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When disasters strike, whether from natural causes like earthquakes, hurricanes, and typhoons, or man-made causes such as conflict or famine, the United States has swiftly responded by mobilizing funding, coordinating emergency responses, and deploying teams to directly alleviate suffering in countries around the world. The United States has reliably mobilized when allies and partners are in need of aid during their most vulnerable moments, such as its leadership during the 2014–2016 Ebola crisis, which led to fewer than a dozen cases being treated on U.S. soil, and its emergency responses to devastating storms like the 2004 tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, and Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 in the Philippines, a key U.S. security partner. This has caused nations the world over to look to the United States for leadership during crises, understanding that the American people—among the world’s most generous—care about the lives of their neighbors near and far.
This legacy has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress for decades, but has recently become a flashpoint in the second Trump administration’s plan to “usher [in] a Golden Age for America by reforming and improving the government bureaucracy to work for the American people.” One of the president’s day one executive orders imposed a “90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.” In the 80 days since, the order has already had serious consequences for humanitarian assistance.
The executive order granted the secretary of state the authority to waive the pause for specific programs. Nevertheless, confusion reigns as to whether humanitarian assistance can continue, and if so, what kind, how much, and to what extent, as well as whether humanitarian agencies will get paid for their work. Subsequent efforts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as an independent entity have added considerable turmoil into the mix, and a series of lawsuits have raised questions about whether government actions can continue. Most recently, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. government did not need to immediately pay $1.5 billion for work already performed in accordance with U.S. government contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83 percent of USAID agreements would be terminated, including many that had previously been granted a full or partial waiver. In late March, a leaked list reportedly shared with Congress indicated that the administration had terminated 5,341 programs, accounting for an even higher 86 percent of total USAID programs.
Now, the Trump administration has revealed plans to “realign certain USAID functions” to the State Department by July 1, 2025. These functions include global health support and humanitarian assistance, albeit with a much-reduced footprint and an as yet undefined structure. This presents an opportunity for the administration to build upon what worked in the provision of humanitarian assistance and step away from what did not serve U.S. interests. In order to do so, the administration must take stock of the consequences of what it has dismantled and where confusion exists about its directives.
Background
According to the State Department, the primary goal of humanitarian assistance is to save lives and alleviate suffering by ensuring that vulnerable and crisis-affected individuals receive assistance and protection. It often entails providing for basic human needs, including shelter, protection from violence, adequate food, clean drinking water, sanitation services, medicine and medical care, education, and other needs during crises. Uninhibited humanitarian access is essential for delivering this aid. In his confirmation hearing, Secretary Rubio affirmed he would use “all the authorities” of his office to ensure that humanitarian organizations—including those funded by the U.S. government—have safe, unfettered access to conflict-affected populations.
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Initial State Department guidance on implementing the aid pause exempted “emergency food assistance.” However, it seemed as though the freeze would cover broader humanitarian aid. It was also unclear whether “emergency food assistance” would include the cash-based Emergency Food Security Program or only the in-kind Food for Peace, which procures U.S. farm commodities and is politically popular on both sides of the aisle.
Ten days into the near-total foreign aid “stop-work” order, Secretary Rubio issued a waiver for “life-saving humanitarian assistance.” This directive includes permission to provide, “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs necessary to deliver such assistance.” In practice, the implementation of the lifesaving waiver has been much less straightforward. Implementing partners submitted requests for waivers but variably received no response; received responses from a variety of different individuals in the administration awarding them a partial waiver (sometimes framed as a “partial suspension”); saw the waivers they received reversed; or saw their programs previously under a waiver terminated, and then restated, sometimes multiple times. Some programs that had been granted lifesaving waivers were mistakenly terminated, then later reinstated, such as the World Food Programme’s work in 14 impoverished countries. An outgoing administration official involved in the waiver process testified to Congress that officials in charge were offering changing and increasingly narrow definitions of “lifesaving.” Even some programs with “lifesaving” in their award title that provided aid into countries such as Afghanistan were still ultimately terminated.
