2026 International Affairs Fellowship (IAF) Summer Series: Multilateralism Under Pressure

A changing U.S. posture toward international institutions is reshaping the landscape for global cooperation. This panel evaluates the implications for humanitarian aid delivery, migration frameworks, and climate governance. 

This is the second session in a special series of summer meetings featuring a selection of CFR’s recent IAFs, IAFs in Canada, IAFs in India, IAFs in Indonesia, IAFs in Japan, IAFs for Tenured International Relations Scholars, and IAFs in European Security.

The International Affairs Fellowship (IAF) Summer Series is made possible through a generous gift from Janine and J. Tomilson Hill in support of CFR’s flagship International Affairs Fellowship (IAF) program. For more information, please visit CFR’s Fellowship Affairs Page.

DUBIN: Good afternoon and welcome to our final IAF Summer Series panel for this year. We are really excited to have you for this discussion. For those that I do not know—and hopefully I’m getting to know as many of you as I can—my name is Ian Dubin, and I’m the director of the Fellowship Affairs team here at the Council.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the many colleagues in the background that helped put this together. So thank you to all of you. And lastly, I just want to flag our IAF applications as well, as our other fellowship applications, will open on September 8 for next year’s cycle. So please pass the word to your friends, your colleagues, your networks for this incredible opportunity. And maybe you will see them in a couple years at a future summer series event.

Sarah, on to you. Thank you very much.

DANZMAN: Thank you very much, Ian. And it’s a pleasure to be here today. This is the virtual meeting on “Multilateralism Under Pressure,” which, as Ian mentioned, is the last in our summer series for the International Affairs Fellowship Series.

As Ian mentioned, my name is Sarah Bauerle Danzman. I am an associate professor of international studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. And I’m also a former recipient of the IAF. I’m really delighted to be presiding today over this discussion.

Our speakers today include Sam Vigersky, who is spending his IAF year at the Council on Foreign Relations researching and writing on the topic of humanitarian interventions, U.N. reform, and international crisis response. We also have Rita Fernández, who is an expert on immigration policy and whose IAF placement is at the International Organization for Migration. And we have Jocelyn Kelly, a global health expert and senior fellow at the United Nations University, who worked at both the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Development Program during her IAF.

So I wanted to first open by asking our panelists for their reflections on the current state of multilateralism in their specific area of domain expertise. I think there is a general sense that the U.S. has substantially pulled back from multilateral commitments across the board, but the reality is much more varied. And our panelists today can provide us much more detail and expertise in their own field of interest. So, Sam, could you start us off by overviewing the situation in the field of humanitarian assistance?

VIGERSKY: Absolutely. Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me.

I think I have to say what the state is, it’s damaged but not destroyed when it comes to multilateralism and humanitarian aid. We’ve seen huge cuts from the U.S. but, you know, getting less attention are also cuts from Germany, the United Kingdom, and others who are key parts of funding humanitarian interventions overseas. More, probably, important than just those monetary cuts are actually the level of cooperation that we’re seeing to solve some of these protracted crises. The U.S. had always been the center of gravity for that, mostly because of the purse string but also because of their diplomatic interest in being a leader in humanitarian aid. And the Trump administration has stepped back from that role. They’re still engaged, but there’s a broad level of, I think, distrust between some of our traditional allies and our current government.

And that means that coming together to respond to Venezuela still happens at a monetary level, but you might not see the same type of cooperation at the U.N., where there’s a joint pledging conference, everybody’s on the same page about what the strategy should look like. You don’t see that in other settings, in the Horn of Africa, for example, either. So there’s engagement. It’s on the ropes. It’s under tremendous strain. But there’s still some work happening. And, you know, for the people who are relying on that type of humanitarian aid, it’s still important money that’s flowing out the door.

DANZMAN: Well, we certainly picked a group of experts today who are really working in fields that do seem to be collectively on the ropes, to borrow your expression. So, Rita, with that, I’d like to turn to you. You have a pretty unique background in immigration policy, both from the state, domestic level, as well as the international level. So what are you seeing today in terms of multilateralism around issues having to do with migration?

FERNÁNDEZ: Sure. Well, thank you, Sarah. And I also want to thank Ian and CFR for pulling all of this together.

I think it’s safe to say that the U.S. posture on migration has really swung significantly in the past few years. We saw that back in 2018 during the first Trump administration the U.S. walked away from the negotiation process for something called the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. And the agreement was ratified by U.N. member countries, notably without the United States. During the Biden years, the U.S. tried once again to reengage with the process, but where we are now is that the second Trump administration has once again gone back to disengaging from that process. And there was an International Migration Review Forum back in May, which is a four—it’s something that happens every four years. It’s essentially a forum where progress on the GCM, the global compact, is measured. And the U.S. not only did not attend, but shortly after it concluded the State Department released a statement essentially publicly rejecting the forum’s progress declaration, and framing U.N. migration cooperation as facilitating what they specifically referred to as “replacement migration.”

