Strengthening the Humanitarian Sector Brick by Brick

Humanitarian System’s Altered Landscape

Increasing Global Populations in Need

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that across the globe, 305 million people will be in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in 2025. This current estimate — nearly a four-fold increase of need over 10 years with 77.9 million in 2015 — has a projected funding requirement of $47.4 billion.

The following lists humanitarian assistance estimates by most affected regions according to the OCHA’s “Global Humanitarian Overview 2025” report:

1. Sub-Saharan Africa with 85 million people in need.
2. The Middle East and North Africa region with 59 million people.
3. Asia and the Pacific with 55 million people, of whom more than half — 30 million — are in Afghanistan.
4. Latin America and the Caribbean with 34 million people.
5. Europe with 15 million people due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

Conflict is the key driver of need, leading to displacement, hunger, and violence in multiple regions including Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Haiti.

Reduction in Global Humanitarian Aid Funds

The United States, by and large, was funding much of the humanitarian response to these crises around the world. Indeed, until February 2025, the United States had been the largest donor to the humanitarian assistance sector, accounting for over 44% of global humanitarian funding in 2024, and had an estimated planned budget of nearly $10 billion for humanitarian efforts under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for this year.

Under the second Trump administration, USAID has been shut down, with a large number of humanitarian grants and contracts cancelled. The White House’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2026 is $4 billion for humanitarian assistance to be administered by the Department of State, 60% decrease from the prior year. In addition, the United Kingdom has recently announced aid funding cuts that amount to a 39% reduction when compared to 2023 expenditures.

The United States and United Kingdom are not alone in current or planned aid funding reductions. The Netherlands plans to implement a nearly one-third funding decrease to its international development budget beginning in 2027. France’s most recently approved spending bill reduces its Official Development Assistance budget by 35% and aims to review its foreign aid programs for further reductions. Due to budget cuts, Switzerland announced plans to halt its development programs in Albania, Bangladesh, and Zambia by late 2028.

As of this writing, the extent to which other donors, such as the European Union, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, or philanthropic foundations, will fill this void in humanitarian support remains unclear. However, due to budget cuts in USAID and other foreign aid, essential funding for the humanitarian sector is not expected to recover in the near term.

With this context, humanitarian actors have had to contend with the sudden USAID funding cuts and contract cancellations — which have had devastating consequences at the field level, which are expected to increase — but also pose significant management and financial challenges. With the reality of massive funding cuts globally and the closure of USAID, the international humanitarian community — composed of U.N. agencies and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) — will likely need to implement their own budget reductions and reforms to survive and continue to respond to humanitarian emergencies.

Focus and Scope

This brief discusses current substantial changes across the humanitarian aid funding landscape, addresses several implications of these changes, and offers recommendations to the international humanitarian community on how to meet this moment. These recommendations offer ways to continue to respond to key crises and rebuild confidence and trust in the humanitarian system in light of significantly reduced funding from the United States and other donors.

For the purposes of this brief, the humanitarian system refers primarily to the functioning and response mechanisms of key humanitarian U.N. agencies and others, including OCHA, World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF, World Health Organization (WHO), U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), and International Organization for Migration (IOM), and international NGOs as well as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Additionally, this brief’s contents and recommendations have been informed by a series of interviews with former and current U.S. officials, humanitarian NGO staff and leadership, individuals from the private sector, and current and former U.N. staff and leadership. 

Implications of US and Global Humanitarian Aid Cuts

Diminished Technical Capacity

The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle USAID and cut foreign assistance have not only resulted in a decline in funding for humanitarian assistance but also entailed the contraction of technical humanitarian capacity on which stakeholders, including other donors, relied.

In 2020, USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) was established under the first Trump administration to have global presence with a range of broad capabilities to respond to disasters, drive multilateral engagement, and technical expertise across sectors, including meteorology, earthquake response, nutrition, and shelter.

Under the Biden administration, the BHA continued to operate as originally designed by the Trump administration with robust response capabilities that enabled the BHA to respond to multiple protracted crises through Disaster Assistance and Response Teams (DARTs) in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Gaza, Sudan, and Yemen and remain postured for rapid onset disasters. For example, from September to October 2023, the BHA responded to four rapid onset crises in succession — the Morocco earthquake, Libya floods, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and the Israel-Hamas war.

