Seventeen cents. That’s all. Imagine trying to provide food, shelter, and medical care for a person in crisis with just 17 cents per day. Less than a bandage, a handful of rice, a sip of clean water. This isn’t a thought experiment; it’s the brutal mathematical forecast for humanitarian aid in 2025 if USAID, a cornerstone of the global system, is dismantled. Funding per person in is set to plummet to this shockingly inadequate level.
A Crisis of Scale
The collapse of humanitarian funding comes at the worst possible moment:
In 2017: 92.8 million people needed aid across 33 humanitarian appeals, with a total of US$22.2 billion required of which US$21.80 billion was funded - Source 2017 Global HNO and OCHA FTS 2017
In 2025: 305.1 million people are estimated by the UN to need aid across 42 humanitarian appeals, requiring US47.4 billion required, however with US funded frozen currently available funding in 2025 is likely to be closer to 19.3 billion. - Source 2025 Global HNO
In just eight short years, the number of people facing crisis – families uprooted by conflict, children facing starvation, communities devastated by disaster – has more than tripled. Yet instead of the surge in support desperately needed, we’re witnessing the dismantling of the system’s largest donor.
2017 to 2025 Comparison FTS data
The “Fair Share” Fallacy: Why Other Donors Can’t Replace USAID
Some voices suggest that as USAID steps back, other donors could simply step up to fill the gap, if everyone just contributed their “fair share.” But a hard look at the numbers reveals this is not just wishful thinking – it’s a dangerous delusion.
Visualizing USAID’s Foundational Role in the Humanitarian System
The diagrams below powerfully illustrates the distribution of humanitarian funding from major donors between 2017 and 2024. All of this data has come from UN OCHAs Financial Tracking Service , extracted to this excel table by me.
The Financial Tracking Service (FTS) is a vital tool for understanding the global humanitarian funding landscape. Managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), this online database provides a near real-time overview of humanitarian funding flows. It tracks funding needs and contributions from various sources, including governments, UN agencies, NGOs, and other humanitarian actors. While participation in FTS is voluntary, it remains the most comprehensive source of publicly available information on humanitarian financing. The data is continuously updated and fully downloadable, allowing for in-depth analysis and informed decision-making. FTS plays a crucial role in improving coordination and transparency within the humanitarian sector
FTS data is particularly important in the context of the recent USAID funding freeze. By analysing FTS figures, we can gain valuable insights into the scale of the funding gap created by the freeze and its potential impact on humanitarian response efforts.
From reviewing the FTS data we can clearly see, that the United States (USAID) consistently dwarfs all other individual donors in its contribution to global humanitarian aid.
FTS Data 2017 to 2024
FTS Data 2017 to 2024
This data underscores a critical point: USAID’s leading role in humanitarian funding is not a recent anomaly, but a consistent pattern over years. In fact, the modern humanitarian system, as we know it today, has been significantly shaped and underpinned by this long-term, substantial commitment from the United States. For decades, organizations like the UN agencies and international NGOs have relied on this predictable and significant funding stream to plan and implement large-scale operations to address global crises. It’s also important to consider this dominance in the context of economic scale. The United States possesses the world’s largest economy, accounting for approximately 26% of the global GDP.
While the percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that the US allocates to official development assistance (ODA) may be lower than some other OECD nations (many of whom strive to meet the 0.7% UN target), the sheer size of the US economy translates to a massive volume of humanitarian funding in absolute terms.
As this GDP comparison illustrates, while other OECD countries like Germany, the UK, and France are significant economies and important humanitarian donors, their economies are considerably smaller than that of the United States. Therefore, while the “fair share” concept is often discussed in percentage terms, the absolute scale of the US contribution naturally reflects its position as the world’s largest economy.
The humanitarian funding system, particularly for UN agencies and major international NGOs, is fundamentally reliant on contributions from OECD countries. However, within this group of donors, the consistent and substantial funding from the United States, channeled primarily through USAID, has been the bedrock upon which much of the system’s capacity and response has been built. To lose this cornerstone is not just a funding cut; it’s a systemic shock with potentially devastating consequences.
