The Architecture of Hope Under Siege: One Year of Global Aid Dismantling

The Architecture of Hope Under Siege: One Year of Global Aid Dismantling

Civil society organizations (CSOs) are non-state, not-for-profit, voluntary entities formed by people to address social, political, or environmental issues.By Gina RomeroBOGOTA, Colombia, Mar 4 2026 (IPS) A year has passed since a 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign assistance signaled the deepening of a structural dismantling of international solidarity. Today, the “existential threat” to the freedom of association I warned of in my report to last ye…

American hegemony is facing its biggest obstacle yet: Donald Trump

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the newly inaugurated second Trump administration, paused the disbursal of all congressional approved foreign aid and attacked the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for “waste and abuse.” Not only is it unprecedented and unconstitutional for the executive branch to pause aid that has been approved by Congress, the administration also seems to forget the reason the U.S…

I lost my job at USAID a year ago. We still don’t know the true cost of dismantling the agency

This essay was produced through Sequencer's Storytelling Mentorship Program.A score of trained health workers stood at the ready to screen travelers in Kampala last year, one of the last lines of defense against a deadly disease making its way out of Uganda’s capital. Travelers breezed through a finely tuned screening system: staff checked their temperatures via ThermoFlash, and logged their contact information and answers from a comprehensive h…

The Quiet Dismantling of USAID: How Trump’s Foreign Aid Overhaul Is Reshaping American Diplomacy and Global Health

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 to fold the United States Agency for International Development into the State Department, it marked the beginning of what former aid officials and global health experts now describe as one of the most consequential restructurings of American foreign policy infrastructure in decades. What was once the world’s largest bilateral aid agency — with an annual budget exceeding $40 b…