Aid Cuts Tracker Main Document

Update: 15/09/2025 Instead of compiling these resources on Substack I will put them in a spreadsheet and keep updating it, sharing the file as I post relevant essays on particularly important updates. In the coming weeks, I’ll post an essay outlining this mini-project in more detail and what I hope to achieve from it and will include a link to the spreadsheet there. Then, I’ll probably delete this post and just update the spreadsheet, where it’s simpler to organise.

Here I will compile stories, NGO reports, academic studies, press releases, photography projects, etc… that I’ve found related to the ghoulish aid cuts made by the U.S., U.K., European Union, and Canada in recent months. Mostly collected from Reliefweb, The Guardian, and websites of organisations like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and ActionAid.

I don’t want this to just be a craptonne of data, but rather a tool where the impacts of these cuts are seen (hence I will pull from different sources). I’ll also pull some quotes or add a couple of comments from pieces that I find particularly interesting.

This project will likely skew towards the impacts of U.S. cuts, given the sheer scale and chaotic nature of the dismantling of aid, and U.K. cuts, from my country whose leaders I am deeply ashamed of (for many reasons including their cuts to foreign aid). The dismantling of foreign aid is simply murder, targeting the poorest people in the world, and I hope those responsible are held to account. If not, it’s my hope that we remember who they are and what they did. That is what this project will document. I began collecting these in August 2025, and will list them in order of when I came across the source, meaning they will mostly be in time order, with a few exceptions.

One last thing before the list: I want this to be interactive and to build a community that will discuss these issues and help me build a serious comprehensive list. If you stumble across this, I’d really appreciate if you would share.

With all that preamble out of the way, here is the list. I’ll keep adding to it over time:

NGO Reports, Press Releases, and Discussions

1. https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/2025/we-are-stunned-governments-decision-cut-aid-budget

2. https://data.one.org/analysis/uk-aid-cuts

3. https://www.one.org/press/one-campaign-challenges-uk-aid-cuts-pre-action-letter-sent-to-government-ahead-of-potential-judicial-review/

4. https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/mr-tom-fletcher-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-briefing-security-council-humanitarian-situation-syria-21-august-2025

5. https://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/dadaab-businesses-close-aid-cuts-shut-down-refugee-economy

6. https://reliefweb.int/report/bangladesh/half-million-rohingya-children-face-crisis-aid-dries-and-violence-escalates

7. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/vulnerability-low-and-middle-income-countries-impacts-aid-cuts-and-us-tariff-increases

8. https://reliefweb.int/report/bangladesh/eight-years-world-has-abandoned-rohingya-refugees

9. https://www.malariaconsortium.org/news/gavi-replenishment-marks-a-major-step-forward-but-the-shortfall-threatens-to-undo-critical-progress

10. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/us-halts-global-nine-clearing-efforts-amid-foreign-aid-review

Something I missed from earlier in January, with Trump ending funds for programmes that clear landmines and unexploded ordnance in ex-conflict zones. This includes in many cases, mines laid down by U.S. forces e.g. in Vietnam and Cambodia, which are still lethal more than 50 years after those wars ended. These nations are also among the hardest hit by Trump’s idiotic tariffs, hurting their economies and ability to finance their own mine-clearing operations (which they shouldn’t have to do).

“Demining organisations, including the HALO Trust and Mines Advisory Group, have emphasised that these efforts are integral to agricultural recovery, refugee return, and community safety.”

11. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/transition-minerals/revealed-trump-linked-firms-cash-in-on-mineral-lobbying-deals-as-us-cuts-aid/

12. https://actionaid.org/publications/2025/human-cost-public-cuts-africa#downloads

This report from ActionAid International refers more to the impacts of austerity measures and how they impact communities in six countries in Africa. I’ve included it in this list because I think it illustrates a similar point to when aid is cut. Plus, of course, austerity and public sector cuts in low income countries increase the dependence on foreign aid. The challenges to education and healthcare – and the gender disparities that result – are likely to be impacted by aid cuts. There is something truly disturbing that countries like Ethiopia, Malawi, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Liberia are forced to make cuts to their health and education, often to service debt, while the lifeline of foreign aid is also being taken away.

If you’re familiar with ActionAid and their reports, they often focus on important, timely issues: poverty and inequality, gender, education, healthcare, and climate change/climate injustice – always making sure to critique the root causes of these and the international community’s responsibility to finance development and foreign aid. This report covers much of this ground, adding to the data we have by polling those on the front lines (in the case of this report, teachers, nurses, and a focus group of locals who rely on these public services).

13. https://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/countries-africa-risk-running-out-wonder-food-over-next-3-months-due-aid-cuts

14. https://globalgoals.org/news/the-price-of-progress-what-cutting-aid-really-means-for-peoples-lives/

15. https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/biggest-ever-aid-cut-by-g7-countries-a-death-sentence-for-millions-of-people-oxfam/

Articles, Essays, and Art

Cutting Aid, Building Bombs

A post I wrote a few months ago venting about these cuts from the U.K. Labour government. Thanks to my friend Farideh for editing this one, she did an amazing job (you should have seen it before).

“For every anti-war opinion we hear on the news, we get several times as many pro-war ones. If inconvenient facts crop up, they're often just ignored. The recent announcement that defence spending will increase in the EU, up to $670 billion over four years, can only happen because money in politics guides these decisions.”

2. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/feb/11/trump-aid-freeze-endangers-millions-us-aid

3. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/starving-the-worlds-poor-is-one-of-trumps-most-reprehensible-acts

4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/25/uganda-usaid-cuts-photo-essay

“Local teachers and social workers spoke of “a race against time”, where every month of consistent support can be the difference between a child learning to read or joining an armed group.”

5. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/30/donald-trump-foreign-aid-freeze-impact-south-east-asia

6. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jul/10/lobbyists-linked-donald-trump-poorest-countries-mineral-resources-trade-deals-for-us-aid-military-support

This brilliant reporting by Mark Townsend gives us a rare insight into the logic behind these pay cuts, at least coming from the Trump administration. In short, it is about breaking the system to be able to personally profit and negotiate trade deals – particularly involving mineral resources. It’s grotesque; it’s Donald Trump. It’s also a pretty clear-cut case study of why business-like approaches aren’t able to be mapped onto politics, one that will likely cost many people their lives and livelihoods.

Also, see reference 11 in the NGO Reports, Press Releases, and Discussions section of this doc for the source investigation for Townsend’s article if you want to delve into this further.

7. https://www.fairplanet.org/story/when-aid-fails-in-uganda/

8. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/funding-cuts-afghanistan-obstruct-earthquake-response-2025-09-01/

9. https://news.sky.com/story/afghanistan-earthquake-a-catastrophe-compounded-by-trumps-aid-cuts-13423465

Academic Studies (peer-reviewed)

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext

This paper pretty much confirms that these cuts are the nail in the coffin of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is probably worth pointing out that those targets were an extension of the mostly met Millennium Development Goals. The main takeaway from this paper is the widely cited statistic that 14 million deaths will occur from Trump’s dismantling of USAID.