The United States was the only major donor country that had the ability to rapidly deploy skilled DARTs to respond to multiple disasters around the world. The DARTs, which had been in existence since 1991, were comprised of humanitarian field experts with years of experience and training, operate under a U.S. ambassador’s authority in any given country experiencing a disaster, and had a broad range of capabilities:

• Rapid funding to key U.N. and NGO partners.
• Partnership with U.S. military operations.
• Coordination with humanitarian actors including host country’s emergency response actors, such as militaries, emergency management programs, and others.
• Ability to operate and/or reside in disaster theaters when security is permitted, such as tents and encampments in the Türkiye earthquake zone during the 2023 Türkiye-Syria earthquake.
• Deployment of U.S.-based urban search rescue teams.

While the Trump administration may maintain some limited DART capacity, deploying and sustaining multiple DARTS simultaneously will not be possible without an increase in skilled staff, which requires funding. Thus, donors should decide whether to develop this capacity internally or rely on the U.N.’s coordination model for emergency responses.

Retreat in Humanitarian Diplomacy

Similarly, the U.S. retrenchment in humanitarian assistance will likely leave a gap in humanitarian diplomacy. Successive U.S. administrations since President Ronald Reagan have engaged in humanitarian diplomacy, which includes negotiations on aid access, humanitarian ceasefires, and humanitarian pauses and fundraising. U.S.-led humanitarian diplomacy has been invaluable due to its unique ability to project political, diplomatic, and donor power by convening various parties to the table to drive action.

This diplomacy was typically led by the White House, State Department, or USAID, and occasionally by special envoys or coordinators. It was also supported by the humanitarian technical analysis provided by USAID’s DARTS and humanitarian experts. For example, the Reagan administration took diplomatic steps to reach civilians behind battle lines and arranged for food aid to be delivered cross-border to rebel-held areas of Eritrea and Tigray through Sudan, effectively bypassing the Ethiopian government’s blockade. Under George H. W. Bush’s presidency, “Operation Provide Comfort” offered emergency food and medical aid to Iraqi Kurds following the Persian Gulf War. More recent examples of U.S. leadership on humanitarian diplomacy includes its participation in the International Syria Support Group in 2016, Jeddah talks in 2023 concerning humanitarian access in the Sudan civil war, and Gaza humanitarian efforts from October 2023 to January 2025.

While the U.N. plays a key role in humanitarian diplomacy, it cannot serve as a fully effectual substitute for the U.S. or other bilateral countries’ role in negotiating humanitarian access or outcomes, particularly in conflict settings. U.S. humanitarian diplomacy has been effective over the years precisely because it can act as a separate actor and counter the U.N.’s tendency to get mired in legal issues regarding sovereignty or its call to manage the competing interests of member states.

For example, the U.N. would not use the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Türkiye into Syria without a U.N. security resolution or explicit Syrian regime’s explicit permission. More recently, the U.N. would not use the Adre crossing for humanitarian assistance from Chad into Sudan, due to the agency’s legal analysis, despite critical humanitarian need.

Following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S.’ role in humanitarian access in Gaza under the Biden administration was essential to sustaining aid. While donors and likeminded countries (likeminded, depending on the issue), such as the EU, Norway, Qatar, U.K., Saudi Arabia, and UAE, have intermittently played key roles on the humanitarian diplomatic front, U.S. involvement has historically been critical in difficult access negotiations.

Currently, the Trump administration’s intentions on providing strong humanitarian diplomacy and leadership remain unclear, and public statements on humanitarian policy have been limited. The question remains whether other donor countries will address the current gap in humanitarian diplomacy leadership, or if there will continue to be reliance on the U.N.’s role in this area.

Erosion of Confidence

Despite robust funding and supplemental budgets appropriated by U.S. Congress prior to the second Trump administration, respondents interviewed for this brief have suggested that there has been an erosion of bipartisan support for humanitarian assistance programs.

The first issue relates to concerns of what respondents termed, “mission creep,” meaning the gradual expansion of a mission beyond its initial objectives. Fair or not, there has been a perception of primarily conservative thought that the U.N. and international NGOs in the humanitarian community have allowed mission creep with a growing focus on programs and issues that garner political opposition such as climate, gender diversity, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts, that they see as detracting both attention and funding from the core mandate of lifesaving work.

