One year after the second Trump administration moved to dismantle USAID, leaving a gap of more than US$35 billion across more than 120 countries, the future of global aid remains uncertain and millions of lives are now at risk.
The rapid closure disrupted life-saving projects related to food security, clean water, health care, poverty reduction, gender-based violence prevention and human rights
Beyond USAID, the scale of the decline in foreign aid is staggering.
A Lancet study projected that the termination of more than 10,000 USAID contracts could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including more than 4.5 million children under five. CIDRAP reported that other models have projected more than four million additional AIDS deaths if the cuts continue.
Canada had an opportunity “to step up and to play a meaningful role,“ said Heather McPherson, NDP MP for Edmonton Strathcona.
Instead, as U.S. cuts deepen, European donors have retreated as humanitarian needs have grown. Canada has followed the global trend of reducing foreign aid spending. Major powers are increasingly tying aid more closely to trade and foreign policy interests rather than to poverty reduction. Communities in crisis are being left to absorb the consequences of a global aid landscape undergoing a colossal shift — or what some call a collapse.
From shuttered health facilities in Somalia to disrupted HIV programs across Africa, the shift is being felt most acutely by women, children, LGBTQ+ communities, sex workers and people living in poverty.
Although the U.S. rolled back foreign aid in Trump’s first administration, this time “it’s just been a full-on hatchet job,“ explained Liam Swiss, a sociology professor at Acadia University specializing in Canadian foreign policy.
He said the American cuts between 2024 and 2025 were over US$35 billion, with the number “likely to increase next year, and in this instance,” contrary to Trump’s first administration, “there’s no indication that other governments are actually stepping up to try and fill any of that gap.“
Aid, trade and Canadian interests
In Canada, the 0.32 per cent of gross national income (GNI) that goes to the foreign aid envelope is being redefined around Canadian interests: trade, diplomacy, security, and domestic accounting, experts told Ricochet.
For McPherson, it’s clear Canada is “using official development assistance dollars to further trade negotiations and trade relationships” to the detriment of human rights, women’s rights and poverty reduction in the world, saying “that’s not how this is supposed to go.”
This has only increased since the closure of Canada’s own development agency, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), according to Stephen Brown, a professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa.
“There is this sort of mythology of Canadians punching above our weight on the world stage.”
“The Harper government wanted foreign aid to be more under the control of Foreign Affairs and International Trade,“ so it was merged with Global Affairs Canada in 2013, he said.
Brown explained that this changes the recipients of foreign aid since Canada trades with “middle-income countries, not the poorest of the poor,” and as trade gets prioritized, “we’re going to provide less, and perhaps significantly less, to poor countries, fragile states and states in conflict.”
Brown explained the Canadian foreign aid system is “a very average system when you compare it to other donors“ of similar national wealth.
Furthermore, Canadian foreign aid is “more centralized, slower, more bureaucratic than most,“ he continued. “It’s been well documented that Canada gets bogged down by red tape more than other donors.“
Canada spent US$7.2 billion on official development assistance (ODA) in 2025, 0.38 points behind the 0.7 per cent of GNI target set by countries in the 1970s — an effort Canada was an important leader of, said McPherson, who is the NDP critic for foreign affairs and international development.
Although the U.S. has also always been below the target, said Swiss, it has been “the largest donor just by virtue of the size of their economy.“
The U.S. retreat left a hole no country could easily fill. But Canada has not tried to soften the blow; it has moved in the same direction.
McPherson pointed to the most recent federal budget that included a “$2.7 billion cut to international development funding.“
This cut brings it back to its “pre-pandemic levels,” said Swiss.
Foreign aid has decreased not only because of the closure of USAID and Canada’s own cuts, but a global trend of donors reducing ODA in the wake of increasing needs and multiple shocks, said aid experts.
Swiss explained, foreign aid changes “in parallel with the expansion and contraction of the world economy,“ and right now, he said, it seems, “we’re in a period of contraction.“
The global economic downturn, conflicts disrupting supply chains and the post-COVID-19 affordability crisis are also being reflected in reductions to foreign aid.
