Editorial (Humanitarian Aid on the Move No. 27)

As we go to press with this special number of Humanitarian Aid on the Move, one year after Donald Trump announced that USAID would be closed, we take stock of the disruption that this is causing. What was announced was far more than a unilateral funding decision. Today, we can see that it signalled the end of the world that we inherited in 1945: the international legal system, international cooperation and multilateralism are all called into question, with the old claims to global dominance back to the fore, along with the renewal of untrammelled imperialistic ambitions on the part of the great powers.

Today, human rights and international cooperation are no longer priorities for national governments. Some even see them as problematic. Drastic cuts in the ODA budgets of many western governments in this past year demonstrate in unmistakable fashion the lack of interest in rights and cooperation, and entail cutting back or halting numerous programmes and projects that are in fact essential for millions of people.

Organisations – whether international or national – that work in the areas of humanitarian aid, human rights and development are experiencing an unprecedented crisis which intensifies the need, long since identified, to remodel the aid system, and poses new, existential risks, related to redefinition of mandates, humanitarian access, discredited economic models and the very legitimacy of the organisations concerned.

This is the background to this special number of our review. It provides a summary of the Humanitarian Aid Autumn School, organised in September 2025 by Groupe URD in conjunction with Coordination Sud and VOICE. It also offers a series of articles shedding light on some of the different aspects of the crisis the humanitarian aid sector is going through. Rather than setting out recommendations, this review attempts to deepen our understanding of trends and processes that are currently – we hope – laying down the foundations of collective resilience in the future.

Véronique de Geoffroy, Groupe URD’s executive Director, Maria Groenewald, VOICE’s Director, & Jérôme Fauré, Coordination SUD’s executive Director.