The sudden disappearance of aid leaves the most vulnerable in a mess

Displaced Sudanese children carry packs of humanitarian aid Gadaref city in war-torn Sudan on March 6, 2024. AFP

She received the order and left immediately. There was no handover. No briefing for the local team. No final meeting with the communities she had worked with for years. Just an email, a locked door and an abrupt exit. And if she stayed beyond her official departure time of 30 minutes – to offer any sense of closure – she was penalised, billed per hour.

This is how thousands of development programmes are being dismantled in 2025. Not through reform. Not in conversation with those on the ground. But through abrupt withdrawal – shaped by shifting priorities, and felt most by those with the least power.

Over the past two decades, donor countries have played a vital role in supporting global development. In 2021, global official development assistance reached a record high of $179 billion, driven by pandemic-related support. But according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, global aid fell by 7.1 per cent in 2024 – the first decrease in five years. In 2025, as global needs continue to rise, deeper cuts, programme cancellations, and funding freezes have pushed many vulnerable communities past the tipping point.

Governments have every right to reevaluate spending priorities. The aid system itself has long been in need of reform, to become more sustainable, more equitable and less reliant on models that entrench dependency. Governments in the global south must lead on their own terms – not as subcontractors to donor priorities, but as architects of systems built to withstand volatility.

This shift is long overdue. And the question is no longer whether aid can be cut. It is how to ensure that its withdrawal does not dismantle progress because how donor nations exit matters. It wasn’t the decision to leave. It was the speed, the disruption, and the absence of co-ordination or continuity that turned strategic adjustments into widespread instability for those already living at the margins.

The consequences were swift, measurable, and in many cases, entirely predictable.

Local NGOs were left mid-programme, mid-contract, mid-promise and suddenly unable to deliver on years of trust

In Sudan, the closure of 30 health centres in Central Darfur left thousands without access to medical care. In Bangladesh, over a million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar are surviving on half-rations. In Jordan, funding shortfalls threaten the basic livelihoods of 60,000 Syrian refugee families. In Colombia, suspended support forced the closure of youth programmes that once helped stabilise communities recovering from conflict.

Local NGOs were left mid-programme, mid-contract, mid-promise and suddenly unable to deliver on years of trust. For communities already living through long-term crises, there was no transition plan, no explanation, only the disappearance of something they had never intended to rely on but had come to depend upon out of necessity.

These are not abstract losses. They are the human cost of decisions made from a distance, without the direct involvement of those most affected.

We’ve seen this pattern before. In Haiti, after the cameras moved on. In Uganda, when abrupt health funding cuts triggered a spike in child mortality. In South Sudan, when displacement surged as support dried up.

As one 18-year-old student told me: “It’s hard to say you didn’t see it coming. The same mistakes keep happening – and we’re left managing the consequences of systems we had little role in shaping.”

This is not simply a funding issue. Because this wasn’t just a reduction in aid. It was the removal of commitment. And while the right to exit exists, how that exit is handled reveals more than a shift in budget. It reflects the values and responsibilities underpinning global co-operation. Exiting without sufficient warning, planning or safeguards risks undermining hard-won progress and shifting the burden onto those least equipped to bear it.

Even transition requires intention. Transformation demands coherence, responsibility and foresight. If the future of international co-operation is to remain credible, it cannot be measured only in dollars spent or programmes launched, but in how leaders respond when past commitments no longer align with present realities.

The real question is this: when support is withdrawn, who takes responsibility for what is left behind? Until that question is answered, credibility will remain out of reach, replaced by shifting budgets and responsibilities quietly transferred to communities already facing overwhelming challenges.

Because in the end, the rights to health, education, safety and dignity are not defined by declarations or ink on paper. They are revealed in the decisions we make, and the consequences we are willing to let others live with.