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Oxfam Warns Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Could Help Kill More Than 9 Million People by 2030
"Governments must restore their aid budgets, and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades," said an advocate with the international charity Oxfam.
Apr 10, 2026
The global anti-poverty group Oxfam International warned this week that US President Donald Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid by more than half could kill nearly 10 million people by the end of the decade.
Responding to new data released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showing the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance, Oxfam said “wealthy governments are turning their backs on the lives of millions of women, men, and children in the Global South.”
The OECD released preliminary data on international aid that was provided last year by member countries of the organization's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), finding the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance.
OECD member countries provided $174.3 billion in aid last year, according to the new data, representing 0.26% of the countries' combined gross national income.
In 2024, the countries sent $215.1 billion, or 0.34% of their gross national income to developing countries, including across the Global South—helping to provide nutritional assistance and healthcare initiatives among other programs.
US foreign aid spending dropped by 56.9% after Trump dismantled the US Agency for International Development, cut smaller aid programs, and pushed Congress to rescind previously approved foreign assistance.
"At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization."
Overall, wealthy OECD countries provided 23.1% less in foreign aid last year than they did in 2024—a greater decline than what the Institute of Global Health in Barcelona projected in February when it released a study in The Lancet, evaluating the impact of development assistance funding declines around the world.
The institute found that aid cuts in 2025 alone, which it assumed would represent a 21% decrease in funding, would lead to 695,238 excess deaths. If cuts continued at the same rate, an estimated 9,416,417 people could die of preventable diseases like malaria and AIDS, starvation, and other impacts by 2030.
The drop in foreign aid spending would suggest even more people could be killed by the cuts over the next four years.
“We are in a time of increasing humanitarian needs; strong pressures on the poorest and most fragile countries; and facing growing global uncertainties and massive insecurity," said Carsten Staur, chair of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which compiled the data. "In this situation, the world needs more ODA, not less—to help fight extreme poverty, improve resilience, and mobilize more private resources."
Trump's cuts helped make Germany the largest provider of development assistance for the first time ever, providing $29.1 billion to countries in need. The US sent $29 billion while the United Kingdom provided $17.2 billion, Japan sent $16.2 billion, and France sent $14.5 billion. All five of the top ODA providers reduced their foreign aid spending, accounting for 95.7% of the total decline.
Eight out of the DAC's 34 member countries either maintained or increased their development aid spending, and four countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden—exceeded the United Nations' target of spending 0.7% of their gross national income on ODA.
Didier Jacobs, development finance lead for Oxfam, emphasized that while "recklessly" cutting foreign aid, "the Trump administration has been preparing to ask Congress for tens of billions in additional funding for bombs, ammunition, and other military equipment relating to its unlawful war against Iran."
"At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization. Cuts from donors including Germany, France and the UK will be felt by the world’s poorest," said Jacobs.
In addition to slashing military spending instead of crucial foreign aid, he said, "there are other ways to find tens of billions, such as by taxing the $2.84 trillions of dollars that the super-rich hide in tax havens.”
"Governments must restore their aid budgets," he said, "and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades."
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Oxfam Warns Record $18.3 Trillion in Billionaire Wealth 'Highly Dangerous' to Democracy
"Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable."
Jan 19, 2026
A report released Monday as global elites convened in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum found that the collective wealth of the world's billionaires hit a record $18.3 trillion last year, a marker of supercharged inequality that is threatening democracy across the globe.
Oxfam International's report, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom From Billionaire Power, found that the total number of billionaires worldwide surpassed 3,000 for the first time in history in 2025. Billionaire wealth rose by $2.5 trillion, over 16%, last year. That sum, Oxfam observed, would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.
The new report focuses on the dire political consequences of allowing a small fraction of the world's population to capture so much wealth.
As Oxfam put it:
It is one thing for a billionaire to buy an enormous yacht or many luxury homes around the world. This excessive consumption can be rightly criticized in a deeply unequal world where the majority of people have very little and our planet is suffocating from relentless carbon emissions and waste. But many would reject this criticism, describing it as the politics on envy.
