Foreign aid is a beacon of hope. When aid is cut, children's lives are at risk
- Less than 1% of the U.S. federal budget goes towards foreign aid, and it creates profound impact.
- Today, 1 in 11 children globally already need lifesaving humanitarian assistance.
- Our lifesaving work must continue so we can help children survive. But we cannot do this alone.
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What is foreign aid?
Foreign aid is goods, services, money or technical assistance provided from one country to another.
Foreign aid allows Save the Children to deliver lifesaving programs around the world, with our partners, so that children can grow up healthy, educated and safe.
Beyond meeting children’s most urgent needs, foreign assistance opens pathways for peace, thriving communities, global security and economic stability. It mitigates the risk of future humanitarian crises that could require more intervention.
When foreign aid is cut, it erodes the progress we’ve made and deepens future crises.
How do foreign aid cuts impact children?
Foreign aid cuts are a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable children. Funding cuts are leaving critical funding gaps at a time when 1 in 11 children globally need lifesaving assistance. Children who are trying to survive hunger, conflict and natural disasters.
Foreign aid cuts limit access to food, healthcare and education, leaving millions of children vulnerable to malnutrition, disease and poverty.
Which countries are affected by foreign aid cuts?
Over 40 countries have been impacted across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
From Sudan to Gaza, the DRC to Syria, sick and injured children will arrive at shuttered health clinics with nowhere else to go; children will be lucky to get one meal a day; children will be forced into work or marriage when their schools shut down; children who have experienced trauma will have to try coping alone. Life for millions will come to a grinding halt.
How many programs have been impacted by foreign aid cuts?
Globally, 179 programs have been impacted by recent cuts in aid.
More than 130 programs have been fully terminated and the rest have been fully or partially suspended. This will impact approximately 10.3 million people.
What are some examples of foreign aid that is not able to reach children?
Over 4.4 million pounds of food is being withheld from children and families, including in areas where famine conditions have been declared.
Over 300,000 hygiene, water and sanitation kits and supplies are being held, including in refugee camps with dangerous outbreaks of diseases like cholera.
Over 150,000 school supplies like textbooks cannot be ordered and play centers have had to close, disrupting children’s learning and denying them a vital safe space.
Over 2,000 newborn babies, breastfeeding and birth delivery kits are being held, leaving mothers and babies at risk of infection, pain and malnutrition. o
Over 13 million items of urgent medical supplies have been held up in warehouses for weeks, unable to treat children.
Thousands of kits for newborns and their mothers are being held, leaving mothers and babies at risk of infection, pain and malnutrition.
What Programs Are at Risk When Foreign Aid Is Cut?
Foreign aid allows Save the Children to work with our partners to deliver lifesaving programs around the world so that children grow up healthy, educated and safe. Beyond meeting children’s most urgent needs in a crisis, foreign aid provides medical assistance, keeps children in school, and protects them from abuse and harm.
In the DRC, hundreds of thousands of people will stop being treated for diseases like mpox and cholera.
In Kenya, over 154,600 children under five and 142,100 pregnant and lactating women in hard-to-reach areas will miss out of lifesaving nutrition interventions.
In Latin America, every day, over 2,000 children will be denied access to food, education and other fundamental rights.
In Ethiopia, our polio immunization project will grind to a halt, undoing years of work to eradicate the infection and risking the spread of deadly disease.
In Mozambique, 2,177 tons of essential food supplies have been stuck in warehouses for weeks.
In Afghanistan, the abrupt loss of funding has led to the closure of 32 health facilities, which in January alone, supported 134,046 children.
Your Support Can Help Humanitarian Aid Organizations, like Save the Children
Children need your support to fill the enormous funding gaps in foreign aid that threaten their survival.
Throughout Save the Children’s history, we’ve risen to new challenges. Strengthened by your support, we’re resilient and determined to do whatever it takes for children in the United States and around the world. That’s why now, more than ever, it is our collective responsibility to step up. We owe children a brighter future than they are facing now.
Join Save the Children's political advocacy arm--Save the Children Action Network (SCAN) and send an URGENT message to lawmakers: Cutting foreign aid is unacceptable.