According to Our World in Data, the latest OECD figures from 2025 show aid from top donor countries fell between 2023 and 2024, ranging from a one per cent drop in the U.S. to a 22 per cent decline in Germany.
According to the same dataset, Canada’s foreign aid decreased by eight per cent.
On Canada playing a major role, Swiss said, “Even if Canada wanted to step in there, it’s not actually something feasible that we could do.“ Nor, he added, can the private sector, like philanthropies, “make up for this shortfall.“
McPherson not only criticized the cuts but also said Canada is “not living up to the rule of law we have” regarding the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act (2008), and further criticized the recent closure of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE), which investigated human rights abuses abroad involving Canadian corporations.
The office, created in 2019, was closed by Prime Minister Mark Carney in June, having done “no real investigations,” McPherson said, arguing it failed to hold Canadian companies accountable.
This clashes with the country’s self-image, as “there is this sort of mythology of Canadians punching above our weight on the world stage,” she said. “We like that we have this reputation as peacekeepers and peacebuilders, even though at this moment in time it’s deeply undeserved.”
She explained the ODAA Act itself mandates foreign aid must be provided only if it contributes to poverty reduction or is consistent with international human rights standards.
The act also mandates a minister be responsible for the Act, but the current administration has since downgraded it to a Secretary of State.
Although cuts are not new in Canadian foreign policy, “this government is quite egregious,” said McPherson. She highlighted cuts by previous governments to public engagement and global citizenship. By doing so, she said, “they have undermined international support for international development,” setting the stage for its current defunding.
Because of the size and impact of USAID, McPherson said, “To shut that organization down like that, just turned off the lights,” she argued, “has had far-reaching implications we’re still dealing with.”
McPherson emphasized, when countries like Canada and the U.S. “pull back from their obligations internationally, it makes the world less safe for all of us.“
From long-term support to emergency triage
In Somalia, that retreat is not abstract.
Suganya Kimbrough, program development and quality assurance director with World Vision Somalia, explained they have seen a 60 per cent reduction in foreign aid.
Because of this “sudden pullback,” she explained, “many organizations, especially smaller local Somali partners, have had to either cease their operations or downsize significantly.“
This has a greater impact on women and children, she explained.
A 2026 report by the Women’s Refugee Commission found U.S. foreign aid cuts have weakened access to health care, services for survivors of gender-based violence and educational opportunities for women, children and other marginalized communities.
The report identified three main impacts, each shaped by the same pre-existing inequities and gender roles that force women and girls to carry much of the care work when public services are cut.
Women and girls lost access to vital health services, including maternal and child health care, sexual and reproductive health care, and treatment for HIV/AIDS. It also documented the deaths of women in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Yemen.
The cuts also affected access to gender-based violence prevention and response services for more than three million people. The report found another $116 million was stripped from training and education programs.
In Somalia, “at least 200 health facilities have closed,“ she said, 40 of those being World Vision’s own facilities, “due to the funding cuts, lack of supplies coming into Somalia as a result of the current conflict in Iran,“ Kimbrough explained.
Their current strategy is “rationalization, because we can’t support the 30 per cent of the population that is in crisis right now,“ Kimbrough said. For World Vision Somalia, the top priority area is where kids are severely malnourished.
Beyond the recent funding issues, sustaining frontline development organizations like World Vision into the future is a longstanding issue.
“We don’t want to be seen as an actor that comes in, delivers a program, and then leaves.” She explained their goal is to establish an area-based approach. This builds longer-term resilience, and “sustainable programming so that we’re embedded within a community for a very long time,” said Kimbrough.
But a lack of funding has meant organizations have had to scale back as aid now mostly turns to short-term interventions.
However, she said, “We’re continuing to operate in the key areas through key interventions with the limited funding that we have available.”
The shift from community-based support to emergency triage is not limited to Somalia.
When countries like Canada and the U.S. “pull back from their obligations internationally, it makes the world less safe for all of us.”
