Six Months of Collapse, Six Days to Decide

Executive Summary
January 2025: Nearly 10,000 USAID & State awards terminated affecting 79 million people, more than the entire population of Germany abandoned overnight
June 2025: One-third of global humanitarian capacity eliminated, about 14 000 layoffs or pending redundancies, coordination systems collapsing
Next Week: IASC meets June 17 to decide between managed decline, incremental reform, or radical transformation
The Stakes: Fletcher's UN80 reforms face a simple choice, transformation or death by a thousand cuts
The Evidence: We know what works: pooled funds, unified cash, local leadershipbut institutional resistance may doom proven solutions

Introduction: The Timeline That Changed Everything
The humanitarian system as we knew it ended six months ago. What started with a single funding decision has spiraled into an existential crisis that will climax next week. I've tracked every step of this collapse, from those first frantic WhatsApp messages to yesterday's resignation letters. In a meeting that will define the future, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee must now decide what to build from the rubble.

Article content
The timeline tells a story of cascading collapse:

January 24, 2025: US announces immediate freeze on all foreign assistance
January 25-31: Stop-work orders cascade across 68 countries as 10,000 programs halt
February: Mass layoffs begin; I document "Day Zero for Aid"
March: OCHA survey reveals 68% of organizations received termination notices
April: Survey results confirm 79 million people cut off from assistance
May: UN agencies announce 20-30% workforce cuts; Fletcher accelerates UN80 reforms
June 17: IASC meets to determine the humanitarian system's future

As IASC prepares to meet, they face choices that will determine whether the humanitarian system emerges stronger or continues its death spiral. The evidence is clear. The solutions exist. The only question is courage.

The Reckoning: What Actually Happened
From Shock to System Failure: A Six-Month Autopsy
When I wrote my first analysis on January 25, warning of impending catastrophe, even I, someone paid to be pessimistic about these things, underestimated how fast it would all unravel and the speed of collapse. The US funding, $13.8 billion representing 43% of global humanitarian funding, didn't taper off. It vanished overnight.

The human impact was immediate. Within 24 hours, Syrian refugee programs across Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey received stop-work orders. Food distributions serving 500,000 people in Afghanistan halted mid-delivery. HIV clinics across sub-Saharan Africa began rationing antiretrovirals, knowing their supplies would last weeks, not months.

By February, what I termed "The Death of Denial" had set in. Nearly 10,000 USAID and State Department awards were terminated. In Haiti, the only trauma hospital serving Port-au-Prince's 2.8 million people reduced surgeries by 60%. Across the Sahel, nutrition programs that had prevented famine for a decade simply disappeared.

The March data revealed the cruelest irony: those closest to communities suffered most. National NGOs faced 75% termination rates. Women-led organizations? 80%. A decade of localization rhetoric evaporated as international agencies protected their core operations by cutting local partners first.

Tom Fletcher's stark admission in May"probably a third is coming out of the humanitarian sector right now" merely confirmed what fieldworkers already knew. WFP announced cuts of up to 6,000 jobs. OCHA itself cut 20% of programs and posts. The architecture built over 75 years wasn't being reformed. It was being demolished.

The Three Futures Facing IASC
The leaders walking into the IASC meeting next week are not just attendees; they're architects of the future. The discussion on the table isn't about coordination it's a fundamental choice between three possible worlds for the 305 million people who depend on a system in ashes. Before them lie three distinct paths. Each one leads to a profoundly different reality.

Choice 1: The Status Quo Path - "Managed Decline"
This is the path of resignation. It accepts the catastrophic new budget but clings to the familiar, pre-crisis architecture. This approach is defined by:

Preserving legacy agency mandates and the cumbersome cluster system.
Implementing deep, across the board cuts proportionally.
Relying on the same bilateral funding mechanisms, just with less money.
Attempting to coordinate with a skeleton crew.

Advantages: Requires minimal political capital; it's the path of least resistance. Preserves institutional roles and donor relationships in their current form. Let's be honest: this is the coward's choice

Challenges: Guarantees massive inefficiency. It scales down impact at the same rate as funding, ensuring the people who need help most are permanently cut off.

Likely Outcome: The humanitarian system continues at a much reduced capacity, serving fewer people but maintaining recognizable structures. Gradual decline, not transformation.

Choice 2: The Incremental Reform Path - "Strategic Consolidation"
This middle path is an attempt to renovate while the structure is still smoldering. It embraces the spirit of Tom Fletcher's UN80 reforms, aiming for targeted improvements without a fundamental teardown. This approach involves:

Selectively merging the most obviously overlapping functions.
Pushing for better collaboration while protecting distinct agency mandates.
Gradually increasing pooled funding but keeping bilateralism dominant.
Using technology to streamline coordination and find modest savings.

Advantages: Politically achievable and builds on existing reform momentum. Promises real efficiency gains of 15-20%, which is not insignificant.

Challenges: The gains may not be enough to offset a 40%+ funding cut. It risks creating a two-tiered system: a more efficient core for some, and a permanent cold for everyone else left outside.

Likely Outcome: System operates at a reduced capacity with improved efficiency.

Choice 3: The Radical Transformation Path - "Phoenix Rising"
This is the high-risk, high-reward path. It accepts that the old house is gone and dares to build something new, resilient, and fireproof from the foundation up. This requires abandoning incrementalism for a fundamental restructure:

Merging major operational agencies into a unified response mechanism.
Shifting over 50% of all funding to highly efficient pooled funds and direct financing.
Making cash assistance the default for meeting basic needs, with in-kind aid as the exception.
Transferring real power and resources to local actors, making them partners, not subcontractors.

Advantages: The only path with the potential to offset the funding cuts through radical efficiency. Directly addresses the root causes of systemic failure and empowers those closest to the crisis.

Challenges: Guarantees massive institutional resistance from those protecting their turf. Carries significant transition risks at a time of peak instability.

Likely Outcome: After difficult transition, system could potentially serve more people with less money through radical efficiency gains

The Localization Catastrophe: First to Be Cut, Last to Be Consulted
The data on localization's collapse deserves urgent attention because it exposes the humanitarian system's deepest hypocrisy. For years, we've proclaimed "as local as possible, as international as necessary." The crisis revealed this as empty rhetoric.

The OCHA survey findings are damning:

National NGOs: 75% received termination notices (vs. 68% average)
Only 30% saw funding reinstated (vs. 33% overall)
Women-led organizations: 80% termination rate
Average coverage reduction for local NGOs: 41%

But Ukraine provides the most devastating evidence. In ideal conditions sophisticated infrastructure, educated populations, functional banking only 3% of $1.2 billion in multi-purpose cash assistance reached local actors directly. Not 30%. Not 13%. Three percent.

This isn't about capacity. Ukrainian organizations rebuilt their country while under bombardment. Lebanese NGOs coordinate massive refugee responses. Colombian groups navigate complex conflict dynamics daily. They're excluded not because they can't deliver, but because the system is architecturally designed to exclude them.

In Cox's Bazar, Bangladeshi organizations that speak Rohingya, understand cultural sensitivities, and have worked there for decades watch international agencies struggle with basic community engagement, yet receive only subcontracts, never direct funding. The very organizations trusted by communities, speaking local languages, understanding contexts, these are the first casualties.

The Evidence IASC Can't Ignore
The last six months have been more than a crisis; they have been a brutal, system-wide audit conducted in real-time. The results are not ambiguous. They are a verdict on what works and what has failed. This is the evidence the IASC cannot ignore.

What Works:
The Power of Cash: Faster, Cheaper, More Dignified.

The evidence is ironclad: direct cash transfