This is another edition of Inklings, where we explore how aid works in the wilds of Geneva, on the front lines of emergency response, or in the dark corners of online punditry.
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Today: Aid worker attacks, political and donor headwinds, and reflections on dependency from an NGO head who once relied on aid.
Trumplings|
Aid worker safety: Aid worker killings are already at record highs, and they’re likely to rise as the humanitarian funding crisis continues, warns analyst Abby Stoddard. Violence could jump as funding shrinks, then fall as programmes stop, said Stoddard, writing on 2025’s doomscrolling app of choice, LinkedIn. Stoddard is a partner at Humanitarian Outcomes – keeper of the database that tracks aid worker attacks.
“We know from our research with humanitarian organisations that sudden defunding and work stoppages can create security risks in a few ways,” Stoddard told us by email. “Cutting communities off from relief aid they have been depending on fuels fear and desperation. Vendors, staff members, rental property owners, and others will go unpaid, creating hostilities. We are already hearing from NGOs concerned about the uptick they are seeing in negative social media posts, which are being amplified, and aid organisations and aid workers being ‘demonised.’ For a sector that relies so heavily on acceptance, this puts all aid organisations at risk, whether or not they received any US funding.”
Duty of care to staff also costs money – and security and support budgets are among the first to be cut (if they were available at all) when the cupboards are bare.
Aid worker cuts: Colleague Jacob Goldberg reports on the plans for mass layoffs at the Danish Refugee Council. The “emergency terminations” could hit 2,000 people, which would add up to a quarter of the NGO’s staff. It’s another sign of the cuts, furloughs, and worry sweeping through the humanitarian workforce. UN agencies and NGOs big and small have been holding town halls and all-staff calls in recent days. DRC’s last annual reports suggests it receives about 14% of its funding from the US government. Other groups, from Mercy Corps to CARE, Save the Children, or the International Rescue Committee (not to mention UN agencies), are even more reliant.
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Local staff: It’s not always clear how aid leaders are making these tough decisions, and transparency – to staff, and to people who use aid – will be key in the coming days. This isn’t necessarily a humanitarian sector forte. ”So many of us are stuck in limbo not knowing when we’ll find out,” an aid worker at a big NGO told us. The vast majority of aid workers are citizens of the countries in which they work – and often part of the communities they help. They’ve been hit hard from the start of Trump’s aid freeze. One sign: Titi Foundation, a South Sudanese NGO, recently posted a job ad for a new programme. They’ve received hundreds of applications – many recently laid off from bigger aid groups. “These were once my donors in the INGOs or UN agencies,” executive director Gloria Soma told us in an interview. “The toll of unemployment alone is on the rise.” There’s more from our chat with Soma below.
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Citizen fundraising: A former IRC staffer has launched a GoFundMe campaign for furloughed IRC staff and for the organisation itself (!). A WHO staffer, meanwhile, has launched a campaign to raise funds for the de-Trumped health agency, Geneva Solutions reports. So far, this latter campaign has raised more than $137,000 (!!).
A rising tide floats all boats: That reporting on the DRC cuts seems to be revving up the right-wing social media machinery – in Danish. They’re echoing Trump-Musk talking points, but for a local audience. It’s a reminder that 2025’s version of the Trump effect isn’t simply Trump himself, but the playbook being written and followed around the globe. Countries like Germany, Canada, Norway, and Australia are hurtling towards elections this year with right and far-right politicians on the rise. These countries have been major humanitarian donors for years, across political lines. Will they remain so after 2025? Humanitarians have turned to these and other conventional donors, hopeful for a stopgap. That’s understandable, but the bigger-picture trend seems clear. They may be better served by preparing for what’s next.
Obeying in advance: Over at Devex, Colum Lynch serves up this slice of reporting on the UN’s migration agency. IOM, he writes, “has been scrubbing its website of references to sexual and reproductive health rights, gender-based violence, LGBTQ+, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, in an apparent effort to stave off steep budget cuts from the United States”. (+1 for the GIF) When last we heard from IOM, it appeared to be pitching itself as the agency of record to tackle the seemingly inexplicable “rising demand for return assistance across Latin America and the Caribbean”. Like many agencies, of course, IOM is heavily dependent on US cash; its funding is also earmarked to the hilt.
Data points|
Which countries are most exposed to US cuts? The Center for Global Development has crunched the numbers to identify eight countries where a fifth of assistance comes from USAID: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.
How is the US aid freeze hitting global HIV response? UNAIDS has this updated blog tallying topline impacts. There’s clear disruption in Ethiopia, for example, including access to antiretroviral treatment. At the same time, governments like Malawi are ensuring that treatment continues, UNAIDS said.
End quote|
“We need to have timeframes of when we do this, and at what point do we stop.”
Today’s funding crisis will change the humanitarian sector. What comes next?
Humanitarians have been talking about reforms for years. Critiquing aid or the aid system today can be fraught – prone to misreading and weaponisation by the Trump machinery.
Gloria Soma of Titi Foundation in Juba has nuanced views on aid, dependency, and change: She once relied on aid, and now leads an organisation that helps others.
Local aid groups need to be less dependent on international donors and agencies. And communities in South Sudan, she said, need to be less dependent on emergency aid – embracing development and resilience work.
Here’s a larger slice of our chat, which didn’t make it into this week’s story on how local aid groups are navigating the Trump freezes:
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