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Presented by The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation | What’s unusual in the new US-OCHA plan.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is not exactly known for being SUBTLE. And after more than a year of cuts to foreign assistance, his latest budget loudly telegraphs that he’s far from done. Also in today’s edition: We delve into the Trump administration’s decision to pool its humanitarian funds — sort of.  The U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office recently published its contentious three-year spending plans that will profoundly reshape the future of U.K. aid. To understand the implications of these changes for international organizations, join our Devex Pro Briefing on Tuesday, April 7. The session will feature the Center for Global Development’s Euan Ritchie and Bond’s Gideon Rabinowitz. Save your spot now.
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The cuts keep on coming
That’s the reduction to U.S. foreign affairs spending that Trump lays out in his “skinny” fiscal 2027 blueprint to Congress.
The request includes $35.6 billion for the State Department and other international programs, down about $15.5 billion from what Congress approved for fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30. As I say ad nauseam, there are winners and losers in any budget deal. In this case, it would be a lot faster for me to lay out the winners than the losers, so let’s get started. The main winner is the America First Opportunity Fund to support national security interests, currently focused on illegal migration, critical minerals, and countering adversaries, as well as supporting U.S. partners such as Jordan and the Philippines. Wait, did I mention critical minerals? Yes? Well, they deserve a second mention given that Trump wants $13 billion for them, including “resources to rebuild and secure the critical mineral supply chains foolishly ceded to American adversaries by earlier administrations” — though it’s unclear exactly how or where that $13 billion would be distributed. Now, the losers. Where do I begin? How about with a list:
But it’s a shot across the bow for the aid sector from a White House that keeps firing at them. Read: Trump’s budget request calls for 30% cut to foreign affairs spending |
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The deep end of the OCHA
Let’s go back to the present, where U.S. humanitarian funds are flowing, in both new — and well-tread — directions.
First thing to know about the $2 billion that the Trump administration is channeling through the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, is that the administration is not messing around in terms of scope, size, or speed. “Surgical precision” is how one document describes deploying aid to Kenya. In this “sharply constrained funding environment,” it says, the goal is “safeguarding the essential functions of human survival, preventing system collapse, and ensuring that every dollar translates into measureable, lifesaving impact.” As my colleague Elissa Miolene writes, the humanitarian funds are designed to be lean, strict, fast-tracked, and time-bound. It’s “explicitly for life saving assistance” and will “target those in most severe humanitarian need, whose fate of life or death depends on a rapid response,” OCHA spokesperson Eri Kaneko says. The other thing to know is that for all the vitriol the administration has hurled at large INGOs and traditional players in foreign assistance, a lot of familiar names appear on the OCHA list, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is expected to receive $60.7 million; Save the Children, with $40 million; Catholic Relief Services, with $38 million; and Mercy Corps, with $38 million. Check out the story for the full list. In fact, across all 14 countries approved for funding, local organizations are slated to receive just 13% of U.S. funding — with U.N. agencies and INGOs receiving the lion’s share. The approach has attracted cautious optimism and plenty of skepticism. “[The Trump administration] could have chosen to take the U.S. out of the humanitarian space, or they could’ve chosen a mechanism that actually is proven to work, in terms of coordinating with the humanitarian system, and that’s OCHA,” says Peter Yeo, president of the Better World Campaign, noting that he remains hopeful this is a “decent” way forward. Others argue that throwing the kitchen sink at OCHA is a sign the State Department isn’t capable of getting funds out the door itself. They also point out that the $2 billion is a tiny fraction of what USAID once allocated — and that while the U.S. originally positioned this funding as part of OCHA’s long-standing pooling of funds from various donors, the money here would actually be tightly earmarked. “Pooled funds are an important tool, but these aren’t functioning like pooled funds,” says Courtney Blake, who worked at USAID managing its relationship with OCHA. “Pooled funding should be a key component of an effective, modern US government humanitarian funding strategy. It should not be a primary or singular vehicle of a modern strategic U.S. funding strategy. And so in either case, it’s pretty far off the mark from what it should be, even if on the surface it looks nice.” Read: Inside America’s $2 billion humanitarian bet 
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Chain reaction
The Trump administration’s “move fast and break things” approach to foreign aid reform looks poised to continue, with Reuters reporting last week that the State Department plans to rapidly shutter the behemoth global health supply chain project led by Chemonics International. This project has purchased and distributed billions of dollars’ worth of critical global health supplies in dozens of countries over the last decade.
It’s a story with twists and turns. The Global Health Supply Chain Program - Procurement and Supply Management project was supposed to wind down a couple of years ago, but a replacement project — known as “NextGen” — ran into repeated delays. Then DOGE upended U.S. global health contracting, and the Trump administration shut down the planned NextGen awards last year without announcing an alternative. Now, according to Reuters, they are also planning an abrupt May 30 end for the current project, while suggesting they will shift to pooled procurement options instead. The project’s looming shutdown reflects a pattern in the Trump administration’s handling of foreign aid programs, says Catherine Connor, senior strategic adviser at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. “Instead of figuring out how to make projects work better, we just end them and then figure out what to do,” she says. “With supply chain, you can’t do that,” she adds, warning that disruptions could cost lives. Related: What will replace USAID’s largest project? No one seems to know  What’s next for U.S. foreign aid? Devex Pro Insider’s special Saturday edition delivers exclusive insights and analysis right to you. Check out past editions.
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Net negative
Africa is already struggling to get health commodities because of the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran — and the massive global disruptions it has triggered, from fuel hikes to deliveries of everything from food to vaccines.
Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of Africa CDC, tells my colleague Sara Jerving that the crisis in the Middle East is having tangible health consequences on Africa. For example, the cost of polyester, a critical raw material used in the production of mosquito nets, has increased by up to 40%, he says, stressing this is a “wake-up call” for the continent to accelerate local pharmaceutical manufacturing. “Africa is at risk of facing a sharp rise in prices, prolonged delivery delays, and dangerous shortages of essential medicines and health products — most of which are imported from China and India,” Kaseya says. “Very quickly, this will no longer be just a question of cost or logistics — it will become a question of lives, because our continent remains heavily dependent on external supply for medicines, vaccines, and health commodities.” It’s not just Africa in the crosshairs. The Middle East, the epicenter of current global conflict, is facing a surge of diseases, the World Health Organization’s Dr. Hanan Balkhy warns. A huge worry is attacks on desalination sites, crucial for access to safe drinking water in the region. A full-scale breakdown would lead to disaster, Balkhy says: “If it does happen, the reserves of water that exist in some of these countries will [only] last for days, maximum weeks.” Read: Health orgs warn of ‘dangerous’ supply shortages amid Middle East crisis Also: WHO senior official warns of unseen health threats amid Middle East war  Enjoyed this content? Devex CheckUp — our free weekly newsletter — delivers more insights on global health straight to your inbox. Sign up today.
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In other news
A U.N. report details four sexual abuse cases, three of which involved child victims, implicating personnel from a Kenyan-led, U.S.-backed multinational security mission deployed to combat gang violence in Haiti. [CNN] A drone strike on a Sudanese hospital during a children’s immunization campaign killed at least 10 people, including seven medical workers. [Al Jazeera] Aid groups warn that the Iran war is pushing humanitarian operations “beyond their limits,” with the U.N. calling it the worst supply chain disruption since the COVID-19 pandemic. [AP News]
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Thank you for reading today’s Newswire, edited by Fiona Zublin, copy edited by Nicole Tablizo, and produced by Adia Pauline Lim. Have a news tip? Email [email protected].
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