After the Funding Cliff: Glide, don’t Crash
Guest blog by Oli Brown and Esther Waters-Crane originally published here. 2025—with its perfect storm of Trump 2.0 and the failure of the international community to halt the on-going devastation in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza—tore at the fragile fabric of international cooperation and the rules-based order perhaps more than any other time since the collapse of the League of Nations. The first week of 2026, with the US’s regime change in Venezuela – an intervention which is widely being seen as illegal under international law – continues the theme. The surge in right-wing populism, the return of zero-sum geopolitics, and Europe’s rush to rearm against Russian aggression have driven steep funding cuts for international development and humanitarian organizations. The dissolution of USAID under Trump was emblematic, but all major donors retrenched. Global overseas development aid has fallen by 20% since 2023, at a time when humanitarian need has never been great...