Akwe Amosu: Hello and welcome to Strength and Solidarity. I’m Akwe Amosu, here with episode 50 of our podcast about the tools, tactics and strategies being used to defend human rights. And this time… The Trump Administration has blown up US foreign aid. Is it a catastrophe? Or an opportunity?
AA: The freeze on US aid – a large proportion of global donor support for humanitarian, development, and human rights work – has caused consternation in country after country, as well as in the United States itself. And there’s no doubt about the harm. These are funds that keep people alive, with food in famine conditions, with medications for people with chronic illnesses all over the world, and in other equally critical ways – for example, funding for safe houses, or legal help for activists targeted by oppressive government. But in one sense, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Such huge reliance on funding from a foreign donor has always carried risk for the recipient and now that risk has become a reality. How to face up to that reality is what I want to talk about with my two guests, Farnoosh Hashemian, an experienced global health expert and former donor, and Dzikamai Bere, National Director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, better known as ZimRights.
AA: Welcome Farnoosh
Farnoush Hashemian: Thank you Akwe, for having me here.
AA: And welcome Dzikamai – again.
Dzikamai Bere: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
AA: So this crisis that so suddenly has come with the new US administration, resulting in the freezing of aid spending from different US government departments – I’m curious to hear what comes to the top of your mind if you’re trying to convey the scale of the impact. Dzikamai, do you want to start?
DB: Yes, yes. Thank you very much, Akwe. The impact is huge. The impact is huge. In Zimbabwe alone, the USAID annual budget was over 300 million, so the impact is huge in the sense that all, I mean, imagine in a small country like Zimbabwe, and you suddenly take away $360 million per year. So the amount was not just going to the aid groups, it was also going into the national fiscus. In Zimbabwe, as you know, because of the economy that we’re going through, NGOs contribute a lot in terms of foreign currency, and with 360 million suddenly being withdrawn, the impact is very visible. And beyond that, the manner of the withdrawal makes the impact even much, much worse. I mean, for example, in Zimbabwe, it’s really funny, you know, the order came on the 27th and it was saying it’s effective from the 24th. How do you explain that? How do you implement that?
AA: Farnoosh, what about you?
FH: Um, so, I, you know, where I’m situated in the global health movement, and based on the experience that we had from the previous Trump administration, we expected that there would be huge, you know, cuts to the women’s rights programming, the programming around sexual reproductive health issues, what is called global gag rule has been exponentially expanded during the first Trump administration to really attack any organization that worked on any form of advocacy or service delivery related to abortion. So we were ready for that to happen, but we really were not ready to see the rug being pulled out of our legs like this, um, basically the whole overseas aid freezing and being stopped. And that has had significant impact – many of the HIV programs rely on US funding so many people who are on lifesaving HIV treatment programs could not receive that. We heard that people were standing in line to come and get their food in places where there has been famine and severe food deficiency, like these catastrophical, ripple effects are not just on health or, or humanitarian aid or development or climate, it’s like we are seeing that actually expanding to the human rights field because with what Elon Musk is doing, the way he has framed USAID’s work, he’s also creating a lot of misinformation about what that work meant. So that means that folks who were involved in this work, many local colleagues and peers who were doing human rights work, or global health work, or health delivery, or working to improve lives of their fellow citizens are now perceived to be somebody who’s corrupt, who has been doing harm, it’s really something that we are concerned about, not just the impact of that for today, but you know, for how –
AA: How they’ll be seen in the future.
FH: The future. Yes.
AA: And you said something to me, before we started about the emotional impact, the grief that people are experiencing, but also the enormous emotional disruption. What are your thoughts there?
FH: The impact of this, for people who are in this field and for, for the communities that we are serving are multifaceted because on one hand, individuals are losing their jobs very suddenly, many of the people who work in this field do not have, you know, financial security around this. So now you’re all of a sudden told that you don’t have, you, you cannot pay your rent, and there’s no guarantee that this is gonna be returned. You see these international NGOs closing down offices, like I heard that the Danish Refugee Council actually furloughed 2000 employees that, like, just think about the impact of 2000 people in these local communities that the Danish Refugee Council served. Like they’re now without jobs, without future prospects. And then organizations small and large having to close down and turn off the light and that’s really painful. And then knowing that beyond the personal impact on us and our institutions, people who have real vulnerabilities and real needs are not going to be served, knowing that people are going to die because of these policies. And that is extremely, you know, um, disheartening. And it’s one of those things that, like, we wonder, oh, what could have been done differently? What can I do now? But I think for us, it’s a moment to just sit with this grief of what has been taken away from us, however imperfect and however – we’ve talked about the flaws of aid dependency and the ways donor work – however it was, there was something that brought income, but now that’s like, been shattered.
