Six Months Into His Presidency, Trump Has Created a Global Humanitarian Catastrophe

Deaths from disease and famine have already begun and it's more than Gaza

Olivier De Schutter for Common Dreams

Photo: Mohammad Abu Samra for the IRC

As the UN’s independent expert on poverty, I am no stranger to harrowing statistics. 

But few numbers have shaken me like those emerging in the wake of the Trump administration’s suspension of U.S. foreign aid. According to new estimates published in The Lancet, these funding cuts could result in more than 14 million deaths by 2030, a third of them young children.

These deaths will not be the result of droughts, earthquakes, pandemics, or war. They will be the direct consequence of a single, lethal decision made by one of the wealthiest men to ever walk this planet.

On his first day back in the White House, Donald Trump handed a death sentence to millions of people. Hours after taking office on January 20, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14169, ordering a pause on billions of dollars of foreign aid under the guise of a “90-day review” to ensure aid was aligned with his “America First” approach.

Six months later, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been dissolved, and the entirety of America’s global humanitarian aid workforce will be terminated over the summer. The findings of the “review” have not been published.

Until the U.S. State Department releases a full assessment report, one can only conclude that the decisions to suspend foreign aid and subsequently dismantle USAID were made in an environment of zero transparency, zero accountability, and with no clear justification for a decision that will ultimately cost millions of lives.

What was billed as a temporary policy reassessment has transformed over the first half of 2025 into a full-blown humanitarian emergency. Estimates put the death toll since the aid freeze was announced at nearly 350,000 people—more than 200,000 of them children. All of these deaths were entirely preventable.

USAID and additional cuts to the UN and its agencies mean the UN faces the gravest threat to its existence in its 80-year history. UNFPA, the UN's reproductive health agency, estimates 32 million people will lose access to its services. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, warns that 12.8 million displaced people are at risk of losing life-saving health interventions. The International Organization for Migration projects 10 million migrants and internally displaced people will miss out on emergency assistance.

We are numbed by numbers. “One death is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic,” the saying goes. But these are our fellow humans—right now—suffering and dying. Children refused food. Refugees denied life-saving care after fleeing the horrors of war. Mothers bleeding to death during childbirth. All because the United States, once the backbone of the global humanitarian system, has suddenly turned off the tap.

America has abandoned the fight against poverty. But what does it mean to put America first while letting children elsewhere starve to death? The retreat may feel politically convenient, but the consequences will not stay confined to distant borders. When food systems collapse, migration spikes. When vaccines are cut off, disease spreads. When aid disappears, conflict grows. There is no version of global instability in which the U.S. remains unscathed.

No other country is stepping in to fill the void left by the United States. On the contrary, many are following suit, redirecting money once earmarked for life-saving development programs—initiatives that ultimately build a safer, more stable world–towards defense spending.

These decisions are not just budgetary shifts; they represent a fundamental threat to multilateralism and the international rules-based order that has kept the world from the brink of world war for well over half a century.

The question now facing other world leaders is stark: will they continue to capitulate to Trump’s unilateralism, or will they stand up and defend multilateralism and international solidarity, including financial support, as our only safeguard against chaos, endless conflict, and unnecessary human suffering?

Olivier De Schutter is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2020 and is part of the Special Procedures, the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring experts that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world.