Humanitarian Assistance in a Time of Deep Foreign Aid Cuts

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CHAPTERS 

[00:00:00]: How sweeping foreign aid cuts are hitting refugee-hosting countries 

[00:02:41]: What the cuts look like on the ground—food, medicine, and schools 

[00:09:57]: Why local organizations are absorbing the shock without the resources 

[00:18:04]: What genuine localization looks like when it works 

[00:21:33]: What needs to change and why communities are more resilient than the system
 

 TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:03.01] 

Hi, welcome to World of Migration, a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that delves into interesting global development on immigration, immigrant integration and humanitarian protection. My name is Lawrence Huang and I'm a Policy Analyst with MPI's International Program and I'm your host. Today we are at a turning point in the migration world. The billions of dollars that humanitarian agencies and migrant and refugee hosting governments have relied on to manage migration and refugee crisis disappearing as key actors pull back on long standing foreign aid disbursements. And while many of you will have heard about the sudden and massive cuts in early 2025 to U.S. Foreign aid, some US$4 billion, perhaps more surprising is so many of the traditional European donors had already or have since announced cuts to their own budget. Germany's 2025 budget includes a 47% cut to humanitarian assistance, or US$1.5 billion. And in February 2025, the United Kingdom announced their own 40% cut in order to make space for increased security spending. It'll take us some time to really know what this means for international migration. Will this further destabilize conflict situations and weaken disaster response so displacement across borders increases? Will the low and middle income countries that host the vast majority of refugees end up with fewer resources for integration?

[00:01:37.02] 

And what does that mean for onward migration to high income destinations? Or is there now an opportunity to take advantage of this current shock to bring needed reform and innovation to the foreign aid system system and how it deals with migration? Our guest today thinks there is such an opportunity, but that the critical piece is localization. And in this context he means working directly at the local level, with local communities, with local NGOs to achieve the most impact even with shrinking resources. Micheal Gumisiriza is a program lead at COHERE, an international nonprofit that supports refugee-led organizations and host community grassroots leaders in the global sector south. He is based in southwest Uganda where he works in Rwamwanja refugee settlement and is part of COHERE's work across Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe. He is in many ways on the front line of helping local organizations navigate these massive funding cuts. Michael, thank you so much for being here.

[00:02:39.04] 

Thank you Lawrence for having me.

[00:02:41.06] 

Great. So let's get right into it. There have been this massive cut to foreign aid, not least the near total shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. And the U.S. has historically been the largest humanitarian aid donor in total dollars. So from your vantage point, what has the last six months, eight months been like on the ground in Uganda and across Africa?

[00:03:04.19] 

Thank you, Lawrence. Once again. So from my vantage point, I'll give probably, you know, my experience, especially in refugee settlements in Uganda where I am based and where COHERE works. So the last six months have not been definitely good for a big number of refugees and especially those who have been relying on food rations that we are being provided by World Food Programme. And I think a big funding of that food assistance was from USAID. And so when World Food Programme announced the, you know, the termination of these food rations that were being given to refugees, very many refugees were affected. So what we've been seeing is that most of the refugees were previously relying on these food assistance, are now either spending most of their time in nearby host communities working for food, while others have actually return to DRC. So we, we have witnessed some of the refugees leaving the refugee settlements here in southwestern Uganda and returning to the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the area where they had, you know, been forced to leave because of war. But now, obviously, they risk being recruited by rebel groups like M23. But some of the refugees that we have talked to, they tell us that it's better to die back at home rather than seeing their children starve.

[00:04:47.09] 

And that also extends to education because we have also seen some of them, the parents, putting their children out of school and instead using them to assist them look for food in nearby host communities.

[00:04:59.10] 

So

[00:05:01.17] 

lastly, I think from the health perspective, we increasingly see medication, essential medicines, lacking in hospitals, refugees visiting hospitals and being told that there is no medicine.

[00:05:14.21] 

So

[00:05:16.24] 

I just wanted to also touch on the issue of local organizations and how they have been responding to this. Most of the partners that we are working with, increasingly now they are coming under pressure because most of the refugees who are relying on the services being offered by INGOs are now returning to local organizations like refugee led organizations. But these ones have been critically underfunded and they don't have resources to look after these refugees or provide them with help. So I think this is a moment for government and especially here in Uganda, to probably provide more land to refugees and also accord them more rights for greater integration instead of, you know, relying on unsustainable donor funding.

