Aid suspension: who carries the burden?

In January 2025, the Trump administration froze humanitarian aid through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and suspended the United States Refugee Admissions Program. As recipients of aid, these programmes are life-saving for refugees. Other donor countries, including Germany, France and the United Kingdom, significantly reduced their aid budgets. For as long as I can remember, funding gaps have always existed, even when donor countries were pouring billions of dollars into humanitarian assistance. When I was a refugee in Uganda, I faced challenges including limited access to health and education. My father died of malaria because there was no medicine to treat him at the health centre. Personally, I almost died of malaria and typhoid. Aid suspension has exposed a deeper weakness in the global refugee response: a humanitarian system built on emergency assistance rather than long-term resilience, refugee leadership, and accountability for the conflicts that drive displacement.

In April, I visited Kenya, where the organisation I work for, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), partners with refugee-led organisations (RLOs). I also went back to my former refugee settlement, Kyangwali, in Uganda, where I saw firsthand the impact of aid cuts and the role RLOs continue to play in providing critical services to refugees regardless of the funding cuts. In Kenya, IRAP partners are providing a range of services, including legal family reunification. In Uganda, hundreds of RLOs are providing livelihood, education and climate adaptation services. As I walked through my former refugee settlement, Kyangwali, the impact of recent aid cuts was impossible to ignore. I saw sickly women, malnourished children, and a deep sense of hopelessness in the eyes of many refugees. Poverty, sickness and hunger were etched on refugees’ faces. When I lived there, life was far from easy. We faced many challenges, including limited access to healthcare and education. Yet, the Ugandan government allocated each refugee household enough land for farming to grow enough food to feed our families and to sell the surplus to pay for our children’s education, and other necessities such as clothing. Today, that reality has changed. As more refugees have fled the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, much of the available land has been allocated to newly arrived families. Many refugees no longer have enough land to sustain themselves and instead depend on just 24,000 Ugandan shillings (US$6) in monthly cash assistance. As poverty deepens, refugees, particularly women and young people, face growing risks of gender-based violence, exploitation and substance abuse.

How will refugees survive amid funding cuts?

Below are some of the practical ways refugee problems can be addressed:

Inclusion of refugees in national planning and economies

Investing in refugee livelihoods and economic inclusion should be a priority for host countries: refugees need opportunities to work, run businesses, access financial services, acquire skills, and participate in local markets. Livelihood programmes should be designed with refugees. Unfortunately, most refugee host countries have restrictive refugee policies, making it difficult for refugees to enjoy foundational rights. This 2022 work rights study conducted in 51 countries found that all 51 countries imposed work rights restrictions on refugees. Some host countries, like Uganda, have demonstrated that the inclusion of refugees in national economies benefits both refugees and host communities. When policies permit refugees to work and create ventures, they employ both refugees and their host community members, and their presence increases demand for goods and services. The inclusion of refugees should be well thought through to include major investments. For example, the World Bank’s Window for Host Communities and Refugees (WHR) provides concessionary loans to low- and middle-income countries hosting a significant number of refugees. Investments such as the Bank’s WHR, in collaboration with host countries, should design mechanisms for refugee inclusion in programme design and implementation, if the Bank’s investment is to achieve its intended impact. Without meaningful inclusion of refugees in key investments, no amount of money will solve refugee problems.

Financial inclusion should also come with access to capital. Host countries, in collaboration with their development partners, should consider establishing refugee enterprise funds so that refugee entrepreneurs can access capital, protect refugees’ access to land and other production resources, and ensure that cash assistance is sufficient and predictable enough to meet basic needs. Where possible, refugees should be included in national social protection systems rather than maintained in parallel humanitarian programmes that can disappear when donor funding falls. Other areas host countries should consider may include recognition of refugee qualifications, access to formal education and vocational skills, and general integration of refugees in the national education systems. Skills development can benefit refugees and host communities.

Direct funding of RLOs

Although some funders have started recognising RLOs’ contribution and are now funding them, studies continue to show that RLOs are critically underfunded. ODI Global research found that in 2024, only $49 million reached RLOs compared to $4.7 billion provided to nine UN Refugee Response Plans. RLOs are started because of widening gaps in service delivery and over the years have proved effective. They are embedded in the refugee community, understand the needs of their community, design solutions from within, are trusted by community members, have cultural knowledge, and can identify gaps.

Due to challenges and widening gaps in service delivery, there was an increase in substance use, early marriages, pregnancies and prostitution among young people in Kyangwali. With my fellow refugee youth, in 2005, we founded COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA) to provide quality education to refugee children and youth, and help families start small income-generating activities. Our programmes were designed with parents and guardians as well as young people we intended to serve, who became volunteers in our classrooms and farms to grow food to feed children in CIYOTA programmes. Two decades later, CIYOTA runs successful schools from pre-primary or kindergarten to high school, and partners with key organisations to support students who complete secondary education in accessing tertiary education. This was possible thanks to Uganda’s progressive refugee policy that allows refugees to start businesses and organisations. Uganda’s refugee policy needs to be emulated by other host countries.

