9. Agency for International Development · Minor
Appoint a political appointee to hold the U.N. and WHO accountable
Printed page 266 9. Agency for International Development
“Leadership should designate a political appointee to help coordinate cross-agency efforts to hold the U.S. government’s multilateral partners (U.N. and WHO agencies and other international organizations) to a higher level of financial and programmatic accountability, including assurances that language promoting abortion will be removed from U.N. documents, policy statements, and technical literature.”
What has happened
- Partially done
A political appointee with this remit now exists and has used it. The July 2025 reorganization created an Under Secretary for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom, to whom the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response, the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and the new Office of Foreign Assistance Oversight report. Under that office the United States signed the "Humanitarian Reset" memorandum of understanding with UN OCHA, whose stated purpose is to hold U.N. humanitarian agencies to a higher standard of financial and programmatic accountability - country-level policy agreements, new impact and oversight mechanisms, and "negative earmarks". `partial`: the post is departmental rather than a cross-agency coordinator, and the assurance the Quote names - removing abortion-promoting language from U.N. documents - is pursued through the January 2026 withdrawal memorandum and the 2026 foreign-assistance award terms (see #669, #670), not through this designation.
- State Department: United States and UN OCHA sign the "Humanitarian Reset" memorandum of understanding, with a $2 billion anchor pledge to country-based pooled funds
- Report to Congress on Personnel and Process Changes to Vetting Related to Implementing Section 620M of the FAA - the July 2025 reorganization created the Office of Foreign Assistance Oversight and its vetting and accountability office
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- This is an appointment ask, so our roster of the people credited in the Mandate was checked first; no one on it currently holds an office matching this post.
- The Under Secretary’s office page (https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-foreign-assistance-humanitarian-affairs-and-religious-freedom/) names Jeremy P. Lewin and lists the reporting bureaus. It carries no date, so it is recorded here as a lead; the dated Primary record that the reorganization created the office is the May 2026 vetting report cited above.
- State’s SFOAA report index also carries a report to Congress on United Nations Procurement Reform (https://www.state.gov/united-nations-procurement-reform/), which is adjacent multilateral-accountability work but is not a designation of a coordinator.
Researched 2026-08-28.
- Action
- appoint
- Object
- Political appointee coordinating multilateral accountability
- ID
- 695