The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is planning to lay off around 2,000 staff members because of President Donald Trump’s suspension of US aid funding, three staff members told The New Humanitarian.
DRC Secretary General Charlotte Slente announced the initial estimate for the planned layoffs during a global staff meeting on 7 February, the staffers said. The estimate represents roughly a quarter of DRC’s global workforce, signalling the unprecedented restructuring that aid organisations are being forced to undertake amid the attempted obliteration of USAID, previously the aid agency of the world’s largest donor government.
“We are proceeding with emergency termination of contracts in different countries, but the full impact remains uncertain, as the situation continues to evolve with new daily developments, including updates from the US government,” a DRC spokesperson told The New Humanitarian via email on 11 February.
“The United States is the Danish Refugee Council’s second-largest donor, and this support was being used to support displaced communities in some of the most affected areas by humanitarian crises worldwide,” the spokesperson said.
US government funding accounted for around $70 million, roughly 14% of DRC’s $500 million budget in 2023.
The timeline for the terminations and details about who would be affected have not yet been released, two of the staff members said. Both estimated the brunt of the cuts would be borne by national staff, who make up a larger proportion of the workforce than international staff and are more likely to work on country-level programmes that rely on US funding. But headquarters and regional offices are also likely to be hit.
Sector-wide cuts
Trump’s attacks on foreign aid, beginning in late January, have triggered upheaval across the humanitarian sector. The US typically supplies up to 40% of emergency response funding.
Aid groups – from big UN agencies and international NGOs to local groups – have suspended US-funded programmes and begun to lay off staff.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) announced on 10 February that it was suspending activities in 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Sudan, and Ukraine.
“We have, in our 79-year history, never experienced such an abrupt discontinuation of aid funding from any of our many donor nations, inter-governmental organisations, or private donor agencies,” NRC said in a statement.
Catholic Relief Services has begun reducing staff and may lay off as much as half of its workforce, the National Catholic Reporter reported on 5 February. The organisation received about half of its $1.5 billion annual budget from USAID.
In recent days, many of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations – from the UN’s refugee and migration agencies (UNHCR and IOM) to NGOs like Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee – have held town halls and calls with worried staff. The IRC has begun to furlough staff, three staff members told The New Humanitarian.
Navigating the waiver process
The 90-day freeze has been billed as part of a process to assess whether USAID’s activities align with the Trump administration’s foreign policy priorities. A waiver issued by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio exempts “life-saving humanitarian assistance” from the suspension, allowing the continuation of USAID-funded activities in seven sectors: food; nutrition; health; logistics; protection; shelter and settlements; and water, sanitation, and hygiene.
But the waiver leaves US-funded organisations with the responsibility to interpret their own activities under these criteria and decide whether to continue or suspend their US-funded activities.
In practice, many aid groups have faced difficulty receiving approval for waivers, while those that have say they’re still waiting for US funds to come through.
DRC has instructed country offices to take a cautious approach.
According to a guidance document sent by DRC headquarters to its country offices on 5 February, the exemptions could either be interpreted to include all activities within the seven sectors listed in the waiver, or to only include activities within those sectors that are emergency-focused.
“DRC has chosen to go with the latter and more careful interpretation,” said the document, seen by The New Humanitarian.
The organisation has instructed country offices to apply colour-coded labels to US-funded activities: green for those that are clearly exempt from the suspension and should continue, yellow for those that should only resume with approval from headquarters, and orange for those that likely are not exempt and should remain suspended.
The document includes examples: Emergency cash assistance is green, for-work cash assistance is yellow, and multipurpose cash assistance is orange.
Edited by Irwin Loy.