The Stephen Lewis Foundation told Ricochet that the closure of USAID and the overall reduction in funding have shifted the care received by the beneficiaries from community-based care, or community-driven outreach, to a facilities-based one, with huge implications for women, sex workers and the LGBTQ+ communities they serve through 95 community-led organizations in 14 countries across Africa.
The Stephen Lewis Foundation’s focus is “supporting community-led organizations working on the frontlines of the HIV epidemic in countries across Africa.” After USAID’s closure, SLF partners could not deliver life-prolonging medication, even though they had plenty in stock and many of their ambulances remained parked.
The suddenness and the lack of clarity caused an incredible emotional and psychological impact on aid recipients, as Leah Teklemariam, director of programs with the SLF, explained. “These life-saving services and supports just suddenly, in an instant, they were not there, even when you can see them,” she explained.
According to Teklemariam, “these aren’t just bureaucratic administrative decisions; these affect people’s lives and their ability to trust in their future.”
SLF said shortages and changes in the medication regime, the type of care the communities received and the bureaucracy in the early stages of the executive order, when uncertainty reigned, led to medication resistance, and even patients only seeking treatment in later stages of HIV.
She described not only funding but also an ideological shift as having a “real ripple effect” with impacts not just on an individual’s health, “but for the entire health of the community,” while exacerbating long-standing inequalities, she explained.
As World Vision continues to advocate for multi-year funding, Kimbrough said Canadian-funded multi-year projects show what longer-term aid can do when it is sustained.
Building resilience, not dependence
One example, she said, is Reacts-In, a Canadian-funded six-million-dollar long-term investment in Baidoa, the largest city in Southwest Somalia.
The initiative started in 2023 and will continue until 2030. Reacts-In has so far helped 475,651 direct beneficiaries, with a focus on nutrition and gender equality, under Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP).
Long-term investments like this one, she explained, help “strengthen systems and look at long-term solutions.“
FIAP, explained Swiss, hasn’t been given the “same priority under this most recent government under the Carney Liberals.”
Another systems strengthening program is BLOOM in the disputed and controversial territory in northern Somalia, Somaliland, which has partial international recognition as an independent state.
BLOOM also operates in Tanzania and Rwanda, with $5 million going directly to the northern territory from 2025 to 2030 to empower marginalized adolescent and young women through what Kimbrough described as transformative work rather than one-off training.
This year, however, Somalia did not receive humanitarian funding from Global Affairs Canada, explained Kimbrough.
MAPLE is another Canadian-funded project, with Save the Children Somalia, that underscores the importance of multi-year funding, as it is on track to end this year, explained Mohamed Abdulkadir, senior director of program delivery for Save the Children Somalia.
Although it ends as planned, it highlights the need for long-term sustained investment for what both aid directors described as “life-changing projects.”
World Vision Somalia is still implementing one remaining USAID-funded grant, which is expected to end in September 2026.
“If they [corporations] did pay taxes, well, then aid would be a lot less necessary.”
The closure of USAID saw “very rapid closure of projects without adequate time for transition or sustainability,“ explained Kimbrough. But it is not just USAID, she explained. “We’ve seen quite a few other donors, European donors in particular, also deprioritizing Somalia.“
She thinks there has been “a drastic shift in how power dynamics are at play with international aid,” who should make funding decisions and the role the Global South should have, she said.
However, she emphasized, “the families that are being impacted on the ground have very little say.” She wishes “there had been a plan in place before all the funding changed so drastically.”
Brown said, “No single actor can replace it; USAID was just so big.”
For Canada to step in and lead change as suggested by McPherson, he said it’s not just overcoming a lack of political will, but also “we’d have to do more than just change Global Affairs Canada procedures internally,” because, he continued, “the broader Canadian government doesn’t allow for many things.”
Beyond foreign aid, Teklemariam suggests we look at debt justice, while Brown suggests closing tax loopholes, tax havens and preventing multinational corporations from engaging in transfer pricing to further improve the global system and “improve conditions in developing countries.”
“If they [corporations] did pay taxes, well, then aid would be a lot less necessary,” said Brown.