And I think along with all of this you’re also seeing an escalation in the rhetoric on migration. For example, in the 2025 Munich Security Conference we heard Vice President Vance tell European leaders that migration was the continent’s most urgent challenge, warning against unvetted migration. And we did see in the National Security Strategy that was released this past year that they went further still by describing Europe as risking what they called “civilizational erasure” due to migration and declining birth rates. And so, despite all of this, it’s, I think, worth noting that withdrawal is not necessarily symmetrical, and that the U.S. remains functionally engaged where there is funding and cooperation opportunities that serve its interests and align with the administration’s enforcement agenda.

So they still fund things around anti-trafficking assistance, law enforcement. There’s sort of one-off funding on some humanitarian objectives, and there’s also border management funding with various allies both in Latin America and in the Caribbean. So I think it’s worth noting that there’s still some engagement, just in a different way. So I think a helpful way of putting this is that, on migration, the U.S. has not necessarily left the table. It’s just moved on to a process of selective disengagement. That includes a retreat from more of the rules-based humanitarian-framed cooperation that we’ve seen in the past, and coupled with continued and even expanded bilateral engagement on removals and enforcement more broadly.

DANZMAN: Thank you. That’s a really great overview of how, in some ways, it’s not necessarily that multilateralism and governance has completely dissipated, but that the kind of strategies that underpin it have shifted significantly.

Jocelyn, turning to you, your work sits at the intersection of global health, human rights, and gender equality. So, again, issues that have really been on the ropes or are experiencing some pretty big changes in terms of how the U.S. thinks about its priorities in these areas. So from your vantage point, what does the current state of multilateral cooperation look like?

KELLY: Yeah. And I’d like to also open with a huge thanks for CFR and the fellowship experience, which was incredible. So I would encourage anyone who’s interested to apply. And I will also note, I’m speaking on behalf of myself and not representing any institution in my remarks.

Yeah. So when I thought about this event, I had a lot of thoughts about where we are with multilateralism. And then I thought, you know, let me just zoom out and start almost from first principles. What does multilateralism do? What’s the point? Is there a reason that we should actually care about it? And, you know, I am thinking about this from my perspective of global health and human rights. And what I really came back to is that multilateralism is a totally unique engine for change. It’s the kind of change that no one country can do on its own. And then I started to think about what multilateralism has achieved just in the fields that I’m involved in—the global ban on chemical weapons and landmines, the eradication of polio, the creation of human rights norms, global vaccinations at scale. And this is just to name a few. So this is multilateralism’s most distinctive capacity. You know, it can take a compelling shared problem and create institutions that drive change after political attention moves on.

Where are we now? What’s the current state? You know, it’s a—it’s a really tough time. And I’m sure we’ll dig into this more in the following questions. But I think multilateralism is being instrumentalized and fractured. And this is a time when we’re tackling the world’s biggest problems as a very, very connected planet. We’ve got pandemics, climate change, conflict, migration, and technology governance, just to name a few. So none of these problems can be managed quickly, nationally, or alone. And I think of the current U.S. engagement along the line of three S’s. It’s selective, sovereign, and supposedly security oriented, but I think it’s really undermining its own security objectives. It’s dismantled structures, trust relationships, and norms that took decades or longer to build.

You know, universal human rights can’t be reduced to bilateral bargains. And because, by definition, they are universal. They’re not benefits to be exchanged between favored partners. And global health is similarly indifferent to national boundaries. It’s about pathogens, data, supply chains, and the conditions that shape the health that we all share, particularly from things like air pollution and other global forces. So, you know, I would just circle back to where I began and say, you know, multilateralism, certainly we can talk about this, is imperfect. But I also think it does something no other instrument can, particularly in the global health and human rights field. And it’s financing what’s necessary but not immediately profitable, and protecting what’s universal but not politically powerful at certain times.

DANZMAN: Thank you, Jocelyn. That really—your remarks really, I think, underscore that, just as perhaps the supply of multilateralism may be changing or on the decline in certain issue areas, that doesn’t mean that the demand for it is not continuing to grow, as the challenges we face globally also grow and change over time. And so I think that’s a great segue into this next question that I wanted to pose to the panel, which is really about what we see in terms of change and adaptation within the U.S. and among our global partners around these issues of governance and cooperation that still exist. So, Jocelyn, you had a placement within the U.N. system during your IAF. How are these agencies adapting their strategies for advancing gender equality and health equity, especially as the U.S. interest in these particular issues seems to be sliding?

KELLY: Yeah. I think it’s affecting organizations on, you know, like, a psychological, a personal, and an institutional scale. In January, the administration directed withdrawal from and cessation of funding to thirty-one U.N. entities and thirty-five other international organizations. And we’re seeing those consequences across the multilateral system, from global health, development assistance, child wellbeing, displacement, HIV, human rights, and humanitarian coordination. I’m sure that’s a topic we’ll get into in more detail. The WHO alone has documented major losses in maternal care, vaccination, emergency preparedness, and disease surveillance.