Much of the media coverage of the administration’s effort to suspend aid programs has focused on the attempt to roll USAID into the State Department, pare its staff down from thousands to a few hundred, remove the agency from the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C., and ensure it follows orders originating from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by President Trump’s senior advisor, Elon Musk. Now that the Trump administration has notified Congress of these plans, the merger seems imminent.
Reports have also indicated the extensive knock-on effects on USAID’s partners, grantees, and contract recipients, including local organizations in countries receiving U.S. assistance. Tens of thousands of jobs at home and abroad are at risk, as are entire organizations and programs that support health, education, democracy, agricultural development, environmental protection, and entrepreneurship, among others.
Humanitarian Implications
The aid pause and terminations are likely to have substantial short- and long-term effects on humanitarian assistance. The expanded waiver for “life-saving” activities is welcome, but thus far, program suspension remains the default standard operating procedure. Alarmingly, for a month, DOGE staff essentially shut down USAID’s payment system, meaning that even if humanitarian agencies received approval to work under the waiver, they could not obtain reimbursement for the costs of doing so. More than two months later, humanitarian organizations are still struggling to obtain payment for the work they have performed for a number of reasons. First, USAID leadership has prioritized payments for work performed prior to February 13 and deprioritized payments for terminated awards and awards that are continuing. In practice, this has meant that a number of organizations are not receiving payments. Second, DOGE has implemented a layered process for reviewing disbursements that are paid via the Department of the Treasury or the Department of Health and Human Services, the two U.S. federal government entities that traditionally disburse USAID payments, as USAID is not a disbursement agency. The extra layer of review without feedback going back to USAID officers familiar with programs or to implementing partners themselves has led to a rash of errors, further complicating payments to the partners that were authorized to receive them in principle.
In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) were among those engaging in emergency response activities. Photo: Elizabeth A. Edwards/U.S. Navy via Getty Images.
This catch-22 situation has disrupted food and healthcare for vulnerable people in war-torn Sudan; schooling for Malian refugees in Mauritania; HIV/AIDS prevention worldwide; and response efforts to Marburg disease in Tanzania, Mpox in Central and Eastern Africa, and Ebola in Uganda. Commodities aimed at helping communities in dire need have piled up unused in places facing severe malnutrition and threat of famine, and items already procured remain stuck on ships, unable to be put to use upon reaching their intended destinations. Over the weekend of April 5, nearly all humanitarian programs in Syria were terminated, leaving only one remaining USAID-funded program left standing; the same weekend, all humanitarian programs in Yemen and Afghanistan were terminated. With 80 percent of Yemen’s population, nearly 70 percent of Syria’s population, and half of Afghanistan’s population in need of aid, these three crises alone represent nearly 64 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. The resulting suffering, illness, and death is entirely preventable. The likely long-term human capital losses pose a huge threat to economic growth and prosperity in developing and wealthy countries alike. U.S. citizens will feel this disruption in the coming months if disease outbreaks are unable to be stopped and permeate U.S. borders. Early estimates suggest that the global health impacts will be substantial, with more than 100,000 additional deaths from malaria expected, as well as sizeable increases in paralytic polio, tuberculosis, and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Likewise, 11.2 million newborns are likely to miss out on critical postnatal care within two days of their birth, and 1 million children will not receive treatment for severe acute malnutrition.
