By: Marta Garde

Jessica Stern Quoted

Read in EFE

International Newsroom, (EFE) – International humanitarian aid ends 2025 with its foundations reduced to their bare minimum. The trigger: the freezing of aid by the administration of US President Donald Trump, which forces organizations to both address needs with fewer resources and to rethink the functioning of the system itself.

The cuts by Washington after the Republican leader came to power last January affected tens of thousands of contracts of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The value of the affected foreign assistance as a whole amounted to approximately $60 billion (€51.5 billion).

The executive order that materialized the change specified that the bureaucracy and the US humanitarian sector were not aligned with the country's interests. "In many cases," it stipulated, they were contrary to its values and even served to "destabilize world peace by promoting ideas completely opposed to maintaining harmonious and stable internal and international relations."

For Jessica Stern, who during the term of Democrat Joe Biden (2021-2025) worked as a special envoy for the human rights of the LGBTQ+ community, this is a decision with "devastating and lasting consequences" for the humanitarian sector, which she warns is already "severely underfunded."

"The UN wasn't working perfectly before, but this is like using a chainsaw on a patient who needs a scalpel," explains the current co-founder of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice in an interview with EFE.

Drastic reduction in funds to save lives

The United Nations announced in early December that in 2026 it plans to halve the amount of money it requests from donor countries to help those affected by war and natural disasters. Their goal is to save 87 million lives, for which they require $23 billion (approximately €1.9 billion), an amount that represents less than 1% of what the world has spent on weapons in the last year and is less than half of what was requested for 2025 because the scarcity of resources forces them to prioritize.

But the executive director of UNICEF in Spain, José María Vera, emphasizes that although the US cuts have been "drastic," "with a very strong humanitarian component because it was the main donor," the context "is much more serious."

"Before and also after the US decision, there have been cuts in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and some Nordic countries," he tells EFE. He attributes this to "a lack of interest in extreme humanitarian situations in a context of questioning multilateralism" and a reduction in international cooperation to increase military spending.

According to a joint report by the Institute for Conflict Studies and Humanitarian Action (IECAH) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the financial decline of the humanitarian system in 2025 is estimated to be the largest in its history, with a decrease that could reach 34% compared to 2024 due to cuts from the US and European countries.

Focusing on the most vital aid

Adjusting to the new parameters has led humanitarian organizations to close programs, focus on the most vital aid, reduce their interventions to priority countries, or lower their ambitions.

For Manuel Sánchez-Montero, general director of the NGO Action Against Hunger, Trump's executive order "was an earthquake," but one that occurred "on tectonic plates that were already very unstable."

Therefore, they are urged to follow the maxim that "every crisis brings an opportunity," despite the risk that this nationalist shift will mean that only the "strongest, most solid, and agile" entities will survive. The void left by the United States allows countries like China and the Gulf states to step forward: while the former loses influence on the international stage, the latter gain it.

The co-founder of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice believes that the questions that need to be addressed are "long-term and more existential."

"This is a moment when we really have to confront the challenge of rebuilding the financial architecture of multilateralism. It's the only way forward," she concludes, "because if it has happened once, it can happen again, and we cannot afford to let down the people who depend on the UN."