So, you know, I think agencies are adapting and trying to adapt in several ways. They’re trying to protect their core functions. They’re consolidating offices and staff. They’re seeking new donors. And they’re shifting more responsibility towards national systems. But these national systems, you know, haven’t had a runway to build their capacity, their financing, and their ability to take up that slack. And I think that that is a huge failure of this really fast pivot that we’re seeing. And I think, you know, on that personal and psychological level, when institutions are forced to shrink and remake themselves at this speed and scale, the question is which functions and expertise disappear in the process.

And then, you know, this is something I think that’s really real. And it’s the impact of organizational exhaustion, the constant uncertainty, the re-strategizing, and the churn from the constantly shifting orders and mandates. I think of it as churn-out instead of burnout. It’s just constant change, feeling like you’re on shifting ground, and not knowing where to go next. I think it not only stops you from being productive in the moment, but it actually saps organizational capacity in the long term. And I think it’s going to impact national, international, and, sadly, most of all, grassroots organizations for years, who have the least capacity to respond. You know, I think institutions are losing trust, institutional memory, and the practical knowledge that they need to turn global commitments into health and human rights outcomes.

DANZMAN: Thank you for that. Speaking of fast pivots, I think that we all would probably point to humanitarian aid and the dismantling of USAID as a very fast pivot that was predicated around a theory of change that the aid infrastructure and the systems supporting aid had—was really in the need of radical restructuring. So, Sam, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about what is happening in the aftermath of that radical change. As you know, someone who tries to follow this a little bit more from the outside, it’s confusing and it’s hard to really know what’s happening on the ground in a lot of places that have previously relied substantially on USAID infrastructure. So tell us what—tell us what’s happening.

VIGERSKY: Well, I would say “pivot” is a very generous word to give to the administration, given what happened last year. I would characterize it as outright demolition. What we saw in 2025 was a year of free fall for humanitarian aid. There was really no sign of where the bottom was going to be. And so, whether you’re in the U.N. or you’re an NGO, you were cutting jobs, you’re cutting programs, you weren’t sure if some of this frozen funding that was supposedly eligible for lifesaving work was still going to come through.

And most people spent all of 2025 sorting through that, still not quite sure what was coming next. And the Trump administration in late December announced that they were partnering with the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which is the top of the food chain in terms of who’s making the assessments on the ground about what’s needed and what resources should go there in humanitarian settings. They made an agreement with U.N. OCHA for $2 billion in bilateral aid that would go to them across seventeen different countries around the world.

And I think this took a lot of people by surprise, first and foremost because much of the year had been spent trashing the U.N. as an institution, and then this became the place where the U.S. made their first big rebuild, I’d call it, announcement. But, you know, the second part, and I think this really emphasizes what Rita was getting at, is the U.S. hadn’t necessarily left the table, but the terms of what the table would be set with had changed dramatically. And instead of responding every time, everywhere, all at once to disasters around the world, the U.S. had clearly taken a much more a la carte approach to where they wanted to engage.

And that meant, of those seventeen countries, they would be the recipients of some of this money that was directed through OCHA, but it also meant countries like Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, places with the highest caseloads of hunger, some of the most complicated protection issues around the world, were totally sworn off and basically blacklisted because those governments were not seen as friendly towards the United States. And so this type of approach is a real—I mean, pivot might be one way to call it, but I would say a new paradigm, frankly, compared to what we’ve seen over the last three or four decades.

The second part, about this shift from the U.S. perspective, was the institutions—USAID mainly, but also the Refugee Bureau at the State Department—were no longer seen as being necessary to program that type of money. And so the footprint that is there presently is probably about a quarter or 30 percent of what once existed from the workforce. And what I see the Trump administration doing is saying, we can really outsource the work that was presently—or, formerly done in in U.S. government, to the U.N. We don’t need these people in-house. We’ll push the money offshore. We’ll lower overhead. We think that the U.N. can actually do this faster because there are fewer bureaucratic obstacles inside.

You know, the second part of their theory, I would say, is that humanitarian aid is not just charity alone. It’s a form of statecraft. And they’re really looking to leverage these dollars for some larger breakthroughs that have actually nothing to do—or, you know, maybe aren’t directly tied to life-saving work itself. Whether that might be signing agreements on critical minerals, whether that might be boosting partners who are central to our security in the hemisphere or in Africa, these have been quite unapologetically framed as part of the new paradigm that the Trump administration is interested in in pursuing. And I think, you know, for the U.N. and the NGOs that are on the receiving end of this money, it puts them in a tough position, frankly, because they are much more in the political fold of work that, by principle, is supposed to be independent and impartial of political ties.

