The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) executive director faces serious challenges, following cuts in development funding, amid escalating global conflict.
On January 20th, Donald Trump announced a suspension of all US foreign development assistance programs to conduct a comprehensive review. By March 10, 83% of the USAID program had ended, creating a funding gap of 60 billion US dollars (approximately 55.3 billion euros).
Surente warned that unless the US recovers support, the sector is facing a “very important situation.”
“We’re going to see an increase in population with all sorts of factors, including vulnerability, hunger, alienation, access to services. In this world, conflicts are dragged down, conflicts are not complete, new conflicts arise,” she said.
Most organizations in the humanitarian sector relied on a wide range of US funding, but until recently they accounted for around 40% of global humanitarian funding.
“The US is now essentially looking at its entire portfolio of development cooperation and humanitarian assistance,” Slente said, meaning that the roughly 1.5 million people who were planning to support it this year with US funding will no longer reach it.
According to a countdown 2030 Europe report, the US has cut eight European countries and the EU itself, and the EU itself has announced or implemented a total of 30 billion euros reduction in development support over the next four years.
“They’re doing it differently. It’s not day to day because it’s more planned. They’re not cutting contracts already signed and implemented. They’re planning a little further ahead,” the DRC president contrasts with a gradual way of Europe’s withdrawal from the more sudden exit of the US.
“Nottheless, it will have a complete impact on both the development and the humanitarian sector,” she added.
Can the EU step up?
“There’s a big open door for the EU to intervene,” Slente said. “The problem is, what the EU can do and willing to do.”
“I think we can see funding patterns in which European donors and European institutions take greater responsibility for many regions, such as Africa.
Earlier this year, in response to the US cuts, the European Commission told Euronows that the EU could not compensate for losses in US funds.
“Everyone in the international community must take responsibility. The funding gap will widen and annoy millions of people. The EU cannot fill this gap alone,” a spokesman for the committee said.
“I don’t want to see either EU institutions or other bilateral donors as a substitute for US funding,” Slente said.
“We’re a little worried about the trends we see in Europe. There’s not all the support needed for the strong European Union stance on these topics,” Slente pointed out.
She added that increasingly, more and more central governments are comparing foreign aid with domestic policies, leading to public questions about international aid priorities, such as why countries fund education in Somali rather than investing the same resources in their own education system.
Surente believes the story is common in the US and is “even more dangerous than fundraising, as it encourages other governments to board.”
