'We never seriously prepared for this': Fallout from the USAID fiasco
Rights workers facing pay reductions and lay-offs as US foreign aid freeze cripples humanitarian groups
Speaking over the phone from Taiwan, the melancholy in Francis’ (not his real name) voice was palpable.
“Surprisingly, I didn't feel angry. I feel more… sad, [more] sadness.
“It's like we are abandoning our partners, and we are destroying all the democratic progress that we have established for many, many years.”
Francis asked to remain anonymous when interviewed for this article. This week, he works for an organisation that promotes democracy in the Indo-Pacific region. Next week, he’ll be looking for a new job — recent cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have meant his organisation has been plunged into financial uncertainty.
Since US president Donald Trump took office in January, the news cycle has been as predictable as it is depressing: Trump publicly berating wartime Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, working to remove legal protections for trans people, threatening to annex Canada and Panama, making noise about buying Greenland, trade wars, tariffs, viewing Gaza as little more than real estate opportunity… the faecal cacophony we knew was coming is already on overdrive.
One of the main ingredients of this cauldron of shit is the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO, Nazi salute enthusiast and possibly the worst wearer of baseball caps in human history, Elon Musk, who is proudly helming the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a few short weeks, Musk’s DOGE has gutted numerous federal agencies, including, as many have already pointed out, those that had plans to regulate his businesses.
The cuts (which have already been devastating for government or government-funded bodies in the US, and are too numerous to list here) included freezing foreign financial assistance under USAID, with plans to reduce the agency’s staff from around 10,000 employees to fewer than 300.
For rights organisations, NGOs and exile media groups from countries in crisis — particularly those in Southeast Asia and Africa — this has effectively been a death knell. Those able to keep going have had to make agonising choices about how and where to reallocate their funds; how many of their employees will face significant pay cuts, how many will lose their jobs. In the Indo-Pacific region, where numerous rights groups have relied largely — or, in some cases, completely — on USAID funding, the effects have been severe.
“This kind of international aid system has been around in the US government for many decades,” says Francis. “We have some partners that we [have been] regularly working with for many, many years.” Now, because of this unprecedented freeze, these partners have also started letting staff go.
“It's not just about us. It's about all of our civil society partners in the region, and all the experts or stakeholders that we're working with.” Among the affected are political dissidents, particularly diaspora from Myanmar and Hong Kong, who fled their home nations after severe clampdowns.
For groups focused on Myanmar, DOGE’s cuts yanked the rug out from under their feet. “Their funding usually is, like, 100 percent USAID. After that was stopped, our Myanmar office [needed] to stop immediately,” says Francis.
“We never thought through and seriously prepared for this risk,” says ‘Mark’, a journalist from Myanmar who is currently living in Thailand. Writing by email, Mark also asked for a pseudonym to be used instead of his real name due to safety concerns.
“Everyone across the board has been hit hard,” Mark adds. “But in terms of downstream impact on communities who are the beneficiaries, it will be the ones who are in need of support for healthcare.
“My work with journalists, for example, is important, but no one is going to die immediately from not being able to read the news. But in the long run, it will lead to a choking off of an already struggling sector, which makes me very worried that civil society will be even less resourced than it already is.”
The Guardian recently published an article detailing how exile media groups covering Myanmar have been affected. In it, Su Myat, a Burmese journalist who runs the exile media site ThanLwinKhet News, detailed the challenges she now has to grapple with:
Operating on a shoestring budget that was entirely reliant on USAid funding, Su works with a network of journalists in Mae Sot and a small cohort of citizen journalists inside Myanmar that she has trained to covertly file.
A journalist of 20 years, Su, who has the documentation needed to live in Thailand, is now using her own funds to pay the salaries of her team – albeit at 50% – and providing them with a small home and cheap meals.
The search for alternative financial lifelines is no easy task. Reaching out to prospective funders, writing up applications and proposals, building connections, agreeing on terms, amounts, where the funds are allocated — it’s a long list of time-consuming labour required just to keep these cash-strapped groups alive, with no guarantee any of this work will pay off. And, thanks to the US’s impulsive move, there is no buffer or grace period.