DANZMAN: Thank you for that. As I kind of reflect on what each of you have been bringing to the table with respect to multilateralism, something that has also struck me is that there are—in each of your areas of expertise there are some components that really do require multilateralism as a mechanism for addressing those issues. In in migration, for example, you know, if the focus is on kind of addressing root causes of migration, multilateralism is probably going to be kind of the way that you need to engage. But if the focus is more on enforcement, which, Rita, you mentioned is more—this administration is much more focused on cooperation over enforcement, then bilateral engagement may be sufficient for dealing with those sorts of issues. So could you tell us a little bit about how the U.S. is shifting engagement away from multilateral to more bilateral structures to manage these kinds of issues?

FERNÁNDEZ: Right. Something that we’re seeing in this period is the emergence of these safe third-country agreements, sometimes referred to as third-country deportation agreements or third-country national agreements. So these are essentially arrangements where the U.S. will negotiate with another country, and they will agree to accept nationals that are being deported from the U.S. who are not their own nationals. And there are about twenty-five to thirty countries that have agreed to this, in Africa, in the Americas, and elsewhere. Just to give you some examples there’s Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, Ghana, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico. So the number is growing.

And there’s actually a lot of lack of transparency around these agreements. There is some publicly available information about what some of these agreements contain and the terms, but some are strikingly opaque. There’s some, for example, that only came to light as a result of FOIA requests, which is in and of itself a pretty significant break with sort of transparency and more treaty-based multilateral models. So we’re seeing the U.S. really lean on these more sort of one-off bilateral engagements to try and facilitate more removals. There are a number of people that the U.S. either can’t or won’t deport to their home country, which is where these agreements come in handy for them to be able to expand their deportation capabilities.

And we’re seeing not only the U.S. lean on bilateral sort of collaboration, but also leverage rather than multilateral frameworks that have been used in the past. So, for example, they will usually use tactics like invoking, you know, potential visa revocation threats, or tariffs, or investment relationships as bargaining chips to secure these agreements—these third-country agreements. And so I think it’s interesting that—to see that the human and diplomatic fallout is also quite uneven. There are some countries that have entered into these agreements with the U.S., that have said that they can absorb all the deportees that are being sent in their direction into their workforce, into their society.

But meanwhile, others, like Eswatini and Rwanda, have received millions of dollars, of U.S. dollars, in exchange for providing assistance to the people that they accept to receive in their country. So some U.N. agencies we see on the ground provide support and resources to people after they’ve been deported to these third countries. But I think this broader trend is continuing. And it shows that diplomacy is really being conducted in a bilateral, country-by-country basis, and often confidentially. And so that really complicates oversight, accountability. And it makes it harder for multilateral bodies to track the total numbers and the conditions, and for congressional oversight as well.

DANZMAN: Thank you for that. So, seeing the time, I’m going to ask one more question for our panelists before turning to audience Q&A. So, for our audience members, please do start to formulate your questions and please raise your virtual hand if you’d like to be added to the queue.

And with that, Rita, I want to return to you for a moment. So as you lay out this kind of new, more bilateral forms of engagement that the current administration is pursuing, I’d love for you to talk to us a little bit about how you anticipate multilateralism or other forms of transnational governance cooperation to look like in the migration domain over the next five to eight years—you know, moving beyond this current administration to what might come after.

FERNÁNDEZ: Sure. I think it’s important to note that multilateralism on migration will continue, and migration itself will not—will not stop. It’s just a sort of a feature of human civilization, right? And so, the U.S. may or may not be involved in that process. What we’re seeing is that other states broadly share concerns about irregular migration and the number of asylum seekers that have come to their borders. But what they ultimately want is something that is workable, that is managed, that is not chaotic, and are still interested in engaging in forums like the Global Compact for Migration. They are still looking to establish regular migration pathways, either with other countries or through regional agreements.

There are a number of labor mobility agreements that are emerging, such as one agreement recently signed by Germany and Kenya in 2024 that both pairs legal channels for skilled workers and cooperation on returning irregular migrants. So I think you’re going to continue to see a lot of activity. Again, not necessarily with the United States involved, but I think the U.S. may continue to position itself as an outside critic of the U.N. architecture. Will continue to, I think, raise the issue as not only a policy matter, but migration as sort of this broader national security vulnerability. And I think that will—that will also continue. And I think in the long term you’ll probably have more bifurcated systems, where U.N. agencies are sort of coordinating and working with a number of partners. And U.S. participation will again be selective, based on priorities that they see and things that align with U.S. interests.

DANZMAN: Thank you. Jocelyn, could you also step in and kind of, from an over the horizon perspective, what do you see happening in the field of global health beyond the administration in the next several years?