Vulnerable communities will also have to face a world, for the first time in decades, that is far less capable of responding to human crises, such as the violence, instability, and conflict that cause mass displacement, including the outflow of refugees into neighboring countries. U.S. humanitarian leadership and financing contribute to the implementing agencies that act as migration management tools and help people fleeing harm find assistance closer to home. Taking a preventative approach by addressing the root causes of suffering is also the more humane approach, as no person wants to flee their home due to violence or disaster. As the number of displaced persons balloons globally, having more than doubled over the last 10 years, the survival strategies people use will only become more costly and unpredictable absent U.S. support. This vacuum also puts these populations at even greater risk of sexual exploitation and abuse, trafficking, child marriage, and other exploitative situations. Although the waiver has allowed some humanitarian programming to resume, organizations find that even when they can carry on operations in one country, they cannot necessarily do the same thing elsewhere. In Ethiopia, the waiver allows for the provision of food aid to millions of people affected by multiple years of drought and the aftermath of civil war. But agencies have no guidance on whether they can rehire the program staff and truck drivers fired due to the aid pause. This leaves the available food rotting in warehouses in Djibouti, a scenario unfortunately duplicated in many other emergencies.
It is likely that disruptions will continue to evolve, as four main lawsuits—J. Does 1-26 v. Elon Musk, Global Health Council v. Donald J. Trump, AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. Department Of State, and American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, et al. v. United States Office of Personnel Management—filed in response to the workforce cuts and aid freeze have now entered the U.S. courts of appeals. The administration has filed various “motions to stay” and thus will not be required to reinstate employees or disperse payments during the appeals process. Any repayments or employee reinstatements resulting from the litigation will likely occur months or years in the future.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian ecosystem is extremely fragile, with organizations often living paycheck to paycheck. Many organizations do not have the means to contest administration decisions and will simply need to cease operations entirely and potentially close their doors. Resources were vastly unevenly allocated between international implementing partners of USAID and local humanitarian organizations even before the review began, meaning that the partners closest to crises and communities on the ground may have a harder time advocating for their operations or filling the gaps left by U.S. disinvestment. The Network for Empowered Aid Response (NEAR) reported that more than 13.5 million people, including women, children, and marginalized communities, have lost access to services previously provided by 120 of its members.
Humanitarian Brain Drain
USAID has long invested in the knowledge systems needed to ensure effective humanitarian efforts. For example, to ensure that emergency food assistance (both cash and in-kind) addresses situations of acute food insecurity, the agency has invested in major data collection and analysis systems that provide accurate and timely information to support aid allocation decisions. These include the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative, both of which have greatly enhanced understanding of the global acute food insecurity situation and outlook. Researchers for FEWS NET provide forecasting information eight months prior to food security crises emerging and allow humanitarian workers and policymakers the opportunity to plan and prioritize where aid should go in line with the forecasts.
Despite its important humanitarian role, FEWS NET received a stop-work order in connection with the aid suspension. As of this writing, its website is non-functioning. The absence of these data tools will have serious negative effects on the capacity to make intelligent humanitarian assistance decisions, particularly with regard to food aid, even where the waiver is available.
USAID’s own website is likewise inaccessible as of this writing, except for a notice that all direct-hire USAID personnel, with exceptions for mission-critical functions, have been placed on administrative leave globally, and the agency’s online knowledge management tools no longer provide real-time information. The Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC) long provided online access to downloadable technical and program documentation dating back to USAID’s establishment in 1961, including many program and project evaluations. But its website is no longer functioning, abruptly leaving those documents inaccessible. The foreignassistance.gov site, which offers a wealth of budgetary and financial data on aid programs administered by USAID and other U.S. government agencies, remains up and running, and at the time of writing, was last updated March 7, 2025. And the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program, which includes nationally representative surveys of households, malaria indicators, and data on health facilities in over 90 low- and middle-income countries, saw their USAID-funded programs terminated.
A recent report on the state of open humanitarian data by the Humanitarian Data Exchange anticipates that some important humanitarian data is at risk of becoming inaccessible or out of date due to recent funding cuts. Timely humanitarian data is critical to inform real-time decisions about aid allocations, including where needs are most acute and what types of populations are in need. It also provides important insights into how other trends such as conflict or weather dynamics are impacting communities in need. These data inform aid implementers’ security considerations, ensuring that aid workers and recipients of aid have information that they need to safely continue their work. Other information channels that are crucial to ensure aid worker safety, such as the USAID-funded notification system in conflict zones, were affected by the aid freeze. This imperils aid workers, as it shuts down the channel they usually use to notify the U.S. military of their location so that they are not accidentally at risk in the course of a military operation.