“Funding for Myanmar has been on the wane since 2021 when the coup happened,” says Mark. “Perhaps other funders will step up to fill in the gap, but […] it's still a long drawn out process for organisations to build the relationships and trust needed to have a healthy funder-recipient relationship, and in the meantime organisations will have very serious cash flow problems.”
For those from Hong Kong — many of whom fled to nearby Taiwan — there are additional concerns about where alternative funding might come from. Soon after the USAID freeze, some support organisations were contacted by Chinese-based entities offering to fill the financial void.
“After the US pulled their funding, we are already seeing some of the stakeholders being approached by Beijing,” says Francis. “They are saying that ‘Oh, right now the US cannot fund you and we are interested [in] working with you, we have got some money’. We already got some updates for our partners that China… they were [contacted] by [People’s Republic of China] actors to offer this kind of charity to them.”
Last month, NPR reported that at least two human rights groups in the US that had been recipients of US government funding were contacted by people linked to the Chinese Communist Party, offering to introduce them to alternative funders in China:
A Chinese state representative who answers to the government and requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly confirmed they have reached out to at least one China-focused civil society group based in the U.S. that is at risk of losing funding.
They say they proposed to the group that instead of criticizing people and organizations in China publicly, they could facilitate private conversations within China to achieve social change — a proposition one of the groups this person was in contact with said felt like a tactic buy their silence. The Chinese state representative argued it would be a more effective way for them to work.
Though not everyone is angry about the agency’s dismantling, with a number of voices on both ends of the political spectrum celebrating the demise of USAID. The right claim that these cuts are necessary to combat wasteful and frivolous government spending, while the left celebrate the end of a programme perceived to be hypocritical and imperialist, tainted by CIA meddling through American “blood money”.
Even its supporters concede that USAID is far from perfect, and that there are elements of truth to the criticisms. While he hasn’t personally seen any sign of such activity, Francis accepts it’s possible that, in a huge agency like USAID which handles massive amounts of money, there might be some corruption or inefficiency. “I’m not opposed to the idea of looking into it, like investigating the system or investigating the mechanism,” he says. But how that’s done matters. “I don’t think it’s really a good idea to just stop everything right away without weighing the consequences.”
He also points to the tireless work he’s seen carried out by countless NGOs, aid and rights workers, delivering life-saving care or providing education and basic necessities to communities in dire need. For example, initiatives which have been affected by the cuts include programmes to combat famine and malnutrition, landmine clearing programmes, and groups working to stop the spread of diseases like HIV and tuberculosis.
Francis believes the benefits that have come out of the work far outweigh the problems highlighted by USAID’s most vehement critics.
“People would need to see [for] themselves what USAID has achieved throughout the past decades… they would know [that] at least there are some programmes [and] most of the money really has been helping people […] I think sometimes misunderstanding comes from not getting enough information.”
Regardless of whether USAID is in need of serious reform, Trump and Musk’s sudden moves have caused unnecessary upheaval with serious consequences across the world. Organisations were given no time to transition away from their dependency on US funding, no opportunity to properly restructure or seek out alternative funding. “If you see a bank that is having trouble, you just don't close out the bank right away without giving [people a chance to access their money] or stop people from getting their deposit. I think that's really absurd,” Francis adds.
In the US, the Trump administration continues to bulldoze through numerous government agencies and upend diplomatic norms; it’s been announced that the US will halt all military aid to Ukraine and there’s ongoing speculation that Trump is moving to disband the Department of Education.
Internationally, there’s now a global scramble for alternative support mechanisms. Francis says that many rights groups are now turning to European organisations and private donors. But USAID is a huge hole to plug, and there’s no guarantee that other funders will be able to step up their giving to make up for its loss.
“I really want to be as optimistic [as possible] here, but I don’t think I can be right now,” Francis says.