KELLY: Yeah. I definitely don’t think transnational cooperation in global health will disappear. And, you know, I think our shared problems make that impossible. So there’s disease surveillance, access to medicines, health security, migration, climate-related risks, and the regulation of new technologies that we all are trying to tackle, and will require multilateral solutions. But what I do expect is a more fragmented and plural system. I think cooperation may become more selective, state-centric, and security driven, rather than driven by broad universal commitments. Very much to Rita’s point. I think, you know, if you are seeking hope, you could imagine a world in which some of those shifts could create opportunities. You could imagine a shift to regional institutions or bilateral agreements, might actually be closer to some countries’ priorities. And having a more diverse funding base could reduce dependence on traditional donors, who might not be relied on anymore.

But for me, the central question is not which institution replaces the old model. It’s whether the essential functions of multilateralism will survive even as the architecture changes. And so what I’m really hoping to see is not an abdication of responsibility and a hope that countries that are not fully equipped to step into a multilateral system are just given a mandate, and we’re all hoping for the best. But that we’re actually building a stronger kind of more networked, more diverse system. And I think that would be my ideal. And, yeah, my cautiously optimistic view is multilateralism won’t end, it’ll become more diffuse. And our job then, as people who are pro-multilateralism, will be to preserve universality, equity, and accountability within it.

DANZMAN: Thank you, Jocelyn, for that that shot of hope. Sam, to you. What do you see happening in the humanitarian space over the next five to eight years?

VIGERSKY: There’s probably not a very hopeful answer, to be totally direct. You know, the funding levels have no immediate signs of recovery. Even this year, which the Trump administration alone has put about 50 percent more towards humanitarian aid already than they did last year. Potentially hopeful. But you’re still looking at being more than 50 percent down of where humanitarian funding was in 2024. And there are more needs today, you know, than at any point. So the future, to me, if I was sitting at the U.N. or if I was in one of these large NGOs that have historically relied on money from public financing, would be to really turn to individual donors.

I mean, it takes a lot to source billions of dollars that way, but I think it’s instructive that the thread between some of the work that’s so impactful overseas and, frankly, the American people’s support with very strong majorities continuing doing was not necessarily part of the conversation for the last few decades because the money coming from Capitol Hill continued to grow. And it really wasn’t the foundation, as it had been for decades before of what financed the work. So, you know, point one I would say is the future probably involves some very rich people giving a little bit more money. It probably involves some very middle-class people giving a little bit more money. And it definitely needs to involve a communication strategy that makes the relationship between people suffering overseas and people’s wallets in the United States and other countries being connected feel relevant.

And I think the backdrop for everything, which often goes unacknowledged, is that, you know, in New York City, as our mayor likes to say, a quarter of the people are living in poverty here. You know, the United States is not immune to some of the global forces that are putting everyone under strain, even if you have a regular job. So it feels tough to part with your own money here when we have so many problems in America to give it to causes overseas. But that doesn’t make it any less important, as far as I’m concerned. So, you know, my thinking about what comes for the next five to eight years really getting actually to some degree to what Jocelyn’s saying, is reminding everybody of the common humanity that we all share.

That human suffering, unfortunately, is a universal thing. And we shouldn’t prioritize Americans’ human suffering over someone else’s just because they’re standing there next to us. It matters for the whole global well-being. And, you know, this is not just a political issue. This is a moral and religious one that has stood for millennia, that we’ve all tried to, you know, feed the hungry and, you know, cure the sick from disease.

DANZMAN: Well, thank you for that, Sam. And thank you to all of our panelists for a really excellent first part of this discussion. At this time, I would like to invite members to join our conversation with their questions. And I’d also remind you that this meeting is on the record. Do we have a question at this time?

OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)

We will take the first question from Mark Hetfield.

Q: Thank you. Mark Hetfield from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

There’s been a tradition for many decades of the United States naming high-level officials at numerous multilateral agencies. For example, World Food Programme director is usually a U.S. nominee and a U.S. national. Director of the IOM, it’s the same thing. And the deputy high commissioner for refugees, it’s the—it’s the same thing.

This year, we’ve seen some interesting tensions there. For example, the World Food Programme director nominee right now is getting some resistance—from the United States, Luke Lindberg, who happens to be in the Trump administration right now as a(n) official in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but is also John Thune’s son-in-law.

And then we also have in the UNHCR, as the deputy high commissioner Simon Hankinson was nominated from the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Hankinson is an advocate of the United States withdrawing from the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention. His nomination was resisted. And instead, Tressa Rae Finerty, who is an American national, was named. But she was not—she was not supported by the United States government. So I was wondering if you could comment on this, on the status of this practice, where it’s going, and what it means.

DANZMAN: All right. Do one of our panelists want to jump in on this question?

VIGERSKY: I would like to, yes. This is an interesting moment for these appointments. And I think the UNHCR deputy high commissioner one was probably one of the biggest breaks with precedent, for the U.S. at least, that, you know, the nominee was not secured from who the Trump administration had put forward, but it was somebody who self-deployed that happened to be an American. I would just say, you know, by way of background, that’s not entirely unprecedented, because the head of U.N. OCHA many years ago ended up being Martin Griffiths. He was not the U.K. candidate, actually, that had been nominated. He put himself into the pool, and the secretary-general chose him.