[00:06:05.11] 

Thanks, Michael. I think being able to hear about the cuts to education and parents having to pull children out of schools or not having essential medicines anymore, I think it's helpful in grounding us in what's happening in the communities where you work. I want to dive deeper into that. But before we go any further, can you tell us a little bit about your organization COHERE and how its mission is being affected or not by the cut.

[00:06:31.19] 

So COHERE is mainly partnering with refugee-led organizations across Africa, mainly in Uganda, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Malawi and Zimbabwe as well. And when these cuts were announced, they found us already on trajectory of reform. Because in 2023, we started a journey of reforming the organization internally and we were rethinking our partnerships with an aim of shifting from donor compliancy to community trust. So we introduced what we call trust circles, which was like the major focus of our partnerships with refugee led organizations. So the trust circles are basically geographically distributed groups of COHERE staff together with community leaders within refugee settlements. So for example, I belong to the southwestern Uganda trust circle. And what we do, we spend most of our time building relationships with grassroots leaders and refugee-led organizations. And we have pivoted towards making sure that these relationships that we build with grassroots leaders guide our decision making. So when the cuts came, the they found us having already started, for instance, the restructuring process of our staff. And we reduced the number of our staff to honor those who are, you know, working within the refugee settlements. So those who are helping us to build relations with grassroots leaders and those who are mainly, you know, working with donor contracts, or we are focused on donor contracts, they, you know, we had to terminate their work.

[00:08:41.01] 

So this is something that we already knew because we thought that the current humanitarian system that relies on, you know, that is donor-centric, that is based on restricted funding, was unsustainable. And so this is something that we already have started working on to ensure that we weather any for scamming challenges. And so we were not surprised when these cuts happened because most of the partners that we are working with are now being linked to unrestricted funding. And we are increasingly seeing these organizations actually take up a greater role in their communities with the departure of INGOs.

[00:09:21.11] 

Thanks, Michael. I think it's really interesting that COHERE had already started to pivot its work away from a dependency on the big government donors like USAID even before the funding cuts happened. I think a lot of your work, like you were saying, is about working directly in local communities, with local leaders. And you've been putting a lot of effort into building the capacities of local organizations and refugee led organizations as well as getting them funded directly. So how is that going and what impact are you seeing on those local organizations from these global funding cuts?

[00:09:57.18] 

Yeah, so the local organizations that we work with, most of them, they are not directly funded by USAID or most of those big donors. So when these funding cuts landed the local organizations didn't panic as such. I remember we had some sessions with them and, you know, they were not phased by, you know, the panic that we are seeing being experienced by the INGOs, who are the main recipients of most of these funding. However, after the departure of most of these INGOs or scaling down their work work, increasingly the local groups are now, you know, coming under pressure because some of the refugees, for instance, in Rwamwanja, who were, you know, relying on food assistance or whose children were being, you know, sponsored and now these programs have been terminated, have been visiting some of the offices of local organizations asking for, you know, assistance. And this is problematic because most of these local organizations, you know, don't have the resources to take over the work that is being left and then, and fill the gap. And the government, for instance, the government of Uganda also, you know, already is hosting, you know, one of the biggest numbers of refugees in Africa.

[00:11:29.05] 

Really, I think we are number one in Africa. So there is already strain and the government may not be able to fill the gap as well. So what we are seeing now is that obviously these local organizations are the first responders, and for us, we have always known them as such, and they remain within these refugee settlements even after the INGOs have left. So quite often they have been doing command, you know, a lot of work, really commendable work, at least from what we are seeing on the ground. But usually most of this work is done with very limited funding. So for most of the organizations that we work with as COHERE, we are their first donor and probably the last donor. And imagine we have over 500 refugee-led organization partners and CBOs which are within the host community. So what I have seen really is that most of these organizations lack legitimacy, rather they don't lack legitimacy, but they lack recognition and funding for the work that they are doing. And these cuts are exposing who is truly probably indispensable. And for me, it's the local organizations, because they stay even when these INGOs have left.

[00:12:52.06] 

And so I think probably to end here, something which is interesting, which I've seen is in Rwamwanja, for instance, when UNICEF and Save the Children, who were the major sponsors of ECD centers, those who are running early childhood centers in Rwamwanja, when the funding cuts were announced, they decided to transfer these ECD centers to local organizations, but the local organizations were not given any resources. And so the local organizations, most of the RRO refugee-led organizations, actually declined to take over these ECD centers. And unfortunately, most of the ECD centers have been closed, leaving thousands of children and parents who are benefiting from them to, you know, in limbo. So this is the reality on the ground and that's what we are seeing.