USAID and the Department of State have also historically funded important efforts relevant to monitoring, collecting, and reporting data related to global conflicts. One such effort whose data sources could be impacted by the widespread aid cuts is Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), which previously received funding from the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the Department of State and from several bureaus at USAID. According to Clionadh Raleigh, founder of ACLED, its researchers spend the majority of their time sourcing data from a variety of reliable local sources on crisis and conflict zones. Yet many of these local sources have scaled down operations or ceased them entirely due to funding freezes. U.S.-supported foreign-language media outlets have also been impacted, as well as humanitarian implementers who produce open-source data and researchers who create humanitarian datasets. Many of these are now not only unable to produce reliable open-source data but may be unemployed. Since these sources were designed to monitor conflict and produce data in areas that are hard to reach and where other sources are not available, the potentially permanent erasure of this data makes it even harder for those seeking to aid affected populations.
The administration’s recent actions also affect weather and navigation data sources that may have impacts on humanitarian forecasting and national security more broadly. These foreshadow potential erosions in the quality of weather and atmospheric data critical to the functioning of the U.S. shipping, farming, and disaster response industries, as well as to U.S. allies and partners around the globe. The administration reportedly fired and then reinstated hundreds of employees from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. agency that provides critical data on weather patterns around the globe. This follows earlier cuts and retirements that, together, are set to decrease the total federal workforce by 25 percent. The implications of this for humanitarian aid are also significant. Through NOAA, the United States provided critical weather forecasting data and early warning on hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, floods, and other severe weather events to partner countries around the globe. In addition, it helps ships navigate by providing data on marine conditions, provides information to warn of space weather that could damage the U.S. electrical grid, provides information that helps farmers optimize their crops, and helps with disaster response, including responding to oil spills. There are substantial national security dependencies on NOAA as well, from its unmatched contributions to defense and operational readiness to its capture of data in harsh environments, including the Arctic and underwater.
All these functions help position the United States as a technological leader that other nations can rely on, a legacy which may now be at risk. The erosion of NOAA’s workforce may compromise the quality and breadth of the data it is able to provide.
This embargo on knowledge about foreign aid, including humanitarian assistance, makes a robust rational policy debate impossible. Even where there is consensus, or the potential to develop broad agreements, the sudden absence of documents and data precludes transparent, democratic governance of aid programs. While policymakers and humanitarian organizations are often operating with imperfect information about crises, eliminating key data sources or degrading the ones that exist could create blind spots for the United States and other countries about issues that could have impacts well beyond their borders, such as another global pandemic, a famine, or a conflict that could spur a refugee crisis. It could also fuel misinformation claims by parties to conflicts around the world who may claim that a conflict does not exist or cast doubt on its impacts. The people who are most harmed are those who are most vulnerable to the impacts of conflict and humanitarian crisis.
Who Will Mind the Gap?
The humanitarian finance implications of freezing U.S. aid are devastating. The United States is by far the largest humanitarian donor globally. Last year, 42 cents of every dollar of humanitarian aid reported to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) came from the U.S. government. The $14 billion that the United States provided exceeded the $10 billion in total humanitarian assistance from the next five largest donors combined—Germany, the European Commission, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia.