So what’s more interesting probably about right now is the WFP vacancy itself. And I think the secretary-general, although officially hasn’t said this, it’s been reported, has decided to pass this decision to his successor, who we don’t know, leaving a position vacant for one year. That is happening with the backdrop of all-time global hunger levels in emergency settings. You know, my personal feeling on this is, if you’re going to be the head of the U.N. you have the responsibility to nominate someone to this role, even if it’s a politically uncomfortable decision to make. And whether he decides to go with Luke Lindberg or someone else really isn’t one that the people who are dealing with successive famines in places like Sudan, who have any number of challenges in some of these other conflict-affected areas can wait for. And I think that this is a real dereliction of duty of the secretary-general himself, and should be remedied, you know, eminently.

Whether Luke Limburg is the right person for the job, you know, clearly there’ll be a lot of opinions on that. David Beasley had no real background in humanitarian aid. He ended up being the greatest rainmaker of humanitarian funding at any U.N. agency of all time. So I think what that tells you is that resume is not necessarily destiny for whoever ends up in that seat.

FERNÁNDEZ: Something I would just quickly add to that. Definitely second Sam’s comments. I think this touches a little bit on something that I mentioned earlier, which is that the current U.S. posture on migration is not only sort of disengaging or taking the back seat on these more sort of global conversations on migration. They’re sort of actively ratcheting up a lot of the current rhetoric. And as, again, we saw in the National Security Strategy and elsewhere, this includes not only categorizing migration as just a policy matter, or a broader sort of topic to be addressed and managed with our allies and partners, but that it is both a national security vulnerability but draws on something even more specific, like identity. And so I think this is kind of a reflection of that, looking to the UNHCR example, right? That there’s ties to similar ideologies. You had mentioned the Heritage Foundation. I think what we will continue to see is the U.S. playing an increasing role in trying to convey its own views on this issue. So it’s not just enough to step back, but they also, I think, are reinforcing that messaging.

DANZMAN: Thank you. We’ll take the next question, please.

OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Esther Brimmer.

Q: Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this rich discussion. I appreciate all the relevant points that we could be raising now. My name is Esther Brimmer. I’m now the James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance here at the Council on Foreign Relations. And also earlier in my career I was assistant secretary for international organizations in the first Obama administration, and been in out of State in various areas.

So there’s so many things we could raise. There are three kind of questions I’d like to pose. The first is how you see the trends that you’ve described affecting emergency response versus long-term development. How is that playing into this? There have been different reasons why the United States has gotten involved in different humanitarian efforts. And just what you’re seeing, are we only focusing on the emergencies or are we losing the long-term development strategies? Just what do you see between those different strategies. The second you already touched on, which, of course, is the intersection between peace and security, and our humanitarian and other activities. I’d like to think we’re all altruistic, but we also wanted to promote stability, prevent conflict, and also had very good strategic reasons for the types of support that we provided. Could you comment on the long-term impact of our activities?

And finally, how do you see the effects of other—you know, there are other organizations also being developed. We have colleagues, obviously, you know, looking closely at the impact of other leaders, as you well know. And I’ve—you know, there were multiple times when my Chinese counterparts told me, you know, we’re on top of this, got this, you know? That other countries see these strategic imports. So, what do you think—how do you think these institutions will be shaped over time? Will there be alternatives that are developed if the U.S. is not leading on this area? Thank you so much for the session.

DANZMAN: All right, a rich set of questions. Who’d like to begin?

KELLY: I could jump in on this. And, Esther, thank you so much for these beautiful questions and for your work.

So I have thought a lot about the difference between kind of these acute versus ongoing impacts for the humanitarian health and global development fields. I think, you know, if we leave with one message, I’d want it to be this: That the retreat from multilateralism is not experienced evenly. And I think this gets exactly to your question about the connective tissue, these deep structures that are being harmed at this time. So I think the cuts land first and hardest on the parts of the system built for the people with the least leverage. These are grassroots women’s organizations, people affected by crisis, frontline health workers. U.N. Women just reported that more than a million women and girls have lost access to critical services this year as those kinds of organizations collapse. And those are not just impacts on those women and girls themselves, but when you start to create those kind of health effects, you really see intergenerational ripples of robbing health, productivity, and well-being from women as well as the families and the children that they might be having in the future.

