Presented by Amazon Sustainability

July 31, 2026

A community radio network once helped warn villages of attacks, trace abducted children, and reunite families across one of Central Africa’s most isolated conflict zones. But U.S. aid cuts have left the system slowly falling apart, weakening both local protection efforts and a vital source of intelligence.

Also in today’s edition: The first U.N. secretary-general straw poll offers a glimpse of the possible frontrunners, and one year after the Sevilla Commitment, is delivery falling short of the promises?

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A system unravels

Local peace committees remain active even without funding, continuing daily radio calls
and trying to update protection plans remotely.
But without regular field visits and refresher training, the system is becoming harder to sustain.

When the Lord’s Resistance Army allegedly abducted 21 children from villages in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo in April, Ferdinand Zangapayda heard about it the same way he hears everything: over a crackling high-frequency radio.

For years, the community-run network he coordinates has been one of the only ways to warn villages of attacks, trace abducted children, and reunite families across one of the world’s most isolated conflict zones. But sweeping U.S. aid cuts have left that system slowly falling apart. “The early-warning system is — community by community — just kind of going dark,” says Paul Ronan, director of programs and policy at Invisible Children.

Broken radios are going unrepaired, field teams have shrunk, and atrocity prevention programs built over years have been paused or terminated. The result is fewer warnings, investigations, and resources to help families whose children have been taken.

The impact stretches far beyond local communities. Aid workers and former U.S. officials say the network also provided some of the only reliable intelligence from remote border regions, helping humanitarian agencies, diplomats, and security officials understand where violence was unfolding. “People would be writing furiously during briefings because no one else had these facts,” one former U.S. official recalled.

Even so, local peace committees continue making their daily radio calls, trying to hold together a system that has protected communities for years despite dwindling resources and broken equipment.

But the latest abductions reopened wounds from years of violence that communities have never fully recovered from. “I was already working on reunification of former escapees,” Zangapayda says. “And suddenly there is another abduction. It is a cycle of atrocities that continues to happen in our region.”

Read: A US-funded atrocity prevention system is going dark

This story is part of The Aid Report, a Gates Foundation-funded, editorially independent initiative to track and document the impacts of the U.S. aid cuts. The project has now documented over 1,000 verified, real-world impacts across sectors and geographies. Explore the Impact Tracker.

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The first round

The race to become the next United Nations secretary-general is taking shape — but it’s far from over.

The U.N. Security Council held its first secret straw poll this week, and while no consensus emerged, two women from Latin America came out ahead. Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the U.N. Trade and Development agency, led the field with 10 votes encouraging her candidacy and one discouraging it, followed closely by former Guyanese foreign minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who received nine and two.

The early results also reinforce a widely held expectation that it is Latin America’s turn to lead the U.N. under the global body’s informal regional rotation — and preferably a woman. But there’s a catch: It remains unclear whether any of the discouraging votes came from one of the Security Council’s five permanent members, whose opposition can effectively end a candidacy.

Elsewhere, the picture was less encouraging. Rafael Grossi, the only male Latin American candidate, failed to benefit from the regional momentum, while the two African candidates — former Senegalese President Macky Sall and veteran Ugandan diplomat Olara Otunnu — trailed the field.

With more straw polls scheduled for August, the contest remains wide open, Devex Senior Global Reporter Colum Lynch tells me. Even candidates who cleared the informal nine-vote threshold still face the biggest hurdle of all: avoiding a veto behind closed doors.

Here is how each of the candidates fared in the first round, according to three diplomatic sources briefed on the outcome:

Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan: 10 encourage, 1 discourage, and 4 no opinion
Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett: 9 encourage, 2 discourage, 4 no opinion
Argentina’s Rafael Grossi: 7 encourage, 2 discourage, 6 no opinion
Chile’s Michele Bachelet: 6 encourage, 5 discourage, 4 no opinion
Senegal’s Macky Sall: 6 encourage, 7 discourage, 2 no opinion
Ecuador’s María Fernanda Espinosa: 5 encourage, 2 discourage, 8 no opinion
Uganda’s Olara Otunnu: 2 encourage, 5 discourage, 8 no opinion

Related reads:

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The race begins

The race to lead the World Food Programme is officially underway. Luke J. Lindberg announced this week that he has submitted his application to become the agency’s next executive director, calling it “the first official step in the process.”