Understanding the “Fair Share” Proposal
The “fair share” proposal emerges as a suggested solution to the massive funding gap left by USAID’s dismantling. The core concept is straightforward: when USAID, a major contributor, withdraws its funding, the remaining donors could proportionally increase their contributions to compensate. This proportional increase would be based on each donor’s current share of the remaining non-USAID humanitarian funding. A simple analogy helps illustrate this: imagine a group of friends splitting a restaurant bill. If one friend suddenly leaves without paying their portion, the remaining friends would need to increase their individual contributions to cover the outstanding balance. The “fair share” proposal applies this same principle to global humanitarian funding.
Calculation Methodology: Step-by-Step
To see why the ‘fair share’ proposal is a fallacy, let’s examine the cold, hard math of the calculation methodology, step-by-step:
- First, we begin by considering the current total humanitarian funding recording in FTS excluding USAID’s contribution. In 2024, this non-USAID funding amounts to $19.3 billion. This figure forms the baseline for calculating proportional shares.
- Second, we determine each individual donor’s current percentage share of this non-USAID funding pool. This step establishes the relative contribution of each donor compared to others, excluding USAID.
- Third, we apply each donor’s calculated percentage share directly to USAID’s $13.9 billion funding gap. By multiplying USAID’s gap by each donor’s percentage share (from step two), we arrive at their specific “fair share” of the additional funding needed to compensate for USAID’s absence.
- Finally, we add this “fair share” of extra funding to each donor’s existing contribution level. This summation provides the “new total needed” – the total amount each donor would have to contribute under the “fair share” proposal to maintain current overall funding levels despite USAID’s departure.
What This Means for Each Donor Group:
To illustrate the practical implications of this “fair share” approach, let’s examine how it would impact different categories of donors:
Major Donors: “The Big Three” (Currently providing 36% of non-US funding)
This group comprises Germany, the European Commission, and the United Kingdom. Collectively, they currently provide 36% of all humanitarian funding excluding USAID.
- For Germany, whose current contribution is $2.6 billion and represents 13% of non-US funding, the required extra contribution would be $1.8 billion. This would bring their new total needed to $4.4 billion, representing a substantial 70% increase.
- The European Commission, with a current contribution of $2.4 billion (12% of non-US funding), would need to increase by an extra $1.7 billion, resulting in a new total of $4.1 billion and a 71% required increase.
- The United Kingdom, currently contributing $2.1 billion (11% of non-US funding), would face a required extra contribution of $1.5 billion, pushing their new total needed to $3.6 billion and a 74% increase.
Mid-Sized Donors (Currently providing about 20% of non-US funding)
This category includes donors like Sweden, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Norway, and the UAE, who each contribute a smaller but still significant portion of non-USAID funding.
- For Sweden, Japan, and Saudi Arabia (each contributing approximately 6% of non-US funding), their current contributions of about $1.2 billion each would require an extra contribution of roughly $830 million each. Their new total needed would be approximately $2 billion each, representing an approximate 70% increase.
- For Norway and the UAE (each at approximately 4% of non-US funding), current contributions of about $800 million each would necessitate an extra $560 million each. Their new total needed becomes about $1.4 billion each, also around a 70% increase.
Smaller Donors (Currently providing about 44% of non-US funding combined)
This broader category includes a wide range of countries and private donors that, while contributing less individually, collectively represent a significant portion of non-USAID funding.
- For countries like South Korea and Qatar, with current contributions in the range of $300-400 million each, the required increases would be in the order of 90-97%, necessitating nearly doubling their current funding levels.
- Private donors and other smaller contributors, currently providing around $250 million in total, would need to increase their collective contribution by over 50% to reach a new total of approximately $375 million.
Reality Check: European Aid in Reverse - And This Was Before USAID Cuts Hit (Data from Late 2024/Early 2025)
The idea that other donors can easily fill the gap? European trends show the opposite – major cuts already happening before USAID’s potential dismantling. Sources like Devex and The Guardian reveal:
- Germany Slashing Aid: Devex and other sources reported in late 2024 that Germany, a major European donor, is planning significant cuts to its foreign aid budget for 2025, including humanitarian assistance. While initial reports indicated a potential halving of humanitarian aid, German NGOs have strongly criticized these cuts as a reversal of international solidarity. These cuts are part of a broader austerity budget for 2025
- France Deep Cuts Imminent: Recent data from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), updated in January 2025, confirms that France’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) decreased by 2.5% in real terms in 2023. OECD analysis further indicates that budget laws for 2024 suggest a continued downward trajectory for French aid, with a significant decrease of 15.8% in real terms in bilateral ODA to developing countries in 2023, as domestic spending priorities take precedence. Initial reports in 2023, such as from Devex, indicated potential cuts of 35% or €2 billion to the main aid budget for 2025. While exact final figures for 2025 are still emerging, official OECD data confirms a clear trend of reduced French aid and a shift away from development assistance.
