Fall in funding cuts aid to 1 million women: UN

The United States was the first to slash billions in foreign assistance in 2025, but other major donors have followed suit.

At least one million women and girls have been cut off from life-saving support over the last 18 months due to global aid cuts, according to new findings by the United Nations.

Published on Friday, the UN Women report found that although organisations serving women and girls have seen a rise in demand for services in the past year, 90 percent say they cannot meet needs on the ground as funding has evaporated.

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The United States was previously the largest aid donor in the world. However, President Donald Trump’s administration slashed billions in foreign aid upon resuming office in January 2025.

As the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled, Washington’s foreign aid dropped by more than 50 percent, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Other major donors to global support, including Germany, France and the United Kingdom, have cut donations as well, largely due to domestic burdens, as well as pressure to increase defence spending.

“The women’s organizations at risk of being shut down are on the frontlines of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises,” Sofia Calltorp, UN Women’s chief of humanitarian action, said in a statement.

“Every dollar withdrawn from women’s organizations is a dollar withdrawn from survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, displaced mothers, girls forced from school, and communities struggling to survive,” she added.

The UN report surveyed 855 women’s organisations across 52 vulnerable countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Afghanistan, and found that 40 percent face temporary or permanent shutdowns within the next year due to low funding.

Sixty percent said they were reaching fewer women and girls since last January despite increased needs.

Half of the organisations surveyed said they have had to put people on waiting lists or turned women and girls away. Nearly all said women they served were getting poorer and girls were dropping out of school.

Even as conflict-related sexual violence doubled in the past year, 62 percent of organisations report no longer having safe spaces and reducing gender-based violence services.