The second issue involves perceptions on the humanitarian community’s deviation from the core principles of impartiality and neutrality. Multiple respondents interviewed for this brief expressed that a view — not exclusively but predominantly held among conservative, Republican corners — that the U.N. and humanitarian NGOs strayed from a neutral stance with respect to the Israel-Hamas war. More specifically, respondents commented on the perception that the international humanitarian community’s response was imbalanced in its criticism of Israel’s conduct of war and U.S. military support to Israel, with scant mention of Hamas’ actions with respect to the Oct. 7 attack, hostages, and use of civilian infrastructure for military/terror purposes. In comparison, there has been a relative lack of attention and minimal advocacy with respect to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, despite millions of people in need, a declared famine in Zamzam camp, and well-documented violence against the civilian population.

The third issue is the view that humanitarian responses often lack an exit plan and that the U.S. tends to bear the cost. This sense of continuously spending funds on protracted crises without any exit or transition plan has deepened donor fatigue. Respondents often cited protracted humanitarian crises in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and the Sahel and the Horn of Africa as examples of the “endless loop” of humanitarian assistance. While these emergencies have continued for years, the humanitarian counterpoint is that these protracted crises require diplomatic and political solutions to end the conflicts driving the need for aid and that complementary development funding is needed to address the root causes.

Finally, the fourth issue is the erosion of grassroots advocacy for humanitarian assistance in the United States. In the past, robust grassroots campaigns that have been mobilized to create advocacy for, to cite a few examples, Darfur, Sudan, in 2004, HIV/AIDS throughout the late 1990s into the 2000s, or Ethiopian famine from 1983 to 1985 were effective in fundraising and creating political momentum from a broad coalition that drew in bipartisan support. In recent years, similar campaigns in scope and bipartisanship seem to have not materialized.

While the accuracy or impartiality of these perceptions are debatable matters, these views do exist. Ultimately, it is unlikely that any of these perceptions or the erosion of grassroots support, in and of themselves, causally led to the decision to shutdown of USAID’s humanitarian operations and funding. However, without the strong foundation of bipartisan and grassroots support, the humanitarian advocacy ballast was much weaker than in the past.

Recommendations for Humanitarian System Reform

Reforms to the humanitarian system have been discussed for decades. Two recent examples of reform efforts include the Grand Bargain initiative started in 2016 and the UN80 Initiative, which was announced by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in March 2025 and aims to streamline operations and improve efficiency within the U.N. system. Humanitarian reform processes have typically been consultative and taken months to develop. While the humanitarian system could have benefited from significant reforms before the current funding reductions, the seismic shifts in the U.S. assistance model and funding will force rapid change.

Given changes in the humanitarian system and rising global needs, this brief offers the following recommendations.

Refocus Mandate on the Lifesaving Mission

Concentrate mandate on the lifesaving mission. Humanitarian organizations need to make fundamental decisions on mandate, based on their organizational values and constituencies and should consider whether and how to refocus on a core mission of saving lives.

Mandate decisions are difficult, especially as many programs — despite being viewed as extraneous or politically charged — have merit. During times of generous funding from donors or supplemental support from the U.S. Congress, the humanitarian system could afford to expand its missions’ capacity and scope to issues that were arguably important — humanitarian development nexus, gender diversity, climate, coordination conferences — but could be viewed as tangential to the lifesaving mission.

This is not to cast judgement on the merits of these efforts and topics. However, as aid resources have declined precipitously in a matter of months since January 2025, organizations should consider refocusing mandates on the core lifesaving mission first and foremost. One NGO leader interviewed for this brief proposed a litmus test — the “girls in crisis” test — that captured a widely shared sentiment: “Does it (the staff costs, the meetings, the report, the bureaucratic process) ultimately help improve the lives of women and girls living in North Kivu, Darfur, Gaza — or not? If not, then get rid of it.”

Shift the focus to the field and frontline communities rather than to headquarters and capital. Most critically, humanitarian organizations should avoid cutting skilled staff who are willing and able to work in difficult, demanding field situations and have technical skills. Also, importantly, humanitarian workers should have sector-specific skills — health, sanitation, shelter, logistics, and access negotiation capabilities. Workers should meet minimal humanitarian standards, known as sphere standards, which include knowing the number of people sharing a latrine, required calories per person, required liters of water per person, etc.

