Literature monitoring

This report synthesises quantitative and qualitative data collected or analysed by Ground Truth Solutions and its partners in 2025, from Afghanistan, CAR, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine. The analysis sought to understand what communities are thinking about the impacts – expected and unexpected, visible and less visible – of cuts to aid and shrinking solidarity, how aligned are the choices the UN-coordinated system has made about where and who to prioritise with the priorities of communities,  and as the formal aid system shrinks, what are the impacts on the broader aid system – community self-help, mutual aid, local civil society, diaspora networks and the private sector.

A hard-hitting analysis of the collapse of the current model of international humanitarian aid. The article highlights that the rift between Western countries – the main funders – and civil society, which is nevertheless essential, is seriously undermining humanitarian NGOs. The article points out that NGOs play a crucial role in social development and the defence of human rights. The difficulties they face reflect a wider destabilisation of civil society, which is nevertheless indispensable to the functioning of democracy.

This report is an attempt to bring nuanced insights from Global South civil society on the hopes and struggles of daily realities, as well as their efforts to find a different way forward. Mimicking the realities in which many national and local organisations find themselves, the report looks both within the dominant international system and outside it.