RLOs are crisis-resilient. Like one of the leaders stated during my recent visit to East Africa, ‘Even if we close our offices, community members know where we live, they will come to our homes.’ This statement reflects the Covid-19 pandemic experience. When larger international humanitarian organisations withdrew, RLOs stayed and provided critical services during the pandemic: sensitised their refugee communities about Covid-19, distributed food to refugee families in lockdown, and provided social-distance-guided education to refugee children, especially those in their final classes, so that they were prepared for their final national examinations.

Although we should not expect RLOs to function with limited funding, RLOs operate with limited resources. RLOs I know rent offices in their local communities, making them accessible and affordable, can mobilise community volunteers, and sustain services. Therefore, refugee leadership is critical and needs funding. RLOs in Kenya and Uganda have stepped up to provide services when international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) are closing their offices and downsizing their teams due to lack of funding. RLOs are worth investing in for the sustainable future of refugees, especially during this time when donor countries are suspending aid. Therefore, individual donors, foundations and other funders should move resources directly to RLOs. Direct funding of RLOs is not simply desirable but essential for resilient refugee response.

Equitable partnerships with RLOs

Beyond funding cuts and gaps in service delivery, which are historical issues, one critical question we should ask is who is best positioned to achieve the impact donors seek. There has been an argument about local organisations such as RLOs lacking capacity. Although RLOs may have gaps, those gaps can be addressed through equitable partnerships and mutual capacity-sharing, rather than using them as a reason to exclude RLOs.

There is a need to shift power and operations to local organisations such as RLOs. We need to examine and evaluate the role of INGOs at the local level and whether their role can be filled by local organisations, including RLOs. One of the things donors should start asking themselves is the impact they envision and whether that impact can either be achieved by local actors proximate to the issues, or external actors who have no understanding of the local issues, and then shift resources not just based on trust and relationships but based on actors proximate to the issues to deliver the impact envisioned.

My role at IRAP is building partnerships with local organisations. For example, IRAP partners in Kenya have done an amazing job with our family reunification programme. Although IRAP Kenya partners were new to family reunification and did not have the right system and infrastructure to run such an initiative, they received training and financial support in the form of unrestricted grants from IRAP to effectively identify, screen and make family reunification referrals to IRAP. Over the years, they have become experts in family reunification: answering both family reunification and policy questions for their community members. After conversations about the needs of our partners, we also launched a mutual capacity-sharing grant, which allowed partners to have extra money to support their organisations to cover some of the existing gaps. For example, some partners received money to hire consultants to support their strategic and fundraising plans. When RLOs are trusted with meaningful responsibilities, are provided appropriate support and are included in programme design and implementation, they can develop significant technical expertise.

INGOs may have direct access to foundations or individual philanthropists, which gives them an upper hand in building relationships and trust to receive funding. This may not be the case for organisations in the Global South. The question is not simply whether INGOs should disappear, but whether their role shifts from implementing programmes locally to supporting, resourcing, connecting and strengthening local actors for greater impact. RLOs aren’t just delivery partners; refugee-led organisations bring accountability, lived experience and expertise that can make programmes more responsive to affected communities. In my view, equitable partnership isn’t about transferring responsibility without resources. It is about transferring decision-making power, resources and opportunity while investing in the capacity of RLOs themselves. If donors know the impact they want to achieve, the first question should be: who is closest to the people and the issues involved and therefore best positioned to achieve that impact? Only after answering that question should we determine what role, if any, an INGO should play. Amidst aid cuts, refugee-serving INGOs with access to funding should partner with RLOs to address refugee problems.

Conclusion

There is an urgent need to rethink prevailing models and practices to better respond to today’s global crises. Meaningful inclusion of refugees is not optional. As the saying goes, ‘nothing about us without us’. Refugees should not be treated merely as aid recipients, but as active participants and contributors in addressing the challenges that affect them. Humanitarian reform should prioritise equitable partnerships with RLOs, including unrestricted flexible funding, co-design of solutions, and greater refugee representation in leadership and decision-making across humanitarian institutions.

The suspension of international aid should not simply prompt calls for more funding. Instead, it should serve as a humanitarian turning point toward a refugee response that prioritises preventing displacement, strengthening accountability, fostering self-reliance, and placing refugees at the centre of decisions about their own futures. Humanitarian assistance will always be necessary during crises, but lasting solutions require political courage. That means addressing the root causes of displacement, preventing forced displacement where possible, empowering displaced people to shape the responses that affect them, and holding accountable those responsible for creating and perpetuating displacement. A more effective humanitarian system is therefore not simply one that delivers more aid; it is one that shares power, recognises refugees not only as rights-holders but also as leaders, and works toward a world in which fewer people are forced to flee their homes.

Bahati Kanyamanza is a former refugee who spent about 25 years in a Ugandan refugee camp and as a refugee in the US, before becoming a naturalised US citizen. He is the global partnerships director at the International Refugee Assistance Project and co-founder of COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa. He has advocated for the rights of refugees for over 20 years.