Following the humanitarian assistance challenges of 2004 in Darfur, significant reforms were made through the U.N.-led Water and Sanitation Cluster Working Group in 2005 to ensure available expertise in aid administration. A former U.N. official interviewed for this brief described the 2004 crisis in Darfur as an instance “where there was no ability to deploy experts with water and sanitation to Darfur, and people died massively for the lack of 100 deployable water experts.” The official also stated, “The reforms that followed through the cluster system were meant to create experts in sectors, i.e. shelters, water, and sanitation.” Now, 20 years since these reform’s implementation, “bureaucracy,” as the official suggested, is driving much of the humanitarian system’s focus.

Improve Cost Efficiency and Sharpen Mission Targets

Identify cost inefficiencies, consolidate overhead, and share services. Large U.N. organizations would greatly benefit from a reassessment of their finances by targeting cost inefficiencies. Based on expenditures from 2023, several U.N. agencies’ overhead costs — particularly the U.N. Development Program, U.N. Population Fund, UNICEF, U.N. Women, and U.N. refugee agency — were approximately 6–7% of each’s overall budget. U.N. agencies should critically review and reconsider their financial portfolios, specifically costs related to headquarters staffing and premium class travel. Within the expansive U.N. system, opportunities likely exist to reduce overhead costs, share administrative services, and review headquarters compensation packages.

Similarly, international NGOs are also under financial pressure. NGOs can likely identify opportunities to merge, consolidate, and streamline the costs of their operations, including headquarters-level staff. Respondents for this brief also noted that there has been criticism of high salaries for some humanitarian NGO CEOs, perceptions of extravagant diplomatic events, and unchecked luxury travel.

At the same time, reduction in costs should not lead to a decrease in essential operational capacity. Above all, financial reassessments should prioritize the retention of experienced, technical staff to ensure that the core lifesaving mission is not compromised.

Prioritize lifesaving programs in regions with the most need. In addition to trimming overhead and headquarters costs, the humanitarian system will likely need to make difficult cuts in the face of current funding declines. 

Aid should be prioritized to regions with vulnerable populations or nonfunctional governance. What this means is that organizations should prioritize regions, such as Sudan and Gaza, whose populations are currently in critical humanitarian need and do not have access to stable governance. Countries with functional governments, such as Colombia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, should do more to care for their own people and further demonstrate ownership. If not financially, they should do so, at least, through designated officials and policy actions that support humanitarian assistance. What is critical, however, is that the humanitarian community build a runway to allow sufficient time to prepare communities and governments to adjust to programmatic cuts.

Practice localization in the field. In the face of programmatic cuts or complete dismantlement of aid organizations, localization should become a practical reality, not only a concept noted in seminars and guidance documents from headquarters. The principle of localization centers on supporting local aid and resource efforts in regions undergoing crisis. The humanitarian system’s practice of localization should go beyond a focus on funding local organizations, especially as donor funding recedes and humanitarian organizations are forced to leave affected regions. Thus, localization support should include transferring more decision-making powers to local actors and communities.

In one example, directly observed by the author in 2024, humanitarian partners in Columbia, who were providing technical assistance to displaced communities on small-scale farming, supplied imported seeds — due to complicated USAID regulations — rather than indigenous seeds to plant home garden crops. In addition to the communities’ dissatisfaction with the quality of vegetables, it was unclear how communities would source more seeds if their own local markets were not supported and/or once the imported, donor-funded seed supply ended due to funding cuts or shifting priorities.

This is only one concrete example of how localization needs to be imbued in the field, particularly in the face of irregular donor funding.

Prioritize Leadership, Accountability, and Reputation

Enhance leadership and management. In addition to cost reassessments, the humanitarian system should emphasize leadership and management at every level. For example, many respondents interviewed for this brief pointed to the need to reform the U.N. resident coordinator/humanitarian coordinator (RC/HC) model. A RC is the highest-ranking representative for the U.N. Development System at the country level, and a HC is the most senior U.N. official in a country experiencing a humanitarian crisis — often one individual occupies both roles.

While the U.N. RC/HC roles are often inherently the most challenging in a humanitarian crisis, various stakeholders’ differing expectations, along with perceptions of opaque hiring and selection processes, intensify the demanding nature of these positions. One of the most difficult issues that U.N. RC/HCs must grapple with is managing relationships with governments in a manner that is impartial and neutral, while building a rapport and also standing for principle on issues, such as protecting civilians from harm. This requires calibration and skill on when to use external messaging versus private messaging and when to escalate to U.N. leadership in New York or lean on member states for diplomacy.