AA: Dzikamai. This, this episode has provoked certainly the reaction that Farnoosh is describing of intense sympathy, grief, distress at the suffering that is coming or has already arrived. But I think it’s also provoked – I don’t think something as harsh as “I told you so,” but from some people, “What did you expect?” This dependency has always had this possibility embedded in it. What’s your reaction to that?
DB: Yeah, it’s, um, yeah, like you’re saying, people are going through grief, so it’s, yeah, maybe not a moment to say, “I told you so.” But a moment to reflect really. From our own experience, we know that this has happened to other communities before. It has happened now at a global scale, but there are cases wherein aid was withdrawn suddenly. And it does lead us to an introspection on the nature of these relationships. What is the power balance in designing these relationships and these projects? Of course, many times it sounds nice to say, “we are equal, we are partners.” But when things come to this, we begin to realize perhaps we were never equal. There’s something called, you know, ‘responsible withdrawal’ when you are implementing a project. It does not just apply to donors only, it also applies to us as the partners who are implementing on the ground. So in communities where we were yesterday and we had started something, and suddenly we are saying, “oh, we’re not coming anymore,” it means the violation of the basic ethics on how to work with communities, cuts across beyond what we probably can see. So while organizations are processing that, we know that actually making the transition is not going to be easy. Some are going to have to close their doors, and we can’t lie to them to say it’s going to be fine. I, I speak from experience. We’ve gone through, through, through this, and I know, um, there was blood on the floor. So there will be that process of grief. And from there, I think there are ways in which we can begin to build a new future for the sector.
AA: And you’ve implied we need to make space for people to go through what they’ve got to go through before we start leaping into the, the future. But I do think it’s also possible that having a conversation about what more sustainable futures might look like is also support for people. It’s also holding out some hope of a better, more, dare I say, self-respecting future, not being at the mercy of this kind of summary action. And so I hope we can get onto that, but maybe, Farnoosh you want to say anything about, examples where you’ve seen this with this ending of funding happen? What, what, what kind of strategies have people followed?
FH: I mean, I think we have so many examples where the US government has acted as the bull in the China shop. As a person who lives in the United States and who is American, Iranian American, I take responsibility for my government’s actions and one of the things that I was actually telling Dzikamai, was about – the, the irresponsible and reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how that unfolded, and how that left thousands of human rights defenders, civil society actors in peril. And how with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and ceding the government to the Taliban, US government also washed its hands from providing development aid to the Afghan government and the Afghan government was highly dependent on the US government funding. Over 40% was reliant on government funding. So now with US money not being there, that means that we’ve seen catastrophic humanitarian disasters happening in Afghanistan, and no one is looking there. Everyone kind of put that story behind and we moved forward without realizing that these are the patterns of how the US government had engaged. They freeze the aid, with the freezing the aid and disappearing the money, it also led to the disappearance of women from the public spaces in Afghanistan. But we really don’t take any responsibility from how we’ve arrived here and what US government’s actions has led to that. We just kind of put it aside and we’re like, oh, we’re gonna go and do advocacy for women’s spaces, but really not looking at the root causes of how we arrived.
AA: So now we know where we are, the aid has been frozen, it is not coming back, and people have got to deal. Dzikamai, you’ve just recently published a blog post in which you basically invited people working in the relevant spaces to face up to that. What was your argument?
DB: Yeah, so, so there are things that we can do. And you did nail it when you said, yeah, that’s how we, we show that there is hope in encouraging action. As the saying says, human beings – we refuse to change until the pain of not changing is more than the pain of changing. So perhaps that’s the opportunity that we can grab where we are going through this, then we ask ourselves, where do we need to change? And my reflection is really in two parts. The first is, what needs to be done now? Because you’ve got leaders who are sitting with this and they need to do something. And I am a firm believer that everything rises and falls on leadership, and how leaders respond to this crisis can help millions of people who are affected by this crisis. And the first thing that I proffer there is leading with empathy. Leading with empathy. We, we, we, we as leaders need to begin from there. How is this affecting our organization, our team members, the communities that we serve and create space for empathy. Uh, we lost up to 14 to 25% of our funding. And we, there were people in the organization who were, whose salaries were on 60% level of effort, on USAID grant. The easier thing would’ve been to say, oh, those who are affected can go home and everyone else sticks around, but we decided, why don’t we share the burden? So across the board, we took a 25% cut so that everyone stays on the job
AA: So that you could redistribute the saving to the people who had lost their income.
