The richest men in the world have just cut off funding to some of the poorest people in the world.

Within hours of stepping into the White House, Donald Trump - with the support and marketing of Elon Musk - issued an executive order suspending all U.S. foreign aid.

Following this, a stop-work order was issued for the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID’s leadership was placed on immediate leave and hundreds of support staff were fired. Those who remained were told to stop funding development work and cut off communication with partner organizations. CUT. OFF. COMMUNICATION.

Around the world, aid agencies have been forced to lay off staff, turn away the needy and even shut their doors for good.

As an organization who also works in the Global South and has implemented projects with the support of international aid money, we know the devastating impacts this is already having on organizations who depend on this funding to do life-saving work, and employ people to implement that life-saving work.

Humanitarian and social aid work has a history of being scrutinized, mistrusted and inspected by certain government funders.

“We must know where the money actually goes.”

“What do they actually do with that funding anyway?”

"Where is the oversight?”

Because you see, they just think we are as corrupt as they are.

This mistrust trickles down to everyday people who hesitate to donate to organizations doing transformative work to uplift communities, while not thinking twice about buying items from corporations who exploit both people and land, making them richer by the day.

While the need for oversight and transparency is key and improvements can always be made, the truth is that most aid organizations and charities do ground-breaking work on shoestring budgets, and are experts in making a dollar go much further than one could even imagine. When grassroots organizations are trusted with flexible funding, we work magic.

Anyone that runs a charity or non-profit organization knows that the oversight we have and the painstaking, capacity-robbing reporting that we must do on a daily basis is exponentially more than for-profit corporations, who get away with blatant corruption, labour exploitation, sexual abuse, deforestation, environmental destruction, and much more.

In fact, many of the social issues that aid organizations are working to address are directly caused by corporations, capitalism, and greed.

But, this move by Trump et al. is not about ensuring transparency, and those of us doing this work know that. This is a power move and an attempt to hoard more for the richest of the rich, while depriving the “undesirables” of basic needs and wellness so they continue to be dependent on corporations for labour, which is almost always cheap, toxic and precarious. And the big ol’ machine of capitalism keeps going.

With this move, years of progress in anti-violence and anti-trafficking work, child marriage prevention, and human rights advancement are at risk.

Years of progress in clean water projects and sustainable farming are at risk.

To truly quantify the impact of these decisions on our world is impossible. Indeed, our humanity has just been taken back decades.

All with the flick of a pen of a man and his supporters who have never wanted for anything in their lives.

Women and children, in particular, will suffer immensely from these decisions. Global studies have proved that when you place money into the hands of local women leaders, their communities thrive. They know how to invest it, what to spend it on, and how to use it to ensure future generations (the children) are well taken care of.

Our fellow women’s organizations, anti-violence organizations, maternal care clinics, and anti-human trafficking organizations will be hit hard from this and, in turn, so will the communities that surround them. When you break a woman down, you break down all those she carries on her back.

In a world of abundance, there should be no child anywhere who goes without food, and no woman or girl whose circumstances force her to sell her body so her family can eat. There is immense wealth to go around and this shameful display of greed - under the guise of addressing corruption - is sickening.

It is also textbook fascism when we observe how it is all being done in the name of “fighting criminals”. Trump recently said USAID was run by “radical lunatics” and Elon Musk called the agency a “criminal organization”.

But, alas, we know who the real criminals are.

Marissa Kokkoros

Executive Director, Aura Freedom

Feb 5, 2025.