It is highly doubtful that other traditional donors will step in to fill the gap created by the U.S. aid pause and the prospect of reduced resources going forward. Even before the Trump administration took office, the European Commission and the biggest donors among EU member states—Germany, France, and the Netherlands—announced aid cuts in light of faltering economies, and big chunks of the remaining resources are covering the costs of hosting migrants, many of whom fled due to the impacts of humanitarian crises. While a number of other EU members, including Greece, Spain, and Portugal, have boosted their aid, they remain small players, especially when it comes to humanitarian assistance. Outside the European Union, the United Kingdom is a significant humanitarian donor, but it also faces an anemic economy and has reduced aid. Turkey and the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, have stepped up their humanitarian giving in the past decade, but their contributions remain miniscule compared with the gap left by the United States.
Theoretically, China or Russia might see opportunity in the chance to become a major source of emergency relief. But over the past five years, both countries have reported minimal levels of humanitarian assistance to UNOCHA. China currently faces its own economic difficulties, and for the time being, Russia remains bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine and fledgling peace talks. Nevertheless, the recent response to the 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar featured visible contributions from both China and Russia. The United States fired the rest of its USAID workforce the same day the Myanmar earthquake response was to commence. Globally, other sources of humanitarian finance exist, including private charity and philanthropy, remittances, and funds collected from solidarity-based networks. Yet none of these sources of finance are likely to fill the gap left by the U.S. government.
Populations in partner countries have long memories, passing down stories about the United States and the way it shaped their destinies and molded their nations through generations, in part due to the provision of foreign aid. The United States famously rebuilt Germany and other nations after World War II, countries that are now close U.S. allies. When a country is in its greatest hour of need, it has meant something that the U.S. president or another senior U.S. official was often a leader’s first phone call. The United States has used its soft-power tool of foreign aid, and humanitarian assistance, to be a trustworthy, reliable partner to nations across administrations. Today, polls in Germany indicate that only 19 percent of the population considers the United States an ally. In a separate poll in Germany, one in two respondents said their opinion of Trump has worsened since he assumed office. What happens to the United States’ long-term relationships when trust is broken?
Back to the Humanitarian Future?
Beyond the chaotic situation created by the aid pause, clunky humanitarian waiver process, terminations, and effort to shutter USAID, the Trump administration’s approach risks setting aid back to the 1980s and limiting the foreign policy tool kit the president has to respond to global crises as they emerge. This is because it rigidly siloes humanitarian and development assistance.
This is in contrast with four decades of good practice that focused on how best to link the two. Examples include efforts to boost investment in disaster risk reduction to help mitigate the effects of natural hazards before they become disasters and to integrate programming across the humanitarian-development-peacebuilding “triple nexus.” Humanitarian appeals for early recovery programming receive little funding from donors, so such an integrated approach to crisis response remains woefully under-resourced.
Along these lines, USAID and other donors have supported community-based resilience building in drought-prone areas in Kenya. This aims to help pastoralists and agro-pastoralists better cope with the effects of natural hazards. Such activities also include immediate relief but seek to reduce the need for emergency aid over the long term.
Effective triple-nexus programming remains a work in progress, but there are encouraging recent examples. In West Africa, Chad hosts over a million refugees from Sudan and continues to provide an open door to uprooted people. The government has worked with donors, including the World Bank and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), to address not only immediate needs among the refugees and their Chadian host communities, but also to obtain investment in longer-term development and secure livelihoods for both. It bears emphasizing that the United States is the biggest funder of both the World Bank and UNHCR.
Another innovative practice emerging in recent years has been the expansion in the use of anticipatory action. This smart innovation allows practitioners to better target aid to places in which data strongly suggest a natural hazard will strike by allowing funding to be allocated in advance. In a disaster, minutes matter, and this forward-looking approach allows humanitarian practitioners and community members to be prepared to hit the ground running in a disaster response, rather than waiting for funders to get their act together in the first few days following a rapid onset crisis.
Does Where Aid Sits Matter?
Much of the discussion around the Trump administration’s aid freeze and personnel layoffs has focused on whether USAID will remain an independent agency or get folded into the State Department. President Trump himself has posted “CLOSE IT DOWN’’ on social media, and the Department of State has recently notified Congress of its intent to merge parts of USAID into the State Department.