[00:13:45.22] 

Yeah, Michael, I think that's such an important point. You're saying that the big UN agencies, the big international NGOs, were more reliant on this USAID or European government funding. And so they were in a funding crisis. And many of them have left, leaving a gap where your refugee led organization, your local partners are trying to, are being asked to fill that gap. They don't have the funding to do so. You said that the local organizations, the over 500 organizations that COHERE partners with, most of them weren't getting funding anyway from the European or American donors. Why is that? Why haven't we seen more money going directly to those local organizations on the ground?

[00:14:33.14] 

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think the current humanitarian and aid system was never built for these organizations, in my view. Because if you look at the bureaucracy, for instance, and the power imbalance that is inherent with, within the donor system, it's really very something that really bothers me a lot because refugee-led groups are often asked to take over programs without being, for instance, given capacity strengthening. So some of the partnerships that we have seen with INGOs that try to reach out to these local organizations, they want to use them for mobilization, but they don't want to fund them directly. And I think that's unfair. Then if you look at some of the due diligence processes that most of these big donors, like you said, want, they are exclusionary. They basically exclude these refugee led organization before they even start applying. So the whole system is set to favor, in my view, the INGOs and the big guys and the local organizations are either have to, you know, share on the crumbs that are the crumbs of many that is, you know, given to them by the INGOs or they are simply using for mobilization.

[00:16:04.00] 

But they are never given the trust to manage budgets or the funds or even you say, for instance. I never saw an instance where they reached out to these array roles and understood their challenges and maybe first built their capacity before requesting them to submit very lengthy, you know, budget templates or log frames that these leaders may not necessarily be, you know, conversant with. But these leaders know their communities better. They have cultural fluency, they have social networks, they have legitimacy and trust that INGOs will never have. So I think I would conclude by saying that maybe the system is quite colonial in nature because it is built on mistrust. It's built on top down decision making. It doesn't really favor and position these arrows to be major actors and decision makers on issues that actually they are close to, which I believe they would be the experts. But I think most of these donors come as experts rather than neighbors, rather than friends, rather than someone who wants to listen. And this is something that we are trying to change because we really believe that localization matters and that proximity matters and lived experience cannot be substituted by logframes.

[00:17:27.06] 

That's a good line. I think that's right, because you've got these really small 10 person, 15 person, local organizations. They will drown in the paperwork of filling out the hundreds of pages of proposals and reporting requirements and audits. And I know that there are many organizations trying to address these challenges and trying to streamline the ways that we can do localization with migrant and refugee communities and organizations. Can you give me an example of when this type of localization, working directly with local organizations has worked well?

[00:18:04.01] 

Yeah, exactly. I think in our experience, I think we've been partnering with local organizations for, I don't know, since 2008. And at first we were also inclined to do direct implementation. But quite often we found out that we are wasting a lot of resources because we would have to import, you know, basically would have to bring in, you know, staff who in most cases we are not even conversant with the refugee settlements. And quite often when we reach these refugee settlements, it would be, you know, it would become impossible to even, you know, mobilize or even reach some of the vulnerable communities and would be forced to look for, you know, refugee led organizations who understood the terrain and the context better. So we realized we are wasting a lot of time going through circles. And that's why we started pivoting towards funding these local organizations so that they could do the actual work. So we have partnered with a local refugee led organization, for instance in Rwamwanja called Tomorrow Vijana. This was our earliest partner. And they work in education mainly they were working with children with disabilities. And when we started working with them, they were operating under a tree.

[00:19:30.17] 

And then we provide them with flexible funding and they were able to build offices and then they recruited more staff. And they are initially working with around 200 children with disabilities. And now they have actually upgraded from one zone and is composed of seven zones. And now they are located within all the seven zones. And recently they are recognized by the office of the Prime Minister as one of the, they are given a memorandum of understanding as one of the I would say it's a recognition for the work that they are doing and it saved us a lot of work because we didn't need to open an office in Rwamwanja because they are already in Rwamwanja. We didn't need to send staff in Rwamwanja because they already had staff in Rwamwanja. So I have to say that we saw a significant reduction in the budget and it made us to focus most of the resources now to funding this ILO instead of recycling it in staff and logistics of traveling and allowances. I think for me, the story of tomorrow Vijana, which is the largest refugee led organization in Rwamwanja today and has now registered as an NGO and recognized by government as well, is an example of what could happen if donors or INGOs could intentionally transfer power and resources to local organizations.