DB: Yes, yes. So this is just an example. And yet I know in other organizations, the entire organization was a hundred percent. So some, it may not apply, but at least I think the principle is very important. How we then communicate, uh, transparently, honestly, how we then try to deal with that. The underlying principle being, let’s try as leaders, uh, to show empathy. And then there are things that we need to do on the ground. Um, you know, as leaders, we must not multiply the problem, we must confront it. We spoke about the manner in which the withdrawal is happening, you know, you wake up, you can’t speak to your agreement officer, their emails are not working, and, you know, um, data is no longer accessible. So I have said, you need to bring your A game in terms of documenting these processes. So you’ve got your agreements that you signed, you’ve got, um, the, the reports that you have produced. So you need to clearly begin to document that.
AA: But I can imagine somebody who’s listening to this, who doesn’t know the ins and outs of US foreign assistance saying, well, what difference does all of that make? The fact is, what really mattered here was the dollars, and the dollars are gone. What does this kind of thoughtful response of empathy and documenting, what does that have to do with making sure that people have funds to do the things that are currently not being funded?
DB: It’s everything, really, because we, we, we are speaking about human rights work. We’re speaking about humanitarian work, and we are not just conduits of, uh, of donor money. I mean, we, we, we are living the mission that we are delivering to the community. So if I’m working with a team, I need to embody the values that we have always believed in, and they need to believe that they are part of the team. And we, we, we care for each other. We’re human rights defenders, we, we humanitarian aid workers, so our role is to care for people. And we can’t start that in the field without caring in the organization. And when it comes to documentation, you need your options open. There are legal options, there are many opinions that are coming up, and there may be a possibility of seeking legal redress, but you won’t be able to access that legal redress if your documentation is not in order. So information preservation then becomes a priority. When you read clearly, it’s very important that you have all the information in your control. If you have a work management platform, make sure it’s up to date. But I recommend actually going traditional – if you can actually print these agreements and keep them in the office. I mentioned as a leader, you don’t need to create more problems. So there comes in the issue of the labour matters, because sometimes you’re going to terminate contracts. I already mentioned how you do it – you have to deploy empathy, but also you need to pay attention to the legal implications of the decisions that you’re making. I would imagine that there isn’t money in many organizations to consult a lawyer, but the hope is that there are quite a number of organizations – in Zimbabwe I know there are quite a number of organizations that provide pro bono legal service to human rights groups – and a lot of them would be willing to provide that help. And in many other organizations, we’ve got positions of a legal advisor. That’s the time when they have to step forward and provide help to make sure that whatever decisions you make don’t multiply the problem. And beyond that, it’s important to become part of the communities that are having these conversations and actually learn from what others are doing in other jurisdictions. Uh, if you are running a project in Zimbabwe, what are others in Uganda doing? What are others in Kenya doing? And learning from those lessons. There are several blogs that are actually keeping the information coming, collect all that information. I would actually dedicate someone to doing the research and compiling that information and making sure that we have sufficient information when the time comes to need it.
AA: Farnoosh, you’re nodding.
FH: Yes. I want to say that, you know, for me, as the turmoil was unfolding, I thought, well, what Trump and right-wing supporters of his, either in the United States or across the globe, basically what they’re doing is attack on every form of knowledge and solidarity. And what they’re doing is that they’re basically saying, with withdrawing these funds, we are gonna look in your contract, and then we’re gonna come back to you to see whether you’ll qualify or not. And then they have these criteriaa of specific populations that there are gonna be, and or specific projects that they’re gonna exclude. For example, if you’re a woman, if you’re a person with a disability, so we know that they basically wanted to divide the field. But what we are seeing actually at this moment of rapid response, is basically we are seeing organizations quickly organizing, there are so many Signal groups that I am part of who are trying to actually follow and monitor what’s going on on the ground, trying to figure out what are some ways that we can actually maybe slow down or stop some of, these harmful behaviors.
AA: And these are Signal groups of people who have been affected by the aid freeze?