Yet far fewer people would disagree that when a billionaire uses their wealth to buy a politician, to influence a government, to own a newspaper or a social media platform, or to out-lawyer any opposition to ensure they are above the law, that these actions undermine progress and fairness. Such power gives billionaires control over all our futures, undermining political freedom and the rights of the rest of us.
Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International's executive director, said Monday that "the widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable."
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said. “Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger."
Oxfam's report notes that highly unequal countries are seven times more likely to experience forms of democratic backsliding, such as the erosion of the rule of law and the undermining of elections.
Both are currently taking place under President Donald Trump in the United States, which is home to more billionaires than any other nation.
That includes Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, the world's richest man, who reportedly just dumped a personal record $10 million into the US Senate race on the side of a pro-Trump candidate vying to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Musk was the largest single donor in the 2024 election, deploying his wealth to help propel Trump to the White House for a second term.
“No country can afford to be complacent. The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast."
Oxfam pointed out that billionaires also use their wealth to influence politics in ways other than bankrolling their preferred candidates. The group observed that "billionaires own more than half the world’s largest media companies and all the main social media companies."
Billionaires are also an estimated 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people, the report states.
"The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies, and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty," said Behar. "Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality healthcare, action on climate change, and tax fairness."
Oxfam urged governments around the world to pursue a number of reforms aimed at redressing massive inequities in income, wealth, and political power, including "effectively taxing the super-rich," establishing "stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich," and creating "realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress."
“No country can afford to be complacent," Behar said. "The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast."
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A Young Child Could Die Every 40 Seconds by 2030 Due to 'Cruel and Illegal' Trump Aid Cuts
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts."
Jan 15, 2026
President Donald Trump's shuttering of USAID last year will have a long-term negative impact on children throughout the world, according to a report released on Thursday by Oxfam.
In its analysis, Oxfam estimates that a child under the age of five could die every 40 seconds by 2030 thanks to the Trump administration's dismantling of American foreign aid programs.
Oxfam says it's basing its projections on "calculations in [the] Lancet’s impact evaluation and forecasting analysis from last July, which projected "4,537,157 child deaths by 2030."
The report also pointed to estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Gates Foundation, which calculates "an additional 200,000 child deaths" for children under five last year. This lines up with data published by the Boston University School of Public Health last year estimating over 250,000 child deaths caused by the drastic slashing of foreign aid funding under the Trump administration.
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, said that "we have run out of words to describe the depths of suffering" caused by Trump's destruction of "the entire global aid system."
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts," Maxman added.
The report also highlighted the specific impacts cuts have had in Sudan, the Philippines, and Syria.
Mayfourth Luneta, deputy executive director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness Foundation, an Oxfam partner in the Philippines, said that due to the Trump aid cuts, her organization had to cancel programs across eight communities that were impacted by floods and earthquakes last year.
"The Philippines was hit with the most powerful storms on Earth recorded last year," Luneta said. "Communities were devastated, families were left with nothing."
Shabnam Baloch, country director for Oxfam in South Sudan, described the impact that aid cuts have had on a country that is undergoing a horrific civil war.
"Water borne illnesses are spreading rapidly, starvation is imminent for many, and while needs are rising, lifesaving organizations are working with a fraction of the resources we had in previous years," said Baloch. "Oxfam, along with many other vital organizations, will be forced to scale down our programs without immediate intervention."
Sara Savva, deputy director-general the alliance of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East and the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (GOPA-DERD), an Oxfam partner in Syria, said her organization had "to drastically reduce the scale and scope of our programs for Syrian families and Iraqi refugees residing in Syria" in the wake of the Trump administration's cuts.
"We were notified we will no longer receive funding from the US government, and thousands of people are left without crucial services necessary to rebuild their lives after a catastrophic civil war," Savva said.
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