Cindy McCain (and yes, Lou is her real middle name) has worn many hats over her lifetime. Her latest is as the embattled leader of a critically important, but critically wounded U.N. aid agency.
Some of the wounds are political, and perhaps self-inflicted. McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, has landed in hot water for allegedly failing to attend a commemoration for the over 100 U.N. workers killed in Gaza amid Israel’s bombardment of the coastal strip … but making time to attend a forum where the people of Israel were honored with a prize named after her late husband, U.S. Sen. John McCain.
In the aftermath, McCain was reduced to tears during a meeting in which she was blasted by staff members about her response — or lack thereof — to the crisis in Gaza.
Other wounds are financial. As of December 2023, WFP has received some $7.3 billion, about 31% of its projected needs for 2023. The result has been severe cuts in food aid from Afghanistan to Yemen.
How much McCain is at fault for these wounds is the subject of fierce debate, as chronicled in Elissa Miolene and Colum Lynch’s profile of the U.N. agency leader for Devex.
Some defend the Joe Biden appointee for not pushing more forcefully for a cease-fire in Gaza.
“This critique that the individual heads of these agencies are not vocal enough — for me, it doesn’t land right,” says Peter Yeo, president of the Better World Campaign. “That’s the [U.N.] secretary-general’s job. The individual agencies’ heads should be focusing on children, or food, or migration.”
Others, though, have little sympathy for McCain. “People are threatening to quit, morale is at an all time low, we have way too much work to do and she’s a weak and essentially ineffective leader,” says one WFP staffer over Signal, speaking to Devex on the condition of anonymity. “She has to go, because she is going to destroy the organization.”
Read: Cindy McCain’s Middle East minefield
ICYMI: WFP staff clash with Cindy McCain over Gaza stance
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