gutting of US aid. But for Nhial, it felt like WFP cuts always start with refugee rations. “What can UN agencies do even before they start reducing the food rations of refugees? Can we start talking about the operation costs of running these institutions – which is huge and crazy,” said Nhial, who’s now a refugee advocate and community activist in Canada. “The salaries that people are paid, sometimes I feel that this is a corporation, not even a humanitarian or UN agency anymore: the benefits that people get; the allowances that people get.”
Rations first: The optics aren’t great. Deep cuts and salaries are a potent juxtaposition – for people who rely on aid, and for those who attack it. Funding crunches are real (if foreseeable), but cutting food rations or services before other options is also a choice. “Of course it’s very complex. But I think it’s a conversation that people should start having,” Nhial said. “[Humanitarians] are always talking about: We’re doing this because we believe in this. We’re doing this because of humanitarian ideals. So the question should be: What sacrifices are people willing to make to make sure these aid cuts do not harm refugees very much?”
Fundraising : WFP uses ration-slashing partly as “last-minute fundraising drives”, analysts say. It’s a donor pet peeve: The organisation cuts food then issues press releases asking for more funding.
Salaries are a lightning rod: Aid salaries are also an easy target for the right-wing machinery. In February, a refugee from Myanmar died after she was sent home from a shuttered US-funded clinic run by the International Rescue Committee, Reuters reported. Pe Kha Lau was seen as an early casualty of the Trump cuts – a potent warning of the dangers now unfolding. But there was an easy deflection on right-wing social media: IRC boss David Miliband’s hefty $1.2 million salary and benefits.
It’s partly a problem of narrative. WFP’s 47 top earners received $10.7 million in total compensation in 2023, according to the agency’s financial statements. IRC’s top 10 earners took home about $5.3 million in 2022. These are hefty salaries (and Miliband’s in particular raises eyebrows even among other aid leaders). But they’re also a (relatively) small bit of each agency’s budgets. And they’re negligible compared to Elon Musk’s $44.9 billion pay package at Tesla, just as aid agency shortfalls are a fraction of the $38 billion in government subsidies and contracts reportedly doled out to Musk and his businesses. Cutting top salaries might be more symbolic than they are difference-making. But when the public has little idea what aid agencies are doing, it’s easy for other narratives to take hold.
It matters how cuts are made: NGOs have been relatively quick to cut compared to UN agencies not named IOM, as we noted here last week. Some 10% of humanitarian NGO workers were laid off in February, UN relief chief Tom Fletcher told reporters this week. Budget cuts are in the pipeline at UN agencies (more on that below), but they could shape up in different ways.
There’s a vast range of salaries across the aid sector, from scraping by to living comfortably. UN salaries tend to sit at the top of this heap, but it still varies: Many workers are strung along on disposable contracts; some are in well-compensated senior roles with tenure-like security. Some agencies are extremely top heavy: The ranks of senior directors at the World Health Organization nearly doubled over seven years, Health Policy Watch reported.
Staffing costs are significant, as they are with any private or public sector organisation. Total staffing costs at WFP were $1.2 billion in 2023 (education grants added up to $30 million). The UN may be behind on staff reductions, but further cuts are inevitable. As with choosing ration cuts over other costs, aid leaders have choices to make when it comes to staff cuts.
“Will senior leaders cut their own salaries, or their own posts, to keep junior staff in place? The incentives are not necessarily skewed in that direction,” Rachel Scott, an analyst who has worked on assessments of international organisations, told us. “You may see people who do decide that that’s the right thing to do, and will look at downsizing allowances and post adjustments and ways of travel and other kinds of perks of the job. And you’ll see others who won’t be so happy to do that.”
OCHA: The UN’s humanitarian coordination arm, which Fletcher leads, is one of those agencies likely weighing tradeoffs. Back in February, Fletcher asked senior managers to make recommendations on budget reductions of up to 20% in their departments, according to sources familiar with the discussions. These instructions came before the UK – OCHA’s second-largest donor – announced plans to slash its aid budget. OCHA did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
✂️: You can add scissors to the long list of supplies that Israel is blocking from Gaza (that list includes adult diapers). Israeli authorities are using aid as a “bargaining chip”, Médecins Sans Frontières said this week amid more blockades. Of course, Israel’s instrumentalisation of aid hasn’t changed – nor has the aid reaction to it.
Data points |
$6.4 billion: WFP is revising its budget forecast for 2025 down to $6.4 billion, boss Cindy McCain told the agency’s executive board at a February meeting. An earlier forecast from the Before Times (aka November) had planned for $8 billion in donor funding.
End notes |
Resets: Relief chief Fletcher has more details on the “humanitarian reset” he floated after a late February meeting of the IASC principals – the somewhat opaque body that brings together heads of UN agencies and (some) big NGOs. It comes in the form of another letter to his IASC counterparts.
On the grand scale of reforms, it may be more “blowing on the game cartridge” than a hard reset. Fletcher promises some next steps on his pre-Trump efficiency push. There’s some doubling down on old promises like local funding, direct cash, and listening to communities. There’s some agreeable language on ending turf wars: “We agreed to give up power and to act collectively where possible, to share information and data” – the “where” and the “possible” doing extraordinary work in this sentence.
Tradeoffs: Meanwhile, here’s more from our chat with analyst Rachel Scott. We asked her about the tradeoffs UN agency leaders will weigh when it comes to staffing cuts:
“There are different ways you could deal with it,” she said. “You could cut staff numbers. You could cut whole offices – just not be present in a place anymore. You could cut senior people and not junior people. Or junior people and not senior people.
"You could rethink your whole business model, which would be the appropriate thing to do, but I’m not sure anyone’s got the balls to do that.
"Or you could look at the salary structure and the allowances structure and go: ‘Well hang on, why are these people getting paid hardship allowance… and flying business class and getting paid this much?’
“They need to make tradeoffs. They will have to make some hard decisions, and that doesn’t seem to have started yet.”
Have any tips, recommendations, or indecipherable acronyms to share with the Inklingsnewsletter? Get in touch: hello@thenewhumanitarian.org
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Aid and Policy Podcasts 13 March 2025