Can the U.S. Funding Freeze Open Opportunities For More Sustainable Humanitarian Aid?

"Imagine an area prone to earthquakes that does not have the necessary infrastructure. We know that things are bad. Still, the timing and scale of the earthquake will be a shock," Rana Ashraf, an Egyptian humanitarian aid worker, tells OkayAfrica about the onslaught of layoffs in the humanitarian and development sector.

The incoming administration in the U.S. under Donald Trump paused billions of dollars of funding for international aid and development on Jan. 24, 2025. It is reportedly trying todismantle the U.S. Agency for International Aid (USAID), which President Trump has been critical of. This decision affects nearly all U.S. foreign aid programs, pending a 90-day review. In the meantime, many USAID-unrelated positions are being cut to accommodate the loss of USAID-funded positions that might be more essential.

A new reality for humanitarian and development workers

Ashraf has worked with international NGOs for the past seven years, holding positions in communications, advocacy, and mental health and psychosocial support departments in Egypt and the U.S. She has suffered from frequent budget cuts and funding redistributions. In 2017, she was working on a resettlement program for refugees in Egypt when President Trump'sMuslim ban paused the lengthy processes of resettlement to the U.S. In 2024, she was working with asylum seekers and survivors of torture in the U.S. when federal funding stopped, and her position was scrapped, leaving her unemployed since October.

"I've been applying for different jobs [in Egypt] and regionally with international organizations. For the first time, instead of just getting rejections, I'm getting notification emails with jobs being canceled," she says.

Kamila Kamal, a UN employee in Egypt who uses a pseudonym to avoid risking her position, shares her frustration with the discourse surrounding layoffs. "In my organization, everyone is focusing on international staff, and people don't care much about Egyptians and nationals working in these programs," she says. Her role exposed her directly to national staff whose contracts were terminated, sometimes with only one day's notice.

"Since the announcement of Trump running in the election, we prepared for a repetition of the scenarios when he was last President and downsized all U.S.-funded programs," says Kamal. "But [this time] Trump stopped everything. There was a town hall telling people they would receive their termination letters tomorrow. I'm talking about people with families working in this program for 15 to 20 years. It is a pity that this huge experience is scattered across the market."

A new reality for beneficiaries

Kamal stresses that while the layoffs put staff in a difficult situation, the beneficiaries of these paused programs are most severely affected yet not centered in the discourse.

"The U.S. was the largest donor for the Sudan response as well as other emergencies in the region," she says. "No other donor was this generous and gave us full authority to do what's best for the beneficiaries." Now that everything has been halted, extremely vulnerable people can no longer access support for basic needs like obtaining visas, receiving healthcare, shelter, protection from violence, or even a blanket during the cold winter months.

"It's huge chaos. I don't think anyone has answers right now," says Kamal. "I feel so sorry; this is against all humanitarian values we have been trained on. We were doing simple work that made people's lives better."

A new framework

Kamal considers the present situation to be the worst-case scenario. Ashraf views the crisis as a potential catalyst for necessary change. She has been discovering the work of scholars who work todecolonize humanitarian aid, building a framework that moves away from asavior industrial complex and towards mutual, collective liberation.

"We must develop and reimagine different infrastructures to revolutionize nonprofits from the inside because so much of what we're doing is harmful and not sustainable," says Ashraf. "Yes, we need humanitarian aid, but we have been operating in a failed system, even with the good things coming out of it."

Ashraf shares that the biggest challenge in all of her positions has been the work environments and structures of nonprofits rather than the actual work she did with torture survivors and asylum seekers. According to her, the worst-case scenario would be to survive this phase and continue as usual afterward.

"We should have the dignity to do this ugly, confusing work of questioning [this system], to create more resilient, interdependent and decolonized structures," she says. "The more we do that, the more we can access safety while changing things. We cannot go on with this level of instability."

"This will come with personal losses," she concludes. "But at the end of the day, I want to do community work that is provided for free, and that's why I want to work with nonprofits."