5 key reasons to read the article
- Discover why a single funding cut is leaving 152 million people beyond the humanitarian safety net.
- Understand how cuts in aid are quietly destabilizing local economies and driving migration in developing states.
- Learn how humanitarian agencies, designed to respond to short-term crises, are now being forced into survival mode.
- Find out how reduced aid will shift crisis burdens onto the next generation.
- Explore the frightening reality of aid shortages that create vacuums which armed groups fill.
In 2024, the U.S. financed roughly US$14.1 billion of the global humanitarian system, paying for nearly 40% of everything from cholera kits in Sudan to ARVs in South Africa. In 2025, this dropped to about US$3.4 billion. According to United Nations figures, the almost US$11-billion decrease was the single largest one-year contraction in humanitarian financing in the system’s history.
Emergency response vs. structural fragility
The effects were immediate. The World Food Programme (WFP) warned of pipeline breaks across multiple country operations and confirmed that, without urgent funding, millions of people could lose access to food assistance.
In Ethiopia, the WFP flagged that it would have to suspend treatment for some 650,000 malnourished women and children unless fresh funding arrived. In Sudan, it warned of drastic cuts to rations and total pipeline failures by early 2026. “Every ration cut means a child goes to bed hungry, a mother skips a meal or a family loses the support they need to survive,” WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain explained.
Behind these urgent warnings lies a more structural problem because aid agencies were designed to respond to short-term shocks, not to operate indefinitely at crisis levels. In 2025, humanitarians saw the sector’s budget halved, with the UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, highlighting that the cut “is forcing a different mode of operation”.
A growing funding gap
According to UN data, total humanitarian funding fell from about US$37 billion in 2024 to US$24.5 billion in 2025. At the same time, major donors have cut their overall aid budgets, and the OECD estimates that ODA will fall again in 2026. As humanitarian aid comes out of the same pot of money, the squeeze will make it more difficult for agencies to find any reliable funding at all.
The reality is visible in the UN’s own planning. For 2026, the organisation appealed for US$23 billion to help 87 million people, down from the initially announced US$33 billion. Yet, UN agencies estimate that around 239 million people worldwide will need life-saving assistance in 2026. That leaves 155 million people, roughly the population of Russia, beyond the formal safety net, not because their needs have disappeared, but because donors have decided they can no longer afford to meet them.
Beyond immediate relief: second-order effects
Most public debate has focused on the immediate life-and-death consequences such as smaller food rations, closed clinics, and staff layoffs. But aid officials and humanitarian agencies warn of a deeper second-order effect: the transfer of crisis costs from the international system to governments and communities that are already fiscally overstretched.
“This sudden termination of aid has created chaos, paralyzed response efforts, and put lives on the line,” commented Jamie Munn, Executive Director of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), a global network representing humanitarian NGOs. “Governments are often overwhelmed during these times, and our members and partners are forced to step in at scale when the worst happens.”
In practice, this means that local governments are being forced to shoulder the costs of schools and clinics that were previously funded by donors. Local clinics that once received free medicine must now pay for those drugs using their own limited budgets.
The political consequences are just as severe. Local leaders cannot ignore starving or displaced people without risking unrest. To cope, they divert funds away from long-term projects, such as roads, power grids or water supply, to pay for emergency food and shelter.
This creates what the World Bank describes as a “poverty trap” in that while this will save lives today, it will stunt future economic growth and make the community even more expensive to support in the long run.
Economic and social aftershocks
For low-income countries, losing aid creates a no-win financial situation. Governments face two options. If they maintain basic services, they must borrow, pushing their debt levels higher until the point when most tax revenue goes to interest payments rather than development. If they refuse to borrow, they must cut spending on vaccines, teachers and basic healthcare. This causes human capital to unravel, with entire generations growing up less healthy and less educated.
The funding cliff does not just stop aid availability; it leads to economic collapse. When aid agencies shut down, local staff, including drivers, translators and nurses, lose their jobs. Local vendors who sold food, fuel, or construction materials to NGOs lose their biggest customers. This economic contraction forces people to migrate, fueling a cycle of displacement and irregular migration that is far harder to manage than the original crisis.
The militarized response risk
Without money for food or services, governments may spend their last remaining funds on border guards and internal police to control desperate populations, thus essentially trading long-term stability for short-term control, a trend that has repeatedly occurred in crisis situations.
Security-first spending is politically visible and immediately tractable for donors, but it does not build schools, clinics, or cash systems that can stabilize communities and reduce the drivers of displacement.
The implications are alarming. When aid becomes scarce, it may turn into a weapon. Observers fear that if humanitarians cannot afford to feed a village, local militia may step in, offering aid in exchange for loyalty, recruits, or silence.
