The humanitarian defunding crisis of 2025.

 

On 20 January 2025, the incoming US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to freeze almost all US foreign relief and development funding. The unexpected move upended the aid sector, as organisations and programmes funded through USAID abruptly ceased operations, affecting millions of aid recipients around the world. Over the ensuing months, the administration cancelled over 80% of USAID-funded aid projects, as the 63-year-old institution was effectively dissolved and its staff dismissed, with the small remainder absorbed into the US State Department. By far the largest humanitarian donor, representing over a third of all humanitarian contributions in most years, the US historically served as the backbone of the international humanitarian aid system. The slashing of this mainstay funding, followed by cuts from other large humanitarian donors such as Germany, the UK, France and the Netherlands, has begun to unravel global response capacity, and will leave millions without life-saving assistance. It also disproportionately affects the support scaffolding of humanitarian assistance, as USAID was a major underwriter of things like logistics and transport, including the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), coordination services such as those provided by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and data assets and analysis, including needs assessments and security data.

Along with the support scaffolding, the sector risks losing hard-gained operational standards, technical expertise, and professional training capacities, all of which undermines operational security at a time when aid work has never been more dangerous.


Organisational impacts: Downsizing and programme closures



While reserves allowed some large international agencies to defer immediate cuts, the sector has taken a massive hit. The full impact will emerge in 2025–2026 as organisations exhaust contingency measures. UN humanitarian agencies and several large international NGOs have already announced major staffing reductions (tens of thousands of professionals laid off across the sector), country programme closures, and the removal of entire functional areas from programming portfolios.3 USAID was the majority donor to a great many aid NGOs – accounting for more than half of budgets for many US-based organisations. Others, even some not directly funded by the US, are nevertheless affected as former USAID partners turn to the same limited donor pool to make up the gap. Competition for reduced resources has become intense, according to senior staff interviewed for this report, with one observing that, “No organisation is truly stable” in the current environment. National and local organisations and community-led networks have absorbed the greatest impact of the sector-wide cuts. With resources concentrated at the top of the international humanitarian system, funding shortfalls naturally cut first and deepest at the community level. An informal survey of 284 national NGOs, distributed by the Global Database of Humanitarian Organisations (GDHO) in February 2025, found that 79% reported programme closures due to USAID defunding in 41 different countries.4 This global departure from vulnerable communities overnight has put local actors in a position where they will continue to face increasing risks and threats.


Impacts on security risk management

Security risk management for humanitarian operations has evolved over the past two decades into a specialised technical function, critical to enabling humanitarian access in the most severe and insecure crises. It is also costly – reliant on skilled personnel (hence training) and equipment for secure communications, facilities, and transport. Loss of funding, competition for remaining limited resources, and a significant brain drain of humanitarian security professionals now threaten to erode much of the progress made in this area, risking a return to a time when security was treated as an afterthought or a discretionary add-on. Organisations rely on flexible funding to maintain these cross-cutting functions, which are often paid for by overheads as well as direct budget lines for security. USAID had developed an advanced approach to partner security support and was notable for generous indirect cost recovery rates (overheads) that allowed for the development of strong security risk management capacities by its funded partners. As one international NGO interviewee explained it: “USAID was 40% of our budget, but losing it impacted 75% of our organisation because of the flexibility of their funding.” The loss of liquidity meant big cuts had to be made rapidly to the cross-cutting activities. Every organisation interviewed reported cutting security positions, and at least one lost the entire regional layer of its global security risk management team through the closure of the regional offices that formerly provided technical support, analysis, and security surge capacity to the country offices. Humanitarian organisations have reduced their operational presence in multiple contexts, undermining both humanitarian access and community security. International organisations are concentrating on preserving their security resources in the most severe insecurity contexts where they continue to work, such as Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and Myanmar, and cutting them elsewhere. The Latin America region has been particularly hard hit for many international aid organisations because of the historically prominent US funding role for aid projects there. Interviewees cited having to cut security positions throughout the region, often leaving several country offices with only remote security risk management support. Many national and local NGOs already lacked full-time dedicated security staff positions due to the inflexibility of funding and low overheads they typically receive from international funding partners, and the steep funding cuts to the sector have put this capacity even further out of reach. As one national NGO staff member noted: “Previously, joint field visits were conducted with other organisations … This no longer happens because either the organisations are no longer present in the territory or because it has become too expensive.”


Loss of logistical support and training



Cuts to shared services have further undermined safe movement, most notably the reduction in UNHAS flights, forcing greater reliance on road travel and the heightened security risks that come with it. Reduced international flight routes provide even broader obstacles to humanitarian operational presence. In Yemen, for example, direct flights between Aden and Amman dropped from 14 per month in December last year to 6, while the Aden–Addis Ababa route was reduced from 28 flights to none as of July 2025, severing a major link for East African staff. Protection programming for vulnerable groups in crisis contexts – already chronically underfunded – has been among the first casualties of recent cuts. In Sudan, the network of emergency response rooms, which had protection teams in each state and a dedicated women’s protection team for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, saw its funding from USAID and other donors disappear. Many interviewees cited protection, along with in-person specialised training and stress counsellors, as “first on the chopping block”. As one said, “I’m worried about the psychological effects, staff wellness in the future, and that there could be less staff resilience to stress that can lead to mistakes.” Stress, burnout, and trauma – common in humanitarian response work – is well known to have an effect on staff security as well as their general wellbeing.5 Training is vital to security risk management, and while many organisations have significantly increased the use of remote video modules, in-person training by a qualified instructor remains preferable. In organisations where most staff have already received security training, the impact is currently less noticeable, but will increase as time goes on and as training becomes less available to staff. Participation in essential courses, such as the UN Safe and Secure Approaches in Field Environments (UN SSAFE), has dropped sharply and the trained cadre is shrinking as staff leave and are not replaced.

Loss of analytical capacity

While some larger organisations have in-house capacity to monitor local security incident trends for risk analysis, many others rely on external support services for this capacity, such as the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO), Geneva Call, and the USAID Partner Liaison Security Offices (PLSOs). Since the USAID defunding, the PLSO network has lost roughly 80% of its capacity, with most officers reduced to closeout duties and only 4 countries continuing to provide full security services and reporting, with no assurance this will continue. INSO has also had to close some field offices and reduce services, most notably training, which is being keenly felt by NGOs in many contexts.6 Geneva Call has been forced to scale back operations, reducing activities and field presence in several contexts where it had been engaging armed groups on humanitarian norms. A UN staffer in Colombia noted that: “Fewer security staff means a reduced ability to carry out detailed analysis of [sub-national] regions.” The staff member emphasised that their kind of in-depth local knowledge – built through sustained contact with communities, armed forces, and other actors – is vital. The greatest impact of the funding cuts, they said, may lie in this erosion of granular, area-specific understanding, which is crucial for both effective security and meaningful access and acceptance.


Access effects


In many contexts, according to interviewees, international humanitarian actors are no longer pursuing access strategies that actively seek to expand reach to areas that have the most acute needs. Instead, they have shifted toward prioritising areas of less operational difficulty and where agencies are already established. This is likely to become the norm for international organisations, as security risk management capacities and personnel are shed in cost reduction measures. Local organisations, long the primary responders in the hardest-to-access areas, will increasingly operate alone, shouldering the greatest exposure to security risks – a pattern already reflected in the security incident data for 2024.