This week, the U.S. pledged $2 billion in humanitarian aid to the United Nations as part of a deal that will also overhaul how the U.S. funds foreign aid work going forward.

The move comes after the U.S. paused, nearly all of its contributions earlier this year, leaving the U.N. and other aid organizations scrambling.

William Brangham breaks it down. William?

That's right, Nick. That $2 billion is just a fraction of the $8 to $10 billion the U.S.

has provided to support global humanitarian work in recent years. But it would still represent

the largest commitment of any single country in the world.

Yesterday, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez welcomed the news, saying it would,

quote, increase our ability to save lives, deliver to the most vulnerable, and reduce human suffering.

So to help us understand the significance of this new pledge, we are joined by Jeremy Kahnendeke.

He's president of refugees international and a former senior USAID official in both the Biden and

Obama administrations.

Jeremy, welcome back to the news hour.

So the U.S. pledges $2 billion and also says all of that money must now be funneled through

one UN organization, the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.

What do you make of that amount and of that new funding structure?

So I think there are two different stories to those two questions.

With the new funding structure, I think there are arguments, good arguments to say that

that could, if it's done right, be a pretty efficient way to deliver aid and arguably

more efficient than some of the traditional ways of funneling it through this whole landscape of individual

UN agencies. However, that really pales in comparison to what looks like a massive cut

in U.S. humanitarian assistance. If you go back two years now to 2024, the final year of the Biden administration, the U.S. provided $14 billion

of global humanitarian assistance. Now, needs in the world are just about the same as they

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