Humanitarian aid is being affected by the withdrawal of the US as a major donor, and the European Union is calling up other countries to join in to help, as the EU cannot compensate for the role the US used to have.
Earlier this year, Donald Trump moved in to dismantle and overhaul USAID, the agency responsible for humanitarian aid in the US. It meant a sudden loss of $10 billion (€8.9 billion) in humanitarian assistance. The end of US-supported aid presents enormous challenges to the rest of the world, as European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Hadja Lahbib, explained.
“In 2024, the United States provided 40% of the world’s humanitarian aid for health, and 61% for nutrition,” she said during her inaugural speech at the European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels.
According to Lahbib, the US withdrawal can result in “a 30% increase in the prevalence of tuberculosis and a 300% increase in the number of people infected with HIV. Above all, we will lose many infection monitoring programmes in certain regions of the world.”
Lahbib explained that the EU is currently unable to match the loss of the US. The bloc funds around €7.7 billion in humanitarian aid worldwide, with €1.9 billion coming straight from the EU budget. She is calling on further help from other countries to expand the number of donor countries. She also reminds European countries of their 2023 promise to finance humanitarian aid with 0.07% of their wealth.
In addition, the EU should ensure that current funds are optimised by moving aid closer to the destination country. She mentioned that “80% of the amount of humanitarian aid goes into logistics and delivery,” and that something can be done to lower that percentage by moving food production closer to where the aid is needed. Â