I also think that the kind of organizations I mentioned, those grassroots women’s organizations, the small democracy-leaning NGO working in the hardest possible environment, those organizations do more than just deliver life-saving services. They’re often the first to detect rising violence, mediate local conflicts, document abuses, build trust with communities, and build the very democratic spaces that we’ve always invested in as the United States. They are the connective tissue linking global commitments on health, human rights, peace, and democracy to the actual outcomes that we want to see. And so I—for me, it’s devastating not just to see some of the acute response fall through, which is horrifying in itself, but to think about these underlying cuts that will—I think, we’ll continue to see through ripple effects for decades and generations. And I also think there’s a quieter loss underneath that one, which worries me as a researcher, where we’re defunding the evidence base at the same time that we’re defunding the programs. So we’re not only dismantling services. We’re dismantling the ability to see the consequences of what we’re doing. And that really worries me in the long term as well.

FERNÁNDEZ: I can go next. I think very quickly, on the point of priorities that are more geared toward emergencies versus the long-term development questions. So Sam had mentioned in his remarks OCHA funding. So there is a tranche of money for both agencies like UNHCR and IOM on migration issues, things that include sort of, like, camp management, and other things that are sort of more short-term and immediate. But on the development issue, I think this actually might apply more to partner states. So not necessarily that the U.S. is seeing it this way, but other countries I think—something that you are seeing more and more is the topic of conversation on migration is also being folded into development. This is something that really came up during the World Bank and IMF, both the spring meetings this year and the fall meetings last year. Which is that migration itself can also be treated as a development issue.

So to give you an example, a country that has a number of returnees coming back either through deportations or voluntary return maybe need assistance with jobs, right? Maybe they also bring skills from the country where they just were. And so those are skills and potential that could be tapped into in their country of origin that they’re returning to. So there, I think—in a broader sort of context outside of the U.S., I think the migration topic as it relates to development is continuing to evolve. And I think you’ll continue to hear that in in other sort of development conversations.

VIGERSKY: I’ll give you two examples where I’m seeing this tension, on your first question, Esther, play out. The first is in northwest Kenya in Kakuma refugee camp, where I was actually last week visiting, that has both a humanitarian emergency relief element to what’s going on there and a long-term development component to it too. There are over 330,000 people, I believe, in Kakuma at this point. It’s been mostly populated by South Sudanese refugees since the early nineties. And what you have is a situation where 400 or so people are still crossing the border every week or two right now. For those people, if you’re fleeing conflict, if you’re fleeing famine in South Sudan, you’re in an emergency setting. And getting immediate relief to those people is a huge priority, obviously. But if you’ve been in that refugee setting for twenty years, it requires a much more long-term lens.

And I guess maybe one of the silver linings to the shakeup of the last year is that the U.S. is putting much more pressure on partners like Kenya and others, where we had just plowed money in perpetuity, it seemed like, into a context that had no end in sight, to really think about what a durable solution might look like. That could be everything from, you know, putting in infrastructure for electricity through solar grid in a public-private partnership, which was one thing I saw there. It could be the WFP putting a farm in place in some of these different settlement sites to not only give livelihoods to people but also to not be relying on food from other sources. And I think that’s going to still be a long-term approach, but there is clearly a catalyst at the moment to move that forward because the money is just not there to sustain what we called humanitarian, even if it was a long-term more development problem.

Now, juxtapose that with where I was in June, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And, you know, there you have a situation that feels so far off from any development paradigm. And the humanitarian setting is as dire as any of the world. And yet, the approach of the Trump administration right now is to look at this through a security lens and try to see what is being called this Gang Suppression Force, authorized by the U.N., to clear, hold, and build a counterterrorism strategy, that has no humanitarian or development corollary to it to surge that type of money in for people suffering from acute levels of food insecurity that are impacting over half the population. So I think that is a cautionary tale to me about what happens when there is a real imbalance between the solution that we’re putting in place, like Haiti.

We can put the gang on their—these gangs on their heels all we want, but the fact is there’s no functioning market there. And people are really in dire need of humanitarian aid, with the U.N. only getting 39 percent of its funding to do those programs right now. So, you know, both are worth watching. And I think, you know, we need to be very clear about what the consequences for people, particularly in Haiti, are, if there aren’t even immediate life-saving programs in place, to say nothing about longer term how we think through some of the development paradigm.

DANZMAN: I think that answer, Sam, specifically, you know, kind of talking about what’s happening in Kenya and also Haiti, really raises the real stakes of what happens when multilateralism is not fit for purpose to the issues that are currently being raised and need to be addressed in the system. So I would love for each of you to maybe reflect briefly, and also kind of to build on Esther’s really good question about emergency versus long-term thinking and response, about, like, what do you think are kind of the core or most important short-term and long-term issues in your domain, that are not getting the kind of visibility that they should be right now? So to any of you and all of you.