Administration critics rightly note that Congress established USAID as an independent federal entity, so an act of Congress is needed to change that. But the issue of where to house aid programs organizationally is, ultimately, a huge tangent.
Secretary Rubio recently said in a press conference that USAID “is unresponsive” to U.S. foreign policy, and presidential advisor Musk wrote more bluntly on X that it is “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists.” While some humanitarian workers highlighted the tension between upholding humanitarian principles and using humanitarian aid to promote U.S. foreign policy goals, anyone who has ever attended a meeting at USAID’s headquarters or visited its operations in the field is likely to come away with a different impression of the degree of alignment with U.S. diplomacy. The legal framework conferring independent agency status on USAID subjects it to the policy guidance of the State Department. In actual practice across multiple administrations, including during President Trump’s previous term, the collaboration between the two agencies is broad and deep. The State Department and USAID have long engaged in extensive joint planning of assistance strategies, as together they administer the vast majority of U.S. aid resources. Moreover, the State Department has the lead role coordinating foreign aid across its own programs (which include the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR), USAID, and 22 other U.S. government entities.
Looking at other major humanitarian donor governments, there are a variety of aid governance mechanisms. The United Kingdom has moved away from an independent agency and runs aid through the integrated Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (its ministry of foreign affairs). In contrast, Germany has a free-standing Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.
Ultimately, where humanitarian assistance sits on the government’s organigram is far less important than the quality of programs. The key questions are whether those programs adhere to humanitarian principles, comply with internationally agreed-upon standards of aid effectiveness and accountability to affected people, and, in keeping with the Grand Bargain, embody a serious commitment to increasing the capacity and resourcing of local and national humanitarian actors in crisis-affected countries. Of course, to do so, the U.S. government must adequately train and staff those who are managing U.S.-funded programs. They must also ensure that their support for implementing partner organizations is consistent enough that those organizations can responsibly plan for their business operations and keep the lights on. In short, people matter. Without the specialized expertise and nimble response capacity of USAID’s humanitarian staff, foreign policy generalists within the Department of State may have difficulty overseeing humanitarian assistance and ensuring that it aligns with international best practice. Perhaps most importantly, it could be challenging for non-specialists to adhere to one of the most important humanitarian principles: “first, do no harm.”
Building on Past Reforms
The United States can build on past reforms to address long-term critiques of U.S. humanitarian assistance.
For example, what reforms are needed to take USAID’s longtime focus on localization to a new level? The agency has sought to support greater local leadership of humanitarian and development programming across multiple administrations from both parties. During the first Trump administration, USAID Administrator Mark Green sought to have aid support “the journey to self-reliance.” This reform effort addressed pain points to streamline USAID’s bureaucratic processes, enhanced USAID’s ability to partner with the private sector and faith-based organizations, and approached aid from the perspective that the organization sought to truly “work itself out of a job.” Under President Biden, Administrator Samantha Power set a goal of providing 25 percent of resources to local actors by 2025. Though USAID fell far short of this target, prior administrations from both parties agreed that to successfully partner with countries to achieve humanitarian and development objectives requires greater support for the entities and systems that already exist in partner countries and that will remain long after USAID and other global development partners have exited.
Not only is localization an efficient and effective way to provide aid, but it is in the United States’ interest to do so, as it puts the people of aid-receiving counties in the driver’s seat to address crises and chart their own future. It can ultimately reduce dependency on foreign donors, including the United States, and allow crises to be handled locally before they have far-reaching, transnational implications.
The big-picture question is whether consensus remains that U.S. international relations dependes on the “three Ds”: diplomacy, defense, and development. There once was wide bipartisan agreement that aid is a crucial “soft-power” instrument. Is that still the case? Does the United States still view saving lives as vital to its long-term security as a nation?
