New Report: How US Aid Cuts Harm Women and Girls in Humanitarian Crises

First comprehensive report on the impact on women and girls illustrates how cuts decimated services and ushered in a “year of harms” 

Washington, DC — One year after the United States abruptly cut billions of dollars in humanitarian funding, a new report from the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) offers the first comprehensive review of how the cuts have affected women and girls across humanitarian crises in the last year. The findings are stark: Women have died in childbirth, millions of survivors of gender-based violence have lost access to lifesaving care, and thousands of girls have been forced to drop out of school.   

“The US aid cuts ushered in a new landscape of harms for women and girls in humanitarian crises,” said Sarah Costa, Executive Director of WRC. “These cuts didn’t simply reduce funding; they also shattered lives and livelihoods and dismantled the foundations of stability in crisis-affected communities. When health, safety, and education services disappear overnight, systems collapse and lives are destroyed, leaving individuals and families struggling to rebuild.” 

A Year of Harms: The Impact of US Foreign Aid Cuts on Women and Girls in Humanitarian Crises analyzed publicly available evidence on how the 2025 US foreign aid cuts have affected women and girls. Drawing on 105 gender-disaggregated sources from humanitarian crises in 32 countries, the report shows that funding reductions triggered cascading failures in health, protection, education, livelihoods, and civil society systems—impacts that have compounded over the past year.  

As one source noted, “Funding cuts do not just end projects; funding cuts silence victims’ voices and weaken justice.”  

The findings demonstrate how services for women and girls have been decimated: 

• Lifesaving healthcare lost at scale: 88% of US funding for maternal and child health and 94% of funding for sexual and reproductive health was cut. These cuts have forced hundreds of clinics to close and left millions of women without care. This could impact care for as many as 16.8 million pregnant women annually and result in 510,000 excess maternal deaths by 2040.  

• Women and girls less safe from violence: A 78% cut in aid to protect women and girls from violence has resulted in more than 3 million women and girls in humanitarian settings losing access to services that help prevent and respond to rape and sexual assault. 

• Education and livelihoods erased: Nearly 80% of US humanitarian funding for education was cut, pushing girls out of school and increasing risks of early marriage, exploitation, and child labor. An untold number of women have lost jobs in humanitarian crises, during which livelihood opportunities for women are extremely limited. 

• Women-led organizations forced to shut down: Nearly all of civil society funding from the US was cut. Women-led and women’s rights organizations were among the hardest hit, with nearly half expecting to or already shut down, shrinking civic space and weakening accountability at a time of rising need. 

WRC calls on international donors and policymakers to urgently restore and protect funding that addresses the unique needs of women’s health, protection, education, and livelihoods; provides direct, flexible, and multi-year funding to women-led organizations; and mitigates harms through gradual transitions and investments in local capacity. Going forward, the US and international humanitarian bodies must prioritize investment in gender-disaggregated data to track long-term impacts and rebuild humanitarian responses with gender equality and local leadership at its core.