U.N. leadership should consider further reforms to this process, which might include elements such as: 

• Clearly defining expectations for the RC/HC role.
• Providing executive leadership training and ongoing coaching.
• Considering the ability for a RC/HC to function in an impartial, neutral, and independent manner with governments and armed actors.
• Considering how OCHA headquarters can provide the best support.
• Defining RC/HC’s authority over the operations of other U.N. agencies and considering whether this authority should be loosened to encourage innovation or tightened to ensure better command and control.
• Offering transparency around the selection process for candidates. 

While agreeing on the need for significant reform, this brief’s respondents did not share a consensus view on what the RC/HC mandate, skill sets, and authorities should be.

Enhance accountability on issues of corruption and misconduct. The humanitarian community should consider enhancing measures on accountability and make strong commitments on anti-corruption, fraud, misconduct and immediate transparent reporting. In doing so, anti-corruption efforts should increasingly be field focused; this can be done through independent field monitoring, encouraging reporting, and exploring technology, particularly GPS and AI-tracking. These actions also should be accompanied by rapid management responses to address any issues quickly and report them to donors. This approach contrasts with one that heavily relies on either headquarters staff, bureaucratic reporting, or compliance procedures, which can become expensive and cumbersome. Donors should spearhead this initiative as they can streamline the reporting and compliance processes and insist on rapid field-based monitoring, reporting, and management action. 

While international NGOs generally have been required to cooperate with bilateral donor inspectors general (IGs) — who oversee organizations to prevent corruption and ensure accountability — on the issue of waste, fraud, and abuse, U.N. agencies are under the jurisdiction of their own IGs. The U.N.’s IG model has, at times, led to friction between donors’ need for information and accountability versus the U.N.’s own procedures. For example, considerable donor frustration arose with incidents, such as the sexual exploitation allegations against WHO staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019, and the large-scale food aid thefts and diversions in Ethiopia in 2022.

The gap between donor concerns and U.N. internal oversight processes should be reduced. As part of an anti-corruption commitment, the U.N.’s oversight bodies should further emphasize sharing information with donor country IGs and prioritize transparent reporting.

Strengthen accountability and take a firm stance on not providing material support to sanctioned, terrorist, or armed groups. The humanitarian community should consider taking a firmer, more public stance on not funding sanctioned, terrorist, and armed groups. In addition to not providing financial support, these efforts should include instituting clearer measures on vetting staff and subcontractors that may be affiliated with these groups.

Some donors, USAID among them, have traditionally included legal provisions on vetting and prohibiting funding for terrorist or sanctioned groups in grants to international NGOs, yet these provisions are less strict for U.N. agencies. In environments where there are high risks or repeated instances of violations, humanitarian organizations should be prepared to take firm actions, make credible threats, and follow through on suspensions when necessary to protect the integrity of the law.

Manage reputation and clearly tell the story. In an era where humanitarian organizations will likely become more reliant on private companies, philanthropy, and grassroots fundraising, reputation matters. This brief’s interview with private companies, donors, and NGOs that have not relied on government funding revealed that an organization’s reputation and a clear understanding of what their funding buys — in plain language — were key determinants of donor decisions. Humanitarian organizations should prioritize telling a clear, coherent story of their work and mission that includes:

• Funding’s impact on the ground.
• Communities’ benefits from assistance.
• Low overhead costs.
• Transparent operations and reporting.

In addition, proactively managing reputation risks — whether from fraud, corruption, or employee misconduct — is key in an environment where organizations will likely be required to attract new donors, build confidence, and develop grassroots networks.

Sharpen External Messaging and Build Ownership 

Foster citizen ownership and organize grassroots humanitarian campaigns. In an era where the humanitarian community needs to diversify sources of funding and substantiate their work to donors, the focus should go beyond traditional advocacy toward creating ownership, especially at the citizen and grassroots level. In this context, ownership refers to citizens across communities, schools, faith-based institutions, and age groups being invested in humanitarian outcomes and having a personal connection to crises occurring in different parts of the world.

Successful past grassroot humanitarian campaigns include UNICEF’s “Coins for Kids” campaign, the (RED) campaign for HIV/AIDS, Keep a Child Alive wristbands for HIV/AIDS in Africa and India, and World Wildlife Fund’s endangered species adoption campaign, to name a few. Major medical events have also bolstered grassroots organizing, with notable, recent examples including the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014–16 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

While some humanitarian organizations, particularly in the faith-based community, have created robust advocacy bonds of ownership and grassroots funding bases, others have not generated the same support. Arguably, the humanitarian community has not launched a unifying grassroots campaign in years, if not in decades. While grassroots ownership may not have prevented the sudden funding cuts to humanitarian aid in the United States and U.K., it may have provided a more stable safety net against them.

