Ahead of the White House's scheduled release of its 2018 budget proposal Thursday, people familiar with the discussions tell Foreign Policy that State Department staffers have been instructed to cut 50 percent or more of U.S. funding to United Nations programs. The proposal would affect peacekeeping efforts across the world, including in Syria and Yemen, as well as campaigns that provide vaccines to children, fight famine, and monitor nuclear weapons programs.
The United States, for example, contributed $1.5 billion to the United Nations' refugee agency's $4 billion budget last year. Trump's proposal would "leave a gaping hole that other big donors would struggle to fill," said U.N. expert Richard Gowan. "Multiply that across other humanitarian agencies, like the World Food Program, and you are basically talking about the breakdown of the international humanitarian system as we know it."
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