Washington DC – Preliminary data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has shown that international development assistance from its members is set to decline by about 23 percent from 2024 to 2025.
Much of that decline was due to a major reduction in funding from the United States.
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The forum, which includes several of the largest economies in Europe and the US, said on Thursday that the US faces a nearly 57 per cent decline in foreign aid in 2025.
The OECD’s four other top contributors – Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and France – also saw declines in their foreign aid aid.
For the first time, overseas development assistance from all five top OECD donors has declined simultaneously, according to the report. Total aid for 2025 was just $174.3 billion, down from $214.6 billion a year earlier, the largest annual decline since the OECD started recording data.
OECD officials warned that the dramatic decline comes at a time when global economic and food security is in doubt amid the tensions of the US-Israel war with Iran.
“It is extremely worrying to see such a large decline in (development funding) in 2025 due to dramatic cuts among top donors,” OECD official Carsten Storr said in a statement.
Preliminary data on Thursday showed only eight member states met or exceeded their funding through 2024.
“We are in a time of increasing humanitarian needs,” Storr said, citing growing global uncertainty and extreme poverty. “I can only request that DAC donors reverse this negative trend and start increasing their (aid).”
The data covers the 34 members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which provide the vast majority of global foreign aid.
But the numbers paint an incomplete picture of global development assistance, as it fails to include influential non-DAC members, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and China.
Data tracked by the OECD separates official development assistance from other types of aid, including military funding.
‘Three-fourth decline’ in America
In its initial assessment, the OECD noted that the US “alone would lead three-quarters of the decline” in 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump has made sweeping cuts to America’s aid infrastructure, including disbanding the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of a broader effort to reduce government spending.
According to the OECD, the US is set to contribute nearly $63bn in official development assistance in 2024, falling to just under $29bn in 2025.
Research This year the University of Sydney suggested that cuts to US funding over the past year have led to an increase in armed conflict in Africa, as state resources have become more scarce.
Other experts have noted that aid cuts are likely to lead to a surge in cases of HIV-AIDS, malaria and polio.
Analyst at the Center for Global Development has projected That US reductions alone were linked to 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths globally in 2025. a recent article published The medical journal The Lancet found that the “current downward trend” in development funding could lead to more than 9.4 million new deaths by 2030.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has said it is changing the US aid model, not avoiding it.
In recent months, it has signed some bilateral aid agreements with African countries, which it says are in line with its “America First” agenda.
But although details of such deals have not been made public, critics say some negotiations appear to include requests from African countries to share mineral access or health data.
‘Turning their backs’
Oxfam, a consortium of several non-governmental aid organizations, was among those calling on rich countries to change course after Thursday’s report.
“Rich governments are turning their backs on the lives of millions of women, men and children in the Global South with these severe aid cuts,” Didier Jacobs, Oxfam’s development finance lead, said in a statement.
Jacobs said governments are “cutting life-saving aid budgets while funding conflict and militarization”.
As an example, he pointed to the US, where the Trump administration is expected to request between $80 billion and $200 billion for the US-Israeli war with Iran, which is currently on hold amid a tenuous ceasefire.
The administration has requested a historic $1.5 trillion set aside for the U.S. military for fiscal year 2027.
“Governments must restore their aid budgets and strengthen the global humanitarian system that is facing its worst crisis in decades,” Jacobs said.