- EU Re-prioritizing :The EU is diverting €2 billion away from development aid to address needs related to Ukraine and migration. This re-prioritization is leading to significant drops in aid for other regions, with some of the poorest nations facing cuts of up to 73%. This shift indicates a change in aid priorities to serve EU strategic interests
- Sweden & Netherlands Retreat: Reports indicate that Sweden and the Netherlands are significantly reducing their long-term aid commitments. Sweden has moved away from its long-standing pledge to dedicate 1% of GNI to aid, and the Netherlands is implementing substantial cuts, influenced by right-leaning political agendas
Bottom Line: Even before any USAID cuts fully materialize, Europe is already pulling back on aid. Expecting these donors to suddenly increase contributions to cover a massive USAID gap is simply detached from reality. The humanitarian funding crisis is deepening rapidly.
The Perfect Storm: Needs Exploding, Funding Collapsing
A convergence of catastrophic trends has created a humanitarian perfect storm, unlike anything witnessed before. Consider these undeniable realities:
- Humanitarian Needs Tripled: Global humanitarian needs have not just increased, they have more than tripled since 2017. The scale of crises is overwhelming the system.
- The Linchpin Vanishes: The world’s single largest humanitarian donor, USAID, is on the verge of dismantling. This isn’t a minor reduction; it’s the potential removal of the system’s foundational funding pillar.
- Donors Cutting, Not Compensating: Instead of rising to the challenge, key European donors, historically vital to the system, are implementing significant aid cuts, as recent reporting reveals. The trend is decisively downward, not upward.
Inescapable Conclusion: Mathematical Impossibility
The stark mathematics of this situation lead to one inescapable and terrifying conclusion: the global humanitarian system is plunging into a funding crisis of unprecedented proportions. Even with the most optimistic – and unrealistic – assumptions about other donors stepping up to their “fair share” obligations, the sheer magnitude of USAID’s contribution makes it mathematically impossible to fill this colossal gap and meet today’s overwhelming needs.
While the “fair share” proposal optimistically suggests other donors could compensate for the loss of USAID funding, even if this were miraculously achieved, it would at best return the system to the projected 2024 funding level before the cuts. However, this level is woefully inadequate.
In 2017, the global humanitarian appeals requested $22.2 billion to meet needs. For 2025, that requested amount has more than doubled to a staggering $47.4 billion, reflecting a tripling of humanitarian needs since 2017. Therefore, even in the absolute best-case “fair share” scenario, where funding is restored to the projected 2024 level, the system would still be billions of dollars short of the realistically requested funding, and dramatically under-resourced to cope with needs that have more than tripled since 2017. The system, already stretched to its breaking point and designed for needs one-third of today’s realities, is facing a collapse of funding in the face of exponentially rising needs – a truly perfect storm with devastating consequences for millions.
Looking Ahead
Looking ahead, we face a stark reality: the humanitarian system must adapt to a dramatically reduced funding environment. This isn’t a set of desired recommendations, but a recognition of unavoidable triage if we are to function in a world of collapsing resources and exploding needs. We must confront these necessities:
- Re-define “Humanitarian Need” Realistically: We can no longer operate with broad, aspirational Humanitarian Response Plans. With most appeals likely to be drastically underfunded, we must tighten our definition of “need” for HNOs and HRPs. Expect far lower coverage of appeals across the board.
- Consolidate & Prioritize Basic Needs: The current cluster system and diverse mandates risk becoming unsustainable. We likely need to consolidate coordination efforts, streamline actors, and ruthlessly prioritize basic needs – mirroring the focus on core survival seen in refugee settings. Reduce overlaps, eliminate redundancies, and ask: what is critical, not just “nice-to-have”?
