A brave new post-Aid world? What we stand to lose or Gain

Katrin Seidel, 22 December 2025

In 2010, I co-authored a paper titled Donor Playground Cambodia. The title spoke to my growing frustrations after eight years of working in the country. The paper argued, in short, for greater modesty and honesty about what development cooperation can realistically achieve - and what it cannot. Fifteen years later, the aid sector is facing damaging funding cuts alongside mounting criticism, with some already declaring the arrival of a post-aid world. Yet much of this critique is coming from a troubling direction. Before we rush into this brave new post-aid future, we need to pause and ask some necessary questions; not least: what do we stand to lose in the radical shift now underway.

For several years, financial support for international cooperation has been shrinking globally. Until earlier this year, when the closure of USAID plunged the sector into a full-blown crisis, budget cuts were largely disguised as consolidation, restructuring, or accounting maneuvers that counted domestic spending as part of international aid. Now, however, cuts are open and unapologetic: the UK government claims reductions to development are made in favor of increased military spending, while the Swedish government, in phasing out support for five countries, argues that funds redirected to Ukraine “have to come from somewhere,” going so far as justifying the decision by saying that aid has not always had the “desired effect”. Closer to home, the German government has cut its development budget compared to the previous year by almost one billion euros, with further reductions planned. It is also dissolving the humanitarian unit within the Foreign Ministry (AA), decisions that have massive impacts on long-standing programmes of large organisations such as the Red Cross, and on smaller civil society organizations and movements, where the effects are often less visible but no less significant.

Questions we should ask ourselves

Yes, aid has not always worked. It is telling that, in recent dialogues, participants from the South seemed less concerned about the reduction in funds compared to their counterparts in the North. Where the latter saw danger, activists from the South expressed hope.

But before we throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, let us ask a few important questions about the current state of the debate:

·       Why is the discussion moving so quickly toward accommodating, rather than challenging, the funding cuts?

·       What do we stand to lose in this sudden shift?

·       How can we encourage a conversation that treats this moment of disruption as an opportunity for a new kind of partnership and genuine global solidarity?

I do not wish to discredit the many committed individuals and organisations that continue to challenge their governments over cuts to aid budgets. Yet the relative lack of sustained outrage is striking. Much of the sector appears to have shifted with remarkable speed from challenging these decisions to adjusting to them.

Perhaps one factor is the erosion of public support for international development. In 2010, when we wrote Donor Playground Cambodia, the sector critically debated aid effectiveness, while public backing in donor countries remained high but shallow, more a “warm glow” than a genuine understanding. This uncritical consensus hindered structural change, which is why we argued for stronger links between voters in donor countries and people at the receiving end of the aid pipeline.

Since then, the increasing complexity of an interconnected world has fuelled a broader rejection of globalisation. Combined with growing social and economic insecurity and widening inequality within donor countries, these sentiments have been actively exploited by right-wing populist movements, driven by nationalist agendas and barely disguised racist undertones, undermining the foundations of international solidarity.

In this context, the rhetoric of aligning development and foreign policy narrowly with national interests, so prominently deployed in justifying the closure of USAID, has travelled quickly, pulling the ground from under those advocating for global solidarity. Most troublingly, long-standing and valid critiques of development cooperation now risk being mobilised in support of precisely those political forces that seek to dismantle it.

What we stand to lose

The first and most urgent losses from cuts in aid budgets and the dismantling of the sector are tangible, immediate, and human.

One projection suggests that ongoing cuts to health, nutrition, sanitation, education, and humanitarian relief programmes could result in millions of additional deaths globally. These impacts are compounded by the weakening of civil society organisations, particularly women-led groups and those focused on gender justice. A survey of women’s rights organisations found 90 percent affected by funding cuts, with nearly half expected to shut down within six months if conditions did not improve. This disproportionate impact is hardly surprising: long operating at the margins, the work of these groups is often overlooked and under-resourced, leaving them highly vulnerable to sudden cuts.

Beyond the survival of organisations and movements, individuals taking personal risks to drive change in oppressive contexts face greater danger. Emboldened autocratic regimes act with impunity, knowing weakened development and human rights infrastructure means fewer allies for activist and less scrutiny for governments. The decline of international solidarity not only undermines networks but also exposes activists to harm, marginalises their work, and erodes the credibility of human rights frameworks.

These immediate effects, evidenced by measurable data and lived experience, point to the human cost of retreating from sustained international cooperation, costs that go far beyond budget lines.

But the losses run deeper still.

The second set of losses concerns the intellectual and moral evolution of how we think about global engagement itself the very principles underpinning what it means to work across borders with justice, respect, and equity at the centre.

For more than a decade, discourse in parts of the development community has been moving from a traditional aid paradigm toward solidarity, underpinned by listening to partners in the majority world about what genuine solidarity looks like in practice.

Alongside this shift has been an expanding understanding of global collaboration not merely as redistribution of wealth, but as intertwined with social, economic, cultural and political rights, grounded in principles of dignity and agency. Feminist perspectives have been especially influential here, stressing that development cooperation must challenge hierarchies of power, embrace intersectionality, prioritise lived experience, and centre the voices and rights of those most affected by inequality and exclusion.

What we risk losing, then, is not only programs and budgets, but the very conceptual ground on which more just and equitable forms of global partnership have been built over the past decade. A retreat from solidarity threatens to revert patterns of engagement back toward hierarchical aid relationships rather than advancing toward mutual respect, shared power, and collective rights.

What next

This moment, though involuntary and driven by problematic forces, offers an opportunity if we remain mindful of what must not be lost. Misguided ideas are already circulating, such as calls to make aid “even more effective”. Rather than jumping to solutions, what matters now is a conversation that builds on past progress and, above all, listens to actors and movements in the majority world, who are already redefining this moment and seeking partnerships grounded in genuine solidarity. At WEAVE, we see the developments of this past year as politically alarming yet recognise their potential, provided the current debate moves towards centering real, transformative cooperation rather than sustaining existing structures.