Humanitarian groups are scrubbing climate change language from their websites, in what appear to be more examples of aid agencies quietly yielding to the Trump administration’s attacks on perceived progressive causes.
Organisations like Care, Mercy Corps, Relief International, and the World Food Program USA non-profit have edited, downplayed, or in some cases erased references to climate change entirely – including in descriptions of core work. The actions include avoiding the word “climate” and revising other terminology, removing climate links from home pages, or deleting entire pages.
For example, World Food Program USA, which raises funds for the UN food agency, appears to have erased the word “climate” from a prominent page that had underscored the climate crisis as a driver of hunger. The page headline, “the climate crisis and hunger”, has been changed to “extreme weather and hunger”.
A section titled “How Climate Change Causes World Hunger” has been erased – along with all uses of the word “climate”. The page title has gone from “Climate change is causing global hunger” to “Natural disasters are causing global hunger” (the two terms are not synonymous). Neither WFP USA nor WFP responded to requests for comment.
In many cases, aid groups’ climate scrubbing appears to be happening alongside a broader erasure of language on gender and diversity pledges.
Humanitarian groups are among a long list of organisations – from universities to tech companies – that have changed language or policies in the wake of the Trump administration’s various orders and attacks that scapegoat trans people, people of colour, and other communities.
The self-censorship on climate change suggests some aid groups are now hesitant to even name one of the main reasons humanitarian needs are soaring across the globe.
This is happening amid widespread rumours that the Trump administration will target non-profits and philanthropic organisations, including those that fund climate initiatives, as part of its attacks on perceived enemies and progressive causes.
However, website revisions on climate, gender, and DEI appeared shortly after Trump retook office in January or earlier, suggesting some organisations are anticipating ways to align with US policy to maintain funding or avoid blowback, rather than reacting to specific directives.
“There's a palpable fear that explicitly addressing climate change could put their core humanitarian mission… at risk, especially the policy shifts targeting climate action and philanthropy that appear to be on the horizon,” said Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation based in India.
Singh said he understood the “treacherous dilemma” some organisations may see, but disagreed with the strategy of changing or deleting climate language.
It risks ”diluting public understanding and weakening the collective call for climate justice,” Singh said. “Naming climate change and its drivers is essential for driving the systemic solutions needed to prevent future suffering.”
The New Humanitarian asked the organisations mentioned in this article about the rationale for changing language on climate, gender, and DEI, and to discuss the dilemmas behind their decisions.
All organisations declined to comment, or did not respond to requests.
Resist or redact
Organisations that seem to be executing the deepest content scrubs are based in the US.
The US government is traditionally the biggest humanitarian and development assistance donor by volume. Groups like Mercy Corps and Care receive 35-40% or more of their income from the US government.
Portland-based Mercy Corps appears to have altered key content on climate change, trimming its “climate, environment, and energy” page to “environment and energy”. The new version omits basic terms like “climate change” and “climate crisis”.
Mercy Corps also appears to have rebranded its “gender equality” work as “women and girls” – removing mentions of gender, equality, discrimination, child marriage, gential mutilation, representation, marginalisation, exclusion, and inclusion on the page. It has removed its main page covering diversity, equity, and inclusion.
It’s unclear whether some organisations’ erasure of climate change represents a shift in programming. Care, for example, has deleted “climate” from a page describing six main focus areas (there are now only five).
A prominent page describing Care’s work on climate, which had been mostly unchanged since at least 2021, appears to have been taken down shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Records from the Internet Archive non-profit suggest it was removed and redirected on or before 6 February.
Like other organisations, Care has undertaken extensive editing of language on gender and equality. This scrubbing seems to have started months ago, in November 2024, when Trump was re-elected.
A page on gender equality was still titled “equality” on 3 November, two days before the US election. By 19 November, web archive tools show the title had been changed to “empowering women and girls”. All mentions of “gender” were removed. Documents on organisational policy and staff training on gender equality are also missing.
Links to Care’s “belonging and inclusion” page have been removed from the main homepage; the page itself is also missing. Material on Care’s “core values” and commitments, linked from this diversity page, are now offline.
Neither Mercy Corps nor Care responded to requests for comment.
The New Humanitarian has seen no evidence that the US government has instructed aid organisations on terminology.
Rather, staff at several aid groups described the situation as senior leadership anticipating possible funding repercussions and aligning with early signals – such as anti-DEI executive orders, circulated lists of words flagged in US government departments, or generic warnings attached to stop-work orders saying that US funding should not be spent on DEI programmes.
An April joint statement drafted by NGO networks urged humanitarian groups to defend their principles and values. “We must resist the arguments for blind pragmatism and the promises that funding can be restored if we go where we’re directed, turn away from our commitments to gender, diversity and inclusion, or quiet our voices,” the statement read. Some 22 organisations signed on. There are roughly 4,000 organisations providing humanitarian aid around the world, according to one estimate.
The intention behind the changes
Examples of other organisations’ climate scrubbing range from downplaying climate references, to changing terminology, to outright deletion.
Relief International, for example, appears to have changed how it describes its strategy. It now “promotes long-term health and wellbeing in communities affected by conflict and disaster”, the current revision states, rather than the original: “communities affected by climate change, conflict and disaster”. It still uses the term “climate change” elsewhere.
Alight, formerly known as the American Refugee Committee, has stripped climate from its five key focus areas, renaming “climate displacement” as “natural disasters response”. It has also removed references to “gender” and “exclusion”.
Private contractor Chemonics, meanwhile, removed top-of-website links and pages on climate change, gender equality, and diversity, equity and inclusion, before a recent website overhaul.
Other aid groups appear to have removed prominent climate-related links on their homepages, but kept the previously linked pages active.
Some groups that abandoned commitments on diversity appear to have left their climate work relatively intact.
And still others appear to have made few obvious changes (some had made few public commitments in the first place).
It’s also unclear whether organisations that are self-censoring are any better off, given the Trump administration’s across-the-board dismantling of US aid funding.
In an April message, the Washington-based National Council of Nonprofits advised members to review their websites and social media posts for “potential conflict” with Trump’s orders.
Ultimately, decisions come down to each organisation. “The Executive Orders state that words alone will not be determinative and you may determine not to change many statements critical to your mission and values,” the council said. “The key is to make sure you are being intentional about the word choices you are using.”
Edited by Andrew Gully.