FH: Who have been affected. Exactly, yes. And then journalists reaching out and asking, oh, we want documentation; show us how the impact is happening to the organizations and to the field, like in places where these fundings were supposed to be delivered and served. Um, there are many resource pages of where people can figure out actually, like questions about compliance issues. Um, there are legal counsels available, um, pro bono, for organizations who have these questions, I’ve seen spreadsheets being developed about jobs that are out there. Um, people who are professional development persons providing webinars and assisting people to kind of say, okay, there might be other opportunities. Um, I’ve seen webinars on alternative fundraising. And it’s really amazing to see just, like, this activism around, we are coming together collectively, we are seeing this huge significant impact across the globe, but we need to address it. Um, but what is challenging is that, perhaps like for groups in the United States, there was a call to educate Congress about the impact of these aid freezes and trying to seek some pushback from US policy makers on this front, as well as there’s like some attempts in terms of bringing litigation as a way to stop or slow this, but the challenge is that organizations are afraid to put their names behind these efforts because of the possibility of backlash, or they are underground organizations that are working on human rights issues in very difficult places that they do not wanna come forward. So there are challenges, but overall, like, what I’m seeing is that despite the fact that US government wanted to break us, we are together, we are standing together, we are trying to figure this out right now.
AA: Dzikamai, is this basically the end of foreign funding of these kinds of services and forms of community development and human rights defense. I mean, there isn’t another funder in the field that can replace the United States. There may still be more money that has not yet been tapped. But what’s to be done about this pattern of dependency? Is there a path into the future in which people can avoid the dependency and fund the work that needs to be funded?
DB: It is not the end. I think we, we are at, at the crossroads. I think we’re at a crossroads and at a number of lessons begin to jump out. I like what Farnoosh said, you know USAID put a lot of money in civic education. We never thought we would need to conduct civic education campaigns to the White House due to the level of disinformation; civic education to the Congress, because they have no idea what is happening. And I think that’s where the conversation then has to begin. The evaluation, what has been the structure and the infrastructure around aid and development? And is this sustainable? Dambisa Moyo does, uh, address some of the issues in her book, uh, Dead Aid. Very provocative. And perhaps many years ago when it came out, a lot of us didn’t give it a second look. But this is the time now for us to begin to look at it. The temptation, Akwe, is to say, where are the other donors? So I’ve seen that happening. I don’t discourage it. I’ve already also engaged with other donors who have reached out to us asking where are the areas that need further support? I already know that the EU delegation in different spaces, they’re saying, “help us quantify the, the money that has been lost in the sector.” And they are making commitments in different spaces. But look, US government pumped 40% of the global aid budget. Now that’s, that’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money. So when we are thinking about solutions, we need to think beyond who should be replacing USAID. We should be saying, how do we ourselves step forward and take charge of our sustainability? So that’s where we have the conversation around sustainability. And the first thing that I want to share with civic leaders is, while we have been shaken into this truth, into this, um, uh, acknowledgement, let’s, let’s not be in denial. I said we are processing the pain, but let’s not be in denial. So this has happened. So in the very immediate, space, we need to begin to live within our means. I mean, sometimes humanitarian work may not need much, but it needs a lot of us. So where we need to reduce costs, we need to begin doing that. I know a lot of leaders who, faced with a similar situation, lived in denial and thought that it will come back and and as a result they created more problems. But most importantly, the question of what are the sustainability strategies that we can begin to deploy now? These are the conversations in the “shift the power” movement that we were having yesterday, and we probably thought we have time. Now realize we don’t have time.
AA: OK, so this sustainability question, what exactly is possible? What can be done, what should be done in your view?
DB: Yeah, so the first thing that we need to do is to begin to learn to live within our means.
AA: I mean, I can hear a bunch of, you know, cynics out there cackling with laughter. They’re thinking about all of the four-wheel drives, the air conditioned hotels, the subsidies for, for foreigners coming and living in the global south and having a, a very nice life. And they’re saying, are those the cuts that you’re talking about?
DB: Those are difficult questions. So do we need everything we have been spending on? Um, so it’s time for us to get to the basics. And then secondly, I would say let’s begin to build a local philanthropy. It can come in different forms. I give you an example of my own organization, ZimRights, we are a community of 250,000 activists. Our annual operations budget is less than $250,000. So we do have the capacity to have our members fund our operations budget. But why have they not been doing so? Motivation! Because the money was there from somewhere else
AA: Right, so the withdrawal of this apparently free money, you think it’s going to make some space for a very different way to raise funds in future.
DB: It has to force us to do that. Method: how have we been trying to reach out to them? But if we also as the leaders didn’t have the motivation, because the money that comes from other donors is much easier to access. But also how we use those funds issues around accountability, uh, becomes very important because at a time when we were being accountable to the donors, if the communities are the ones that are going to be, uh, investing in our work,
AA: You need to be accountable to them.
DB: It means we now need to fix our accountability relationship with those communities. And an important part – it doesn’t need to be crazy ideas. When we speak about community philanthropy, it’s not crazy ideas. The capacity of local businesses, uh, to, to, to invest in our work. And I, I can hear my colleagues in Zimbabwe saying, but businesses will be stigmatized when they invest in human rights work. So let me give you a small example. So our neighbors where Zimrights house is seated, are the Bronte hotel, which is a big hotel,
AA: A pretty famous Zimbabwean hotel, the Bronte Hotel.