Accordingly, the humanitarian community should consider how to build citizen ownership, not only as individual organizations but also as a broad community. Generating grassroot support comes with definite sensitivities of how to best to do this work, especially to avoid creating perceptions of exploiting suffering or victimization for the purposes of fundraising advocacy. Yet, building grassroot campaigns can be accomplished in a manner that is respectful, candid, and sensitive to affected populations and regions.

Use clear, direct language in communications. Every discipline has the tendency to develop its own highly specific or technical language, such as jargon and terms of art. The humanitarian community is no exception with its use of terms, such as “durable platforms,” “climate sensitivity,” “anticipatory action,” and “localization.” These terms, by and large, are likely unfamiliar to the general public. The humanitarian community should make a conscious effort to use clear, direct language in its communication with donors and the public, especially when stating funding’s impacts and accomplishments.

With respect to funding, there is deep-rooted misperception that humanitarian assistance, and foreign aid broadly speaking, is extremely costly to the taxpayer. However, the data tells a different story. In 2023, foreign aid was only 1.2% of the U.S. federal budget. For further context, the federal expenses of the 2023 U.S. budget totaled to more than $6.1 trillion. Additionally, a mere 0.26% of the total 2023 federal budget was specifically allocated to humanitarian aid and disaster relief, which equates to actual pennies on the dollar.

Recasting the actual cost of humanitarian assistance to the taxpayer or the donor, for example, in terms of how less than a cent of a tax dollar supports saving lives, fostering good will internationally, and protecting people’s dignity could help dispel misconceptions regarding the costliness of humanitarian aid. 

Engage new audiences. Humanitarian policy experts and practitioners should reach diverse communities outside of major cities to garner further attention to their critical work. This means an intentional effort to visit schools, universities, churches, community groups, and civic townhalls to discuss humanitarian aid’s operations, purpose, and impacts.

Engaging local media is also important. Strategies could include virtually pairing a U.S. school with another school across the globe receiving humanitarian assistance, a live conversation from the field with a humanitarian practitioner responding to a weather event, an expert briefing on a current humanitarian crisis, etc.

Take a consultative approach to donors. Whether engaging with members from the private sector, philanthropists, or traditional donors, the humanitarian organizations should take the time to consult donors about priorities, concerns, reporting, and ideas. A common concern of donors is that organizations would accept the funding without reporting where the funds would be allocated and what specific impacts resulted from their support.

Most funders respect that humanitarian organizations have the expertise to operate programs in difficult settings and are not trying to impinge on or micromanage their operations. At the same time, fostering a dialogue on priorities or concerns — especially regarding potentially funding terrorist groups, which is a common concern — reporting stories and impacts, offering in-person or virtual visits to the field, and providing photographs and videos of support efforts would significantly help build both donor advocacy and ownership.

Rebuilding the Foundation for Humanitarian Assistance

The dismantling of USAID and sharp declines of global humanitarian assistance funding has been an unexpected turn and has caused significant consequences, which are most critically felt by populations in desperate need in complex crisis settings. While this moment is still raw and being processed, the U.N., international NGOs, bilateral countries, donors, and governments with populations in need do not have much time to digest and reflect, but rather they are in a position that calls on them to act and make critical choices. These decisions go well beyond adjusting to current funding reductions and require confronting strategic decisions, such as redefining mandates, improving engagement on humanitarian diplomacy, retaining field technical capacity, and prioritizing certain programs over others.

This moment also makes clear that the humanitarian community will need to rebuild a solid foundation of support that can withstand any future disruptions and is made of bricks, not straw. Similar to the advocacy efforts that led to the creation and bipartisan support for U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the humanitarian community should consider modeling these past, coalition-building undertakings and focus on garnering support that spans the political spectrum that also includes faith-based organizations, private sector actors, private philanthropy, and engaged grassroots citizens. This work will require the humanitarian community to organize itself, create a coalition of nontraditional partners, and find creative ways to foster ownership.

This publication was produced on behalf of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Wherever feasible, the material was reviewed by external experts prior to its release. Any errors are the responsibility of the author(s) alone.

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.