Areas

Asia

Myanmar

The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck the war-torn country at the end of March was the first large-scale natural disaster to occur since the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID. More than 3,300 people were killed, nearly 5,000 injured, and tens of thousands of homes were damaged, with some neighbourhoods reduced to ashes.

The US has pledged just $9m in aid. For comparison, in 2023 when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, the US pledged $185m. But it is not merely a question of funding. In 2023, it deployed hundreds of relief workers. In Myanmar, there are few staff present on the ground, and it is not clear whether any of the money will get to where it needs to be. In fact, earlier this month, the government fired three aid workers who had been sent to Myanmar to assess how the US could contribute to relief efforts, just days after they arrived in the devastated city. Without assistance and funding, rescue workers have struggled to recover bodies from collapsed buildings and debris.

Afghanistan

Earlier in April, the US terminated funding for World Food Programme (WFP) emergency operations in more than a dozen countries, a decision widely condemned for endangering the lives of millions. Within days, the state department reversed the decision for several countries, but upheld the cuts in Afghanistan and Yemen. The government stated that the reductions were based on “credible and longstanding concerns that funding was benefiting terrorist groups including the Houthis and the Taliban”.

Approximately 23 million people in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, are in need of humanitarian assistance. The US has previously accounted for 43% of the total aid funding entering the country, so these cuts have been devastating. Last week, the aid agency Action Against Hunger – which lost significant funding through the cuts – said that the result would be children dying from malnutrition.

Similarly, the WFP estimates that the loss of funding in Afghanistan will end all of its emergency food distribution in the country for the foreseeable future. Approximately 2 million people, including about 400,000 malnourished children and mothers, rely on this assistance.

According to current and former USAID officials and partner organisations, the cuts are also affecting medical care, access to safe drinking water, support for maternal health services for millions of women, services addressing gender-based violence and mental health treatment for survivors of sexual and physical abuse.

Accessing the most basic medical care has now become infinitely more difficult as more than 200 World Health Organization-supported health facilities in Afghanistan have either closed or ceased functioning, in a country that already was facing a healthcare crisis due to critical underfunding. The WHO estimates that 10% of Afghans could lose healthcare by the end of the year.

Africa

Dikwa

DIKWA, Nigeria (AP) — Under the dappled light of a thatched shelter, Yagana Bulama cradles her surviving infant. The other twin is gone, a casualty of malnutrition and the international funding cuts that are snapping the lifeline for displaced communities in Nigeria’s insurgency-ravaged Borno state.

“Feeding is severely difficult,” said Bulama, 40, who was a farmer before Boko Haram militants swept through her village, forcing her to flee. She and about 400,000 other people at the humanitarian hub of Dikwa — virtually the entire population — rely on assistance. The military restricts their movements to a designated “safe zone,” which severely limits farming.

For years, the United States Agency for International Development had been the backbone of the humanitarian response in northeastern Nigeria, helping non-government organizations provide food, shelter and healthcare to millions of people. But this year, the Trump administration cut more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall assistance around the world.

Programs serving children were hit hard.

Bulama previously lost young triplets to hunger before reaching therapeutic feeding centers in Dikwa. When she gave birth to twins last August, both were severely underweight. Workers from Mercy Corps enrolled them in a program to receive a calorie-dense paste used to treat severe acute malnutrition.

But in February, Mercy Corps abruptly ended the program that was entirely financed by USAID. Two weeks later, one of the twins died, Bulama said.

She has no more tears, only dread for what may come next.

“I don’t want to bury another child,” she said.

Sudan

As the war in Sudan enters its third year, the country is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis: 30 million people are in need of aid, more than half of them children. Around half of Sudan’s population of 50 million are experiencing some degree of acute hunger, and famine has taken hold in at least five areas, including several parts of Darfur and Kordofan. It is estimated that half a million people died from hunger and disease across Sudan in 2024 alone.

Last year, USAID contributed 44% of Sudan’s $1.8bn humanitarian response, according to the UN. Within weeks of the cuts, 80% of community kitchens across Sudan closed, leaving millions at risk of dying from starvation or preventable illness. The cuts have also affected Sudanese refugees who have fled into Chad. Life-saving resources such as food and water, along with other US-funded programmes including mental health counselling and education, which were already operating on extremely limited budgets, have been further reduced.

The cuts are vastly consequential for the staff who work for local NGOs, too. In this piece for the Conversation, Naomi Ruth Pendle, an international development expert working with a team of Sudanese researchers in South Kordofan state, notes that each salary supported dozens of family members.

Europe

The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has captured headlines, but “very regrettable” reductions in European aid budgets are also contributing to a void in support for some of the poorest people in the world’s most fragile states, according to MEPs and NGOs.

Isabella Lövin, a deputy chair of the European parliament’s development committee, said USAID cuts would have “very dramatic consequences around the world”.