Lindberg described the role as “deeply personal,” saying his career has shown him “the generosity of humankind, the resilience of communities facing unimaginable hardship, and the extraordinary impact that happens when humanitarian assistance is delivered with purpose, urgency, and integrity.”

With the future leadership of the world’s largest humanitarian agency now in play, Lindberg said that, if selected, he would lead “with humility, accountability, and an unwavering commitment to those who need us most,” adding that it would be “the honor of a lifetime” to serve alongside WFP staff in the pursuit of “#zerohunger.”

Promises vs. progress

A year after governments signed the Sevilla Commitment at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, or FfD4, the verdict is in: plenty of promises, far less delivery.

A new assessment from Global Policy Forum Europe finds that of the 43 commitments it examined, only nine have been fully implemented. Another 17 have made some progress, while progress has stalled completely on nine and gone into reverse on four — including commitments on official development assistance, climate finance, aid for trade, and support for domestic resource mobilization. Two more need clarification, and the final two were deemed unable to be assessed.

The bright spots have largely come from the U.N. system, including the launch of negotiations for a U.N. tax convention, a new Borrowers’ Platform, a debt support service for small island states, recurring ECOSOC meetings on credit ratings, and work on a “beyond GDP” framework.

Elsewhere, the picture is far less encouraging, my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz tells me. The report finds no progress on IMF governance reform, rechanneling Special Drawing Rights, the African Financing Stability Mechanism, or a U.N.-led effort to overhaul the global debt architecture.

The authors argue that many of Sevilla’s commitments were so loosely drafted that they lacked clear owners, deadlines, or ways to measure success — making accountability difficult from the outset. As they put it: “Our monitoring shows very different levels of compliance among different groups of actors.” The U.N., they conclude, has “mostly done their homework.” The IMF and other international financial institutions? Not so much.

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Funding unlocked

After more than a year of uncertainty, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is finally set to receive U.S. funding — ending a standoff between the Trump administration and Congress over whether the money would ever be released.

The breakthrough follows months of pressure from lawmakers. “After continued advocacy from myself and my Democratic colleagues on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, these funds are finally being allowed to flow,” wrote U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. “We are grateful to the United States for its intention to obligate funding to Gavi," a spokesperson for the alliance tells Devex Senior Reporter Sara Jerving.

The dispute began after U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the U.S. would stop contributing until Gavi worked to “re-earn the public trust,” accusing the alliance of not “taking vaccine safety seriously” — a claim Gavi strongly rejected.

Congress, however, continued approving roughly $300 million a year for Gavi, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently signaled the administration was ready to “reengage” and resolve the impasse.

The decision brings welcome news for an organization that has helped vaccinate more than 1.2 billion children over the past 26 years and has long counted the U.S. among its biggest donors.

But lawmakers say the battle isn’t over. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz welcomed the move while urging the administration to release the billions of dollars in other global health funding that remain frozen.

Read: US finally moves to release $600 million to Gavi

Change lives locally

Big ideas about localization and scale dominate philanthropy. Kakenya Ntaiya thinks change starts somewhere much smaller: with one community at a time.

After surviving female genital mutilation as a girl in rural Kenya, negotiating to stay in school, and earning a scholarship to study in the United States, Ntaiya returned home to found Kakenya’s Dream, creating educational opportunities for thousands of girls while challenging deeply rooted cultural norms.

On the latest episode of the Theory of Change podcast, she talks candidly to Devex Senior Reporter Michael Igoe about navigating community politics, driving lasting cultural change, and why philanthropy’s obsession with scale can sometimes get in the way of simply helping people.

Listen: How Kakenya Ntaiya turned pain into progress

You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, YouTube, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app.

The aid ledger

What happens when you track the fallout from U.S. aid cuts, one story at a time? That’s exactly what The Aid Report has been doing.

Supported by a media grant from the Gates Foundation, the project has documented more than 1,000 verified impacts across countries and sectors over the past few months. In the latest episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, my colleagues Rumbi Chakamba, Kelli Rogers, and Rashad Nimr dig into the biggest patterns, the surprises, what policymakers and donors should take away, and the questions that still don't have answers.

Listen: Tracking the real-world impacts of US foreign aid cuts

The podcast is taking a short break next week, but we’ll be back with a new episode the following week. In the meantime, you can catch up on past episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, YouTube, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app.