KELLY: I’m happy to jump in. So I’m watching—right now, I’m watching three things. The first is very near and dear to my heart, and will be something I’ve mentioned before, but it’s whether these frontline women and community organizations survive, because they’re the first entry point for so many of the outcomes that we’re talking about today. They’re the beating heart of global health and human rights systems. And they really protect democracy as well as peace and security. And I am really hoping that those small, extraordinary kind of hero-driven organizations, truly at the front lines of all of these issues, are able to find a way to survive in this—in this kind of new environment. Second, I’m watching how trust in global health institutions and human rights systems evolves, changes, and whether it survives. Communities are being asked to accept guidance from systems that are increasingly unstable and that don’t guarantee continuity, equity, basic access to services. Sam’s point in Haiti, I mean, how this is being experienced is, I think, an extraordinary example of how local perceptions and how the U.S. is viewed will change.

And, third, whether commitments such as Sevilla, which is the global roadmap for financing sustainable development. Whether that translates into, you know, more support, what it looks like for whether country ownership becomes a way of transferring responsibility from the global community, or whether it becomes an actual roadmap for a new form of development. And I’ll just note, around 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on external debt service than on health or education. And asking those governments to take on greater responsibility for health isn’t credible without more support from this international system. So that’s something I’m keeping an eye on as well.

VIGERSKY: I’ll jump in. Look, the top of my list in any case is going to be people who are relying on life-saving aid and not getting it right now. I mean, that is just going to be the urgent priority day-in and day-out. But from a policy perspective, I see the protection of aid workers themselves as being a really urgent issue right now. We’ve seen a full-scale step change in the amount of aid workers killed, injured, or kidnapped over the last few years. And part of this really circles back to this conversation about multilateralism, protection of civilians, things that these institutions like the Security Council are supposed to be there to stand up for, to ensure the enforcement of international law, international humanitarian law. We’re just seeing a real weakening of that through multilateral institutions themselves. We’re seeing countries indifferent to it, unfortunately.

And, you know, a bigger shift in the killing of aid workers themselves that is most alarming is, in prior decades, this had been non-state actors who were responsible for that type of work. Today, state actors are the majority party to those types of events. And that really speaks, again, to how those parties engage in multilateral institutions that are supposed to be there to protect the civilians, to protect the aid workers themselves. And we know if you’re an aid worker delivering food to somebody who’s about to potentially experience a famine, and you’re going to get bombed by a drone with no accountability, that that aid organization, rightly, will probably be less likely to put their people in harm’s way in the future because they have no protections. Meaning, those civilians themselves who are suffering are also going to have fewer protections. That daisy chain of events, to me, leads to greater suffering and, like, a real risk for the unraveling of our common law and our common protections. So that’s a very near term.

Long term, I think we really have to think in the humanitarian space about consolidation, which is uncomfortable for people to think about whether it’s U.N. agencies consolidating together or even NGOs. It will happen. Every few decades you’ll see this. But when I go out into the field and I see what people are doing, there are people doing information management for twenty different NGOs, but they’re really telling the same story. And in a resource-constrained environment like we are right now, I think we have to ask ourselves, you know, what is the value proposition of employing twenty different people to do the same thing, when maybe there’s a common story that not only we could tell together and break through the information economy or the information deficit that we have right now on these issues, but—excuse me, the attention economy that we’re dealing with right now. But I think we could also think about ways to jointly solve these problems.

And aid worker—or, aid organizations are more inclined to work independently over the past. That’s just kind of how they resource, mobilize, and that’s how they implement. But to me, I think there just has to be more collaboration in this space, and really joint problem solving of these issues to try to eliminate the inefficiencies and to try to elevate these issues into the overall dialogue.

FERNÁNDEZ: Yeah. And then, for me, I would say things that are both in the short term, with very real long-term implications, is just the level of displacement around the world. We are at historic levels of displacement, the highest since the end of the Second World War. Things are not necessarily getting better in that front. Of course, all of the factors that are contributing to this displacement—like conflict, there’s also the potential of climate change also impacting both current and future migration trends. And all of this combined with less U.S. leadership on the issue, with less funding, and less collaboration. I have real worries that there are going to be a series of challenges that we’ll not be able to mitigate and solve in the long term. And that, in turn, will really affect the people that really depend on a number of different, you know, services and resources. And at the end of the day, these conversations that we’re all having have people at the center, as my panelists have sort of alluded to.

What I’m also looking to is how the domestic policy agenda here in the U.S. dovetails with this broader global displacement trend. So the termination of the Temporary Protected Status Program, or TPS, here in the U.S. is causing more sort of vulnerabilities. And people are less and less secure, and losing status. There are about 348,000 Haitians that are in the United States that could lose their TPS designation after the June 2026 Supreme Court ruling. And I’m also just looking broadly to see how a lot of these both bilateral agreements and removal operations are affecting our relationships with other countries. We saw a little bit of friction both with Mexico and South Korea in light of some very high-profile deportation raids. So anyway, I will leave it at that. I know we’re at time. But thank you.

DANZMAN: Well, thank you so much to our fantastic panelists. Thank you to all of you in the audience for joining today’s virtual meeting. And thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations for creating such an excellent opportunity through the International Affairs Fellowship. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

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This is an uncorrected transcript.