On this World Humanitarian Day, the statistics are staggering, but so is the fact that they were largely avoidable. Recent cuts to aid by wealthier nations have driven humanitarian needs to new highs, with at least 700,000 deaths directly attributable to the loss of U.S. humanitarian funding alone since early 2025.
Behind each crisis is a person whose story rarely makes it into the data. In Nepal, young mother Kabita and her baby were among the recent victims of these cuts. Like many others, their deaths could have been prevented by prevention and community health efforts that were paralyzed by the U.S. cuts.
We know humanitarian needs are worsening, but we're steadily losing the ability to know by how much. Kabita's story is not an isolated tragedy. It's one visible thread in a much larger pattern, one playing out in communities around the world.
Under the banner of efficiency and cost-saving, countries who are major donors to humanitarian and development initiatives – including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Canada – have slashed their aid budgets. These decisions are often framed as rational fiscal adjustments. In reality, they carry immediate, deadly consequences for millions of people. The consequences are measured in human lives ending right now because essential services have vanished.
Food assistance, nutrition programs, immunization campaigns, shelter, water and sanitation programs, social protection services, and education have been either trimmed or scrapped altogether. These were not nice-to-have programs, they were the safety nets that kept entire families from falling into irreversible hardship.
This is now a growing global humanitarian crisis impacting countless people. What makes this crisis especially serious is that it doesn't just concern immediate emergencies. It puts decades of real progress in poverty reduction, infectious disease control, and child survival at risk. Worse, by dismantling community-level mechanisms built over years that prevent poverty, disease, and conflict, these cuts don't just erase past gains, they undermine our collective ability to respond to future crises.
Experts are already anticipating a rise in child mortality rates for the first time this century. At least 4.5 million additional deaths of children under five could be attributed to US cuts alone by 2030. This figure captures the scale of what's at stake: not a minor statistical setback, but a generational reversal in the fight against child mortality.
Organizations working directly with women and girls in humanitarian settings are already paying an especially heavy price. According to a recent UN Women report, at least one million women and girls have lost access to critical support for health, education, housing, and recovery from sexual violence since January 2025. This loss of access comes at the worst possible time: armed conflicts have reached their highest levels in 80 years, precisely when this kind of support is needed most.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the current Ebola outbreak is spreading faster than any previous one. With 2,100 deaths so far, it could become the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever. As a Canadian aid worker involved in the response said, “Each of those numbers is someone’s brother, sister, sibling, family member.”
This outbreak is compounded by armed conflict, attacks on humanitarian personnel, misinformation, and lack of access to basic services like health, nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene. Funding cuts have weakened health and surveillance systems, while eroding the hard-won trust of the communities most affected. Yet the path forward is well understood: by supporting locally-led responses and early detection and response, wealthier countries could still help halt this outbreak and prevent future crises like it by investing in humanitarian aid and global health.
The case of HIV may be the cruelest example of this waste. We were living through a turning point: groundbreaking treatment and prevention measures have resulted in 2025 seeing the lowest AIDS-related death rate in 30 years. But it was at precisely this moment that global health funding cuts hit, contributing to rising new infections across 21 countries. The lesson here is clear: progress in global health is never guaranteed, and even partial financial disengagement can reverse trends that took decades to establish, in a matter of months.
What connects all these stories – Kabita's baby in Nepal, the inadequate outbreak response in the DRC, rising HIV infections – is the same underlying factor: deliberate cuts by wealthier countries. While these are justified by leaders as responsible budgeting choices, on the ground they translate into preventable deaths, eroded community trust, and a diminished collective capacity to anticipate the next crisis.
Decades of gains in development and humanitarian response are vulnerable. They depend on sustained, predictable, and sufficient funding. Without a reversal of this trend of aid cuts, the coming months and years are likely to confirm, in hard numbers, what people on the ground are already reporting.
Results Canada advocates are calling on Prime Minister Carney to stop cuts to international aid in Budget 2026, and to reinvest in our world. Take action right now using our budget toolkit.
