The suspension of USAID funding has sent shockwaves around the world and poses an unprecedented challenge for the international aid community.
With millions losing access to lifesaving aid, and tens of thousands losing employment in some of the world’s poorest countries, the already complex array of security risks faced by aid workers will be significantly exacerbated while their capacity to manage them will be eroded.
As an important pillar of the security coordination architecture, supporting more than 1,300 local and international NGOs in the field, our focus throughout this time has been on ensuring continuity of essential services while partners adapt to the new reality.
We will not be withdrawing from any of our current countries and we will continue to provide the country wide incident reporting, alerts, analysis, coordination, and crisis management services that help keep aid workers safe. We will also be maintaining our Conflict and Humanitarian Data Centre in all countries, enabling our partners to access critical data on conflict and security incidents.
We will also continue to work closely and cooperatively with the UN security and access agencies (UNDSS and OCHA) in the field, with the expectation that coordination will become more valuable as resources become stretched across the sector.
However, with USAID contributing approximately 37% of our global budget the preservation of core services will come at some cost. The most visible of these will be the suspension of the majority of our in-person training services, including all Hostile Environment Individual Safety Training (HEIST) and Hostile Environment & First Aid Training (HEFAT).
We are aware that this will have a particular impact on our National NGO partners who have relied on our free training to support their own capacity building. We are exploring solutions, including the provision of on-request training, while in the meantime our NGO Security Risk Management online course remains free to access, with French and Spanish translations anticipated later this year.
We will also be reducing our footprint within each country, including the closure of 19 sub-offices in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, CAR, DRC, Haiti, Mali, Mozambique & Ukraine, reducing our capacity to support access and coordination efforts in some provinces. We will however be maintaining a large proportion of our field monitors to support the collection and verification of reliable information even in the absence of an office.
Lastly, our plans to expand services in Palestine (West Bank) and Sudan (Darfur) will be delayed while our projects in Colombia, Chad and Lebanon will remain limited to Emergency Response activities until further notice.
At the global level, we strongly believe in the need for a coordinated approach and are liaising with our operational Saving Lives Together (SLT) partners to understand the impact that these cuts will have, identify potential gaps, and work towards solutions for the whole community.
While it remains to be seen what comes after USAID, the overt politicisation of aid presents a challenge to our values and poses a risk to those in need of aid, and those who deliver it. We hope that our collective response to this crisis will reaffirm those values including in relation to the funding we accept.
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