DB: Yes. and they come to us and they say, “we want to supply you with borehole water.” So the water that we get throughout the year, we don’t pay for it. You know, Zimbabwe, water is a big deal. You don’t just drink tap water. But you know what we do? We don’t acknowledge them in our financial reports, because there’s a better funder and a bigger funder. And over time there’s no encouragement for similar businesses. Another conversation that we were then having is, why don’t we begin acknowledging those community contributions? They’re not coming in monetary form, but then it helps understand that resources are not only money. Sometimes they are manpower, sometimes they are water, access, electricity, land, all those things. So when we speak about community philanthropy, I’m telling you for an example of a single group that simply came and said, “you are our neighbor. You are doing good work.” What if we deliberately went out and sought them out? And we can scale this to even big businesses. Um, so that’s, those are some of the things that I think we can, we can plan to think about.
AA: Thank you. And, and Farnoosh, you are listening to this. You worked in private philanthropy, you understand the scale of the task that Dzikamai is describing. Do you feel convinced that this path is a way forward? Or do you think it’s not big enough to make a difference?
FH: I think that it is exciting for some organizations, but it’s not necessarily going to work for everyone. And there are mounting challenges for organizations that are working in closed societies because they cannot rely on membership to help, you know, keep the lights on for the organization because there’s risk involved, with risk of association involved, or they cannot crowdsource, or they cannot sometimes be even, you know, out there talking about the work that they’re doing. Sometimes the work that some of the human rights organizations are doing don’t have public appeal. So how do you create local philanthropy or, or bring funding in for those causes? I love this brainstorming about alternative funding mechanisms. But one of the things that, what we are seeing right now is that many of the governments relied on the US government to do their duty of providing medicine and food and education, um, and, you know, making the road, et cetera, et cetera,
AA: So you want to see some of these governments being put under pressure.
FH: Exactly. So I think that that shows the critical work of the human rights defenders to make sure that the governments actually discharge of their duty and provide services and for everyone, right? So that’s, that’s our work, that our work is more relevant than it was pre-2025. I also think that this awful experience maybe creates some learning for us when next time we go and have conversations with donors who want to support the work that we are doing because the reality of the work is, the wealth is concentrated in the hands of few, so I think what we have experienced, this awful turmoil and awful trauma that has been imposed on us also should allow us to rethink how we form relationships with donors. The reality is that the donors are gonna exist. We can talk about the donor conditionalities maybe in a way that’s a little bit more informed from this experience and kind of set our boundaries a little bit if possible. I do acknowledge the very vast power imbalance that exists between organizations who want to do the work, where there is need for funding to exist, resources to exist, to do this work in a sustainable way, in a professional way, so I’m not taking that lightly, but I think there’s some things that we can keep in our, you know, toolbox when we have these kinds of moments of upheaval where there’s opportunity for transformative change.
AA: And that’s what I hear you saying, Dzikamai – let’s seize the opportunity to remake this field in a, a more self-respecting, more sustainable way.
DB: That is correct. And as Farnoosh mentions, there will always be a role for government leadership and rethinking how those relationships are structured is very important. And it’s not only limited to the governments, but it’s also to the other donors. Um, how much flexibility, um, how much goes towards institutional strengthening when we are designing these projects? And also as Farnoosh speaks about, you know, the US government, she did mention it’s her government – she needs to hold it accountable. And from my perspective, local governments must also step up to the party. You, you cannot have your entire health care being funded by a foreign government because what then happens there is that your citizens don’t hold you to account, and the corruption increases, the funds you’re supposed to use for healthcare, you then buy luxury cars because the US government is going to fund your healthcare. We now need to begin to rethink how that all looks like. So this is an opportunity to change the way we work, the way we do development, and the way we hold each other to account.
AA: Great place to stop. Thank you, Dzikamai. Thank you, Farnoosh.
FH: Thank you
DB: Thank you Akwe.
AA: Farnoosh Hashemian, an experienced global health expert and former donor, and Dzikamai Bere, National Director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, better known as ZimRights.
AA: Thanks for listening. We love getting feedback, please share any thoughts, reactions or suggestions you’ve got for the show. And if you aren’t on our mailing list and would like to be added and receive our newsletter, please send a note to pod@strengthandsolidarity.org. We’ll drop that address in the show notes. For now, from producer Peter Coccoma, and me, Akwe Amosu, see you next time.