A "human disaster": The cessation of American humanitarian aid has already forced numerous NGOs to stop dozens of programs helping women, girls, and gender minorities in crisis-hit countries, putting thousands of their lives at risk and threatening their rights, NGOs warn.
"It's brutal, it's a human catastrophe" that will lead to "tens of thousands of deaths," warns Jean-François Corty, president of Médecins du Monde.
Washington has cut 92% of funding for overseas programs from the US development agency USAID, whose annual budget was $42.8 billion, representing 42% of humanitarian aid disbursed worldwide.
Closure of clinics providing pre- and post-natal care, cessation of family planning programs and access to safe abortions, end of food distributions for pregnant and breastfeeding women, cessation of care and psychological support for rape victims: the consequences are dramatic, insist the NGOs.
"Childbirths will no longer take place in good conditions," and "maternal deaths are one of the main causes of death for women in countries in crisis," observes Anne Bideau, Executive Director of Plan International France.
Her organization, which fights gender inequality, received €40 million a year in US aid. Since the announcement of the freeze on this aid, the NGO has had to shut down thirteen projects that reached 1.5 million people in 12 countries. These include a program in Bangladesh fighting child marriage and early pregnancy, and another in Ethiopia providing healthcare to women and newborns.
Solidarités International should have received €60 million from the Americans in 2025, or €361 million of its budget, explains its executive director, Kevin Goldberg. The NGO was forced to halt a program in Afghanistan that was helping nearly 10,000 women in the Bamiyan region (central Afghanistan) develop agricultural activities so they could become economically independent.
UN agencies will also have to cope without American funds: the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was to receive $377 million to provide "essential maternal health care, protection against violence, treatment for rape victims and other lifesaving care in more than 25 countries in crisis," the UN agency said at the end of February.
However, UNFPA is a major supplier of drugs and equipment for sexual and reproductive health care to NGOs, points out Brigitte Tonon, health advisor at Action Against Hunger. She is alarmed by the halt in the distribution of contraception and access to safe abortions, policies targeted by Donald Trump's conservative administration.
In mid-February, the Guttmacher Foundation, a US research institute that provides statistics on birth control and abortion in the United States and around the world, estimated that because of the aid freeze, 11.7 million women and girls would no longer have access to contraception by 2025.
Among them, 4.2 million "will experience unwanted pregnancies and 8,340 will die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth," according to the institute.
– “Attack” on human rights –
The US Congress has been allocating $607.5 million annually for global family planning for the past nine years, $32.5 million of which went to UNFPA, and should have enabled 47.6 million women and girls to benefit from contraception by 2025, the foundation points out.
The withdrawal of US aid is "a massive attack on sexual and reproductive rights" worldwide, including "access to safe abortion," said Jeanne Hefez, an advocacy advisor for the American NGO Ipas, which promotes access to abortion and contraception.
These budget cuts are part of "a very political continuum of attacks on the entire human rights system," she observes.
And this halt to programs that affect women comes "in a context where we see pressure from conservative and anti-rights movements growing," notes Anne Bideau, who speaks of "an extremely worrying underlying movement" denying "the universality of rights and equality between women and men."
These organizations are now expecting a "strong position" and financial resources from European countries, including France, which announced on Friday the launch of a strategy to strengthen its feminist diplomacy around the world.
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