- Define Core Humanitarian Function: Provider of Last Resort: We must explicitly define the humanitarian system’s absolute core function: to act as a provider of last resort where states are unable or unwilling to meet basic survival needs. In this drastically constrained environment, the priority must be saving the maximum number of lives possible.
Imagine a Camp Food Pipeline Breakdown
If food deliveries to a camp abruptly collapse, aid workers face immediate, brutal triage decisions. It’s no longer about providing full rations to everyone. It becomes about stark choices of who gets what little food is available to maximize survival:
- Prioritize the Most Vulnerable: Food would immediately be triaged to those at highest risk of death: acutely malnourished children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, the severely ill, and the frail elderly. These groups become the absolute priority for limited food stocks.
- Reduced Rations for Others: Healthy adults and older children might receive drastically reduced rations, barely enough for survival, or potentially nothing at all if supplies are critically low. The focus shifts from adequate nutrition to preventing immediate death in the most vulnerable.
- Impossible Choices: Aid workers would face agonizing decisions: Do you prioritize a slightly larger ration for severely malnourished infants, potentially leaving more older children with almost nothing? Do you allocate food to those with the highest chance of survival, even if it means others, equally deserving, are left to starve? These are the brutal questions of triage.
System-Wide Triage is Coming
This camp food crisis scenario is a microcosm of the system-wide breakdown we are facing. We are heading towards a reality where the global humanitarian system will be forced to make similar, agonizing triage decisions across entire countries and crises, not just in isolated camps, due to the collapsing funding landscape. The question becomes not “how do we meet all needs?” but “how do we prioritize the most critical needs to save the greatest number of lives possible when resources are catastrophically limited?”
Not a Recommendation, But Reality
Let me be clear: do I believe these triage choices are better? Absolutely not. Do I recommend this path? Certainly not. But by all accounts, the dismantling of USAID is proceeding, and even if funding is reinstated in the future, it’s highly likely to be a fraction of previous levels, at least in the near term. We must react to the reality before us, not cling to wishful thinking. Telling ourselves that private donors or other nations – like China, whose humanitarian contribution last year was a mere US$218,636.0 total funding reported to FTS– will magically step in and fill a multi-billion dollar gap is simply not credible. We must, therefore, confront these difficult choices and prepare for a humanitarian system fundamentally reshaped by scarcity and agonizing prioritization.
Conclusion: Beyond Blame, Towards Brutal Realities – Humanitarian Aid in a New Era
We stand at a painful crossroads. Let’s be clear about the core truths:
- America’s Choice: It is ultimately America’s sovereign decision how to allocate its resources. We may disagree with dismantling USAID, but it is their prerogative. This isn’t about assigning blame; it’s about facing the consequences of a national choice.
- The Cruelty of the Cut – and the Speed: Beyond the sheer volume of lost funding, the abruptness of this shift inflicts immense damage. Lack of notice disrupts planning, breaks trust, and undermines fragile programs overnight. The how is almost as damaging as the what.
- No Going Back to “Normal”: This is not a temporary dip. The trends are clear. Even if US funding partially returns, the scale and reliability of the past are likely gone for the foreseeable future. We cannot wait for a return to a “normal” that is no longer on the horizon.
The Path Forward: Beyond Hope, Towards Hard Choices:
- Acknowledge the Void: Wishful thinking about replacements is futile. We must internalize the reality of a massive, enduring funding gap.
- Embrace Triage – System-Wide: The camp food pipeline analogy is no longer hypothetical. Triage is not a choice; it is the unavoidable operating principle for a severely under-resourced system.
- Focus Ruthlessly on Core Survival: “Nice-to-haves” are over. The humanitarian system’s focus must laser in on basic survival needs – food, water, shelter, basic healthcare – to save the most lives possible with drastically limited means.
- Demand Efficiency, Innovation, Accountability: Every remaining dollar must be stretched further than ever before. Waste, duplication, and inefficiency are now unforgivable. New financing models and radical program adaptation are not optional; they are essential.
- Honest Conversations - Now: We owe it to affected populations, partners, and ourselves to have brutally honest conversations about the limits of what the humanitarian system can now realistically deliver. Transparency and managing expectations are paramount.
The Era of Abundance is Over. The Era of Reckoning is Here. We must face these hard truths, not with despair, but with a fierce determination to reshape the humanitarian system for a future defined by scarcity and agonizing choices. The lives of millions depend on it.