The United States government and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) signed an agreement on Monday through which the administration of Donald Trump will contribute $2 billion to 17 aid programs in United Nations emergencies in 2026.
The memorandum of understanding which includes this contribution, after one year of The United States drastically cuts humanitarian cooperationwas signed at the Washington Mission to the UN in Geneva by US Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jeremy Lewin and UN Humanitarian Coordinator Tom Fletcher.
The UN, through OCHA, has asked its global partners for $23 billion to address humanitarian emergencies in 2026, significantly lower than in 2025, when it requested $47 billion but He only received about 30% of this amountdue to reductions in contributions from partners like the United States.
“This is a historic agreement. Beyond the numbers, what is really important is that millions of lives will be saved in 17 countries”, The UN humanitarian chief stressed before the signing that he thanked President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “their leadership and contribution.”
The British diplomat stressed that the long-awaited American contribution comes after an “extremely difficult year for all those involved in humanitarian action” and will be used to support your 2026 planwith which OCHA wants to reach 87 million people in crisis around the world.
Undersecretary Lewin added that the United States and the United Nations are working together to reform the humanitarian system and make it “smaller and more efficient”. “When Trump became president, he discovered a humanitarian system that had grown beyond its capacity and was unsustainable, that not only the United States but also other donors could no longer maintain and that was ineffective,” he said.
The agreement, he added, means a step towards the future of the UN, in which the organization must “eliminate duplication, remove unnecessary structures, gain efficiency, speed and flexibility, and be better prepared to respond to the humanitarian challenges of the 21st century”.
Fletcher admitted that the United Nations prioritized efficiency as much as possible, eliminating duplication and bureaucracy, and acknowledged that American taxpayersexpect accountability for every dollar spentand the program includes mechanisms to ensure that every dollar saves lives.
Lewin added that the agreement marks “just the beginning” of the new formula cooperation between the United States and the United Nations. He also assured that the way in which North American aid will reach the humanitarian system will be “twice as effective” as before Trump came to power, although in practice the amount could be less, since he recognized that previously the North American allocation for these cooperation programs exceeded $10 billion.
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