Dismantling of USAID will impact women more intensely

The world of foreign assistance is currently experiencing a nightmare that seems straight out of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, which only seemed to get the title wrong: it should have been “2025.” Erasing history and rewriting it to suit a new totalitarian state, as happened in the science fiction classic, appears to be exactly what is happening with the world’s largest international development aid agency, USAID, which is being dismantled because it is “not aligned with American interests.” The move is devastating on a global scale since the agency’s contributions — $43 billion last year — constituted nearly 40% of all humanitarian and development aid worldwide. And women will be the most intensely affected.

The international cooperation and development sector is characterized by a dense but fragile network of collaborations between government agencies, NGOs, the United Nations and thousands of local workers, and it has been losing funding since the Covid-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Therefore, amputating a member with the weight of USAID by freezing funds for 90 days, temporarily suspending programs, conducting mass layoffs and putting workers on forced leave – although a judge has halted it for the moment – is opening cracks that threaten to become earthquakes. And as is often the case when a crisis occurs, the main victims will be women.

“We have made a quick assessment of the impact on our programs and we can say that more than 100,000 people in 14 countries will be immediately affected,” Raquel Martín, from the NGO Entre Culturas, explained to this newspaper. This non-profit is part of the Jesuit Refugee Service that supports almost 400,000 people in 43 countries with educational and mental health programs, school canteens and refugee protection programs.

“And the hangover of what is to come will be even worse, especially for women. They are more vulnerable due to their situation of inequality in almost the entire planet; when there are cuts, they are the ones who suffer the most. Girls become an economic asset for families, so they immediately stop sending them to school, put them to work instead, or marry them off at a younger age. Selling them is also an alternative in contexts of poverty,” she explains.

At the moment, hundreds of programs ranging from malaria and HIV protection to school meals have been halted. The Guttmacher Institute, which is dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive rights, offers compelling data: in just two weeks, almost two million women and girls have been unable to access contraceptive treatments previously funded by USAID. Every week that progresses, another million will be added. If the funding freeze continues for 90 days, there will be four million unwanted pregnancies and at least 8,000 women will die in childbirth.

There are few NGOs willing to speak openly. Sources from another international non-profit with several projects at a standstill explained why. “Part of the sector is silent because we fear reprisals. The Trump administration has proven to be very vindictive.”

If the funding freeze remains in place for 90 days, there will be 4 million unwanted pregnancies and at least 8,000 women will die in childbirth.

The Guttmacher Institute

Even within UN agencies, there is a strategic silence. The concern among workers is palpable in Rome, where the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) are headquartered, with 20,000 employees, 80% of projects dedicated to emergencies and humanitarian aid and a presence in 120 countries. Sources at the WFP, whose budget comes almost 50% from the United States, insist on the difficulties of making an assessment given the complexity of determining which programs could continue under the umbrella of humanitarian and emergency aid – in principle exempt from the cuts – although they admit having received orders to stop some of them, which have since been rescinded.

In addition, the U.S. administration has created a logistical puzzle: in theory, emergency food assistance programs can continue, but what happens when the assistance is not in kind, but in cash? And what about emergency prevention programs? The problem is that there are hundreds of organizations struggling to find a contact person to answer dozens of questions like these, but the dismissal of USAID employees has created a Kafkaesque situation where the person who only yesterday was fielding the questions today no longer even has access to their own email.

There are also other variables. Sources close to FAO explain: “Most programs are not funded by a single country. Often one country contributes to a part of the program and other countries or institutions complete it. But if the money stops flowing from one side, it is impossible to continue with the project because these funds complement each other.”

Decisions with a direct impact

There are many decisions that will have a decisive impact on that 50% of the population. Trump is also working by decree to erase all traces of policies that favor diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) in addition to what the far right calls “gender ideology.” Under both definitions, hundreds of programs around the world can be grouped that promote everything from gender parity, for example by financing initiatives by women farmers and entrepreneurs, to the fight against sexist violence or the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community in countries where they are persecuted.

As if this were not enough, the Trump administration has reintroduced the so-called Mexico City Policy, which prohibits funding for organizations that practice or offer reproductive information, regardless of the source of their funds. According to Doctors Without Borders, this regulation “puts organizations in an impossible position. They either comply with the policy to receive funding from the U.S. government, which restricts the provision of sexual and reproductive health services and information, or they lose access to significant financial support, on which many organizations depend to operate.”

But the Orwellian situation that the humanitarian community is currently experiencing is nothing more than the chronicle of a death foretold: it has been described almost step by step in Project 2025, the bible prepared by the think tanks close to Trump who have spent the last four years planning how to transform their country if they ever came to power. In that nearly 1,000-page document, Chapter 9 is dedicated to how to reduce USAID to the bare minimum and refocus its programs on offering short-term emergency aid, the opposite of what the cooperation sector has been trying to do for more than a decade: long-term programs that allow vulnerable communities to develop their own systems of resilience. That idea is disappearing.

An ultraconservative, racist and denialist ideology prevails throughout the document, as seen in Chapter 9: all DEI programs will be eliminated, women’s rights will be restricted with strictly pro-life policies and, as if that were not enough, all programs against the climate crisis will be abolished as well as collaboration with any organization that “advocates on behalf of climate fanaticism,” a move that will particularly harm women, since according to the UN, four out of five people displaced by climate events are women and girls.

The document is like an oracle of everything that has already happened in recent weeks and of what is likely to happen in the near future. It casts a bleak shadow over the future of millions of vulnerable people around the world, and will force a paradigm shift in a sector that, despite its many flaws, has been and remains essential not only to saving lives but also to the economic and democratic progress of dozens of countries.

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