[00:21:03.16] 

Thanks, Michael. I want to wrap us up by going back to what you said at the very beginning about what you're seeing on the ground in Uganda. With the sort of food insecurity and cuts to health and parents pulling refugee children out of out of school, we are in a funding crisis and it's having a real impact on the ground. How do you think we navigate out of this crisis? And as we think about the future of foreign aid, what do you want to see governments doing differently?

[00:21:33.01] 

I think as far as I'm concerned, we need to rethink the current or the old ways of doing things and pivot to building relationships with grassroots leaders and local organizations. And this requires us. If you really want to be in humanitarian, to be a humanitarian worker, or if you're already in humanitarian work, then it's important that you consider to what extent you allowing those who are closest to the problem to take lead in decision making, but also in deciding how communities that are affected by forced displacement can be, you know, helped. So I think it's important that governments and the wider donor community starts moving away from the old rhetoric of localization without necessarily, you know, practicing what they preach at COHERE. Through the trust circles, we are learning that when we turn up not as experts, but as neighbors, as a friend who is willing to listen and then build relationships that are based on human understanding and listening and developing trust with those who are close to the problem, then we don't need log frames, we don't need theories of change. We just need to listen. We just need to be on the ground and spend more time in the community and be close to those who are seeing the problem in real time.

[00:23:15.23] 

And once we have built relationships with Them, then back them, back them with flexible resources, profile their agency. One of the things that I've seen, really, and COHERE has seen over time, is that there's a lot of obsession by the present humanitarian system with financial currency as the only currency that we can use to solve some of the crises that we see, like forced displacement. But it's important to realize that there are other forms of currencies. For example, lived experience. It can be also a currency network, social network as a currency and legitimacy. And these are the types of currencies that I think we need to explore more in the humanitarian aid system. Because much as the aid has been cut, I don't think that communities are going to collapse or disappear. They are thriving. I'll just end with an example of what I have seen on the ground here in Rwamwanja with the refugees. When they are cut off from food restaurants that was being distributed by one food program. They started borrowing land from the host community. They used the networks that they already had to borrow land from the host community. And some of them are cultivating this land.

[00:24:42.04] 

So how can the government ease the process of acquisition of land? How can the government ease the process of these refugees moving around, being given equal rights and possibly citizenship so that they can move out of the settlements and join the host community and live with others? And refugees are willing to work, Most of them that we have talked to. It's not that they are waiting for handouts. I think it's high time now that we start giving them full rights, full integration, and giving them the flexible resources that allow them to exploit their entrepreneurship potential. If these things are done, I think we could move away from the current system that is donor-centric, and we move towards actual localization that is driven by the community. When we explore all the rest of the currencies, minus the finances, which we are obsessed with.

[00:25:37.13] 

Thank you so much, Michael. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast and learning a bit more about your work and what's happening on the ground.

[00:25:44.24] 

Thank you so much.

[00:25:47.23] 

That was Michael Gumisiriza, program lead from COHERE, who's based in southwest Uganda's Rwamwanja refugee suburbs settlement. I think Michael made really concrete what happens when funding is cut in migrant and refugee settlements. Incredible human suffering as people see food rations cut, essential medicines run out, and parents pull children out of school. We're hearing more and more cases of people going back across borders, returning even to conflict zones, because their conditions have worsened so much in these camps. But Michael also showed us the resilience of migrants and refugees. As the big international organizations are ending projects because they've run out of funding, it's the local organizations that figure out ways to keep people fed, to keep them in school. Precisely because, as Michael said, these were never the organizations getting the funding from the big donors. They never could navigate the bureaucracy of USAID contracts, and they were never trusted with the long term sorts of funding that they needed to operate properly. So it's not that localization is a silver bullet, or it's not that it's an entirely new innovation, but I think Michael helps us understand how important it is not to just talk about localization, but to actually make it happen.

[00:27:07.12] 

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of MPI's World of Migration. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop check out other episodes. You can find World of Migration wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, please leave us a review. You can find all the episodes for this and other MPI podcasts at MPI's website, migrationpolicy.org/podcasts this episode was produced by Daniella Espacio with editorial input from Michelle Mittelstadt and the assistance of Lisa Dixon. Our theme music is called Bright Idea by Geographer. I'm Lawrence Huang. Thank you again for listening and see you next time.