Workers unload medical supplies to fight the Ebola epidemic from a USAID cargo flight on August 24, 2014, in Harbel, Liberia. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The Trump administration has recognized the value of maintaining a humanitarian assistance capability within the U.S. government. By notifying Congress that it intends to preserve humanitarian functions and situate them within the State Department, and by issuing a waiver intended to continue lifesaving aid, this administration has indicated that the parts of foreign aid—and U.S. soft power broadly—that it values include providing emergency relief to populations in need outside of the United States. Yet it has let go of most staff who have the expertise to carry out humanitarian missions and crippled the nongovernmental infrastructure that implements U.S.-funded humanitarian programs.
To take advantage of this moment, minimize and mitigate damage and unintended impacts, and shift course to a more effective approach to humanitarian aid, the Trump administration should pursue the following actions:
- Recommit to “first, do no harm.” The administration should define its humanitarian objectives and immediately recommit to the principle of “first, do no harm” to ensure that its aid, or review of aid, does not result in loss of life or harm recipients of aid.
- Provide clarity on lifesaving waivers and increase their consistency and flexibility. Provide public clarification about what qualifies under humanitarian waivers and ensure that partner organizations have access to contracting officers and other U.S. government officials who can promptly answer their questions. Make the waivers more flexible, and abide by waiver decisions to allow procurement and staffing to continue.
- Pay partners for work performed. Promptly reimburse partner organizations that have incurred costs under U.S. partnership agreements prior to the aid freeze, and reimburse organizations operating under the waiver or that were approved to be “unfrozen.” Take stock of public-private partnerships and multi-donor funds and projects to ensure that people receiving aid are not left in a lurch if U.S. contributions are suddenly pulled.
- Restore data to inform decisionmaking and future humanitarian efforts. Direct efforts to restore transparency and access to data about U.S. assistance, and restore funding for relevant data collection. Encourage the collection of specific data on vulnerable populations to ensure that localized needs are met and resources are distributed effectively. Partner with outside institutions to understand trends in data and create structures within the U.S. government to assess impact and ensure accountability over aid programs. Use this data to inform humanitarian policymaking and allow for a robust public conversation on the value of aid.
- Require meta-analyses of already completed evaluations, third-party independent evaluations, and ex-post evaluations and make them public. The U.S. government should not be grading its own homework when assessing the effectiveness of its programs. The United States should require that third-party, independent evaluations are conducted of aid programs and published in non-technical language and require ex-post evaluations for aid to understand the impact on communities after the completion of a project. It should also take stock of evaluations that have already been completed, including by the Multilateral Organization Performance Outputs Network, and create meta-analyses to better understand evidence. USAID had a rigorous evaluation requirement, but the State Department’s track record is less strong, so the administration should ensure that aid programs are clearly defining their intended impacts.
- Restore emergency response expeditionary capacity. Promptly reconstitute and adequately staff U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Teams and allow them to maintain readiness to deploy in case of an international disaster or emergency. Restore contracts with partners, including urban search and rescue teams.
- Map partner capacity to understand new vulnerabilities. Conduct a mapping analysis of humanitarian partner organizations’ capacities and gaps in capability, access, or reach to understand new vulnerabilities within humanitarian sectors such as water and sanitation, food, health, shelter, protection, and others. By identifying the areas in which organizations previously provided an essential service in humanitarian response, and can no longer do so, the United States can better tailor its assistance and set expectations for partners.
- Consider smart reforms. Use data-backed approaches to increase the use of more effective forms of humanitarian assistance, such as cash-based approaches to food assistance that stimulate local markets, better integration of humanitarian and development programming, deployment of anticipatory action, and provision of direct aid to local partners to reduce aid dependency.
- Embrace the responsible exit. Humanitarian aid is a lifeline for populations in need, and a population will long remember the nation that reneges on a promise. The United States should learn from research on responsible exits from humanitarian settings to ensure that future aid stoppages use a phased transition plan that minimizes harm to aid recipients.
- Convene humanitarian donors and encourage a new approach to burden sharing. The United States rightly wants other countries to step up to take on more leadership in funding humanitarian responses. In order to urge action, the United States should convene implementing partners, donors, philanthropies, private sector partners, volunteer networks, and others to clearly articulate what it will fund and where it will step back. The United States should call upon other countries to define where they will step up and step in and develop a new approach to burden sharing that catalyzes increased commitments from partner nations.
- Urge the United Nations to lead true humanitarian reform. Past humanitarian reform efforts from the Transformative Agenda to the Grand Bargain have avoided changing humanitarian response architecture globally. This architecture has weakened substantially and is not fit for purpose. A “next-generation” architecture is needed that prioritizes frontline needs and organizations and does not entrench existing power dynamics within the aid system. This should include efforts to establish predictable humanitarian financing. A new initiative by UN Humanitarian Coordinator Tom Fletcher called the “humanitarian reset” has promise to streamline aid delivery and build in greater accountability to local partners, but only if it takes aim at the United Nations in addition to others in the humanitarian system.
- Set guardrails for responses to protracted conflicts by working to resolve conflicts. Humanitarian crises do not have humanitarian solutions. Protracted conflicts have grown exponentially, as countries fail to resolve their conflicts and displaced people remain displaced for decades. The United States should work with the UN Security Council and use bilateral channels and regional pressure to push for the swift resolution of conflicts so that they do not continue for decades.
- Do not underestimate human mobility. The desire to migrate for a better life or to flee adverse circumstances is as old as humanity, and a variety of factors are pushing people out of their homes at an increasingly rapid pace. This is only set to increase. The Trump administration should ensure that it is providing aid strategically in locations where pressures increase the likelihood of widespread migration outflows. This requires maintaining expertise in refugees, migration, demography, and human mobility to ensure that U.S. responses are evidence-based.
- Communicate results to Congress and the American people. The Trump administration should focus its aid efforts in key strategic areas and clearly communicate results to Congress, the American people, and recipients of aid in language that is accessible to them. Too often, aid programs are spread so thinly in such tremendous quantities that the forest gets lost for the trees.
- Work with Congress to create a Humanitarian Service Reserve Corps. As the administration seeks to reduce the federal workforce, including humanitarian experts, health workers, and peace and conflict experts, it should create a Humanitarian Service Reserve Corps that allows humanitarian workers who work full-time in other fields to deploy voluntarily in service of the United States to perform professional humanitarian missions. Not only would this address some of the humanitarian brain drain, but it would also provide paid opportunities for the many generous American volunteers who would like to be professionally trained to provide a service that is committed to the principle of “first, do no harm.” This would improve upon USAID’s surge roster approach to provide additional capacity.
Congress should pursue the following actions:
- Communicate legislative intent clearly about appropriated funds for foreign aid, including humanitarian assistance, to ensure the administration understands the structures and purposes of aid that they should be implementing.
- Enforce the requirement for the administration to meaningfully consult with Congress on the foreign aid reforms proposed before they approve congressional notifications for structural changes. Recent appropriations legislation mandates prior consultation with appropriate congressional committees before structural changes to USAID can be made.
- Request review by the Congressional Research Service of the impacts of the foreign aid freeze on humanitarian programs, U.S. expeditionary disaster response capabilities, populations receiving aid, and humanitarian data availability.
- Require the administration to reinstate inspectors general to provide oversight over aid administered by U.S. federal agencies.
- Authorize and fund a Humanitarian Service Reserve Corps to provide surge capacity for humanitarian responses by experts who work in other fields.
Michelle Strucke is director of the Humanitarian Agenda and the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Marc J. Cohen is senior associate (non-resident) with the Humanitarian Agenda at CSIS.
The authors would like to thank Lily Kennedy for her significant contributions to background research and fact checking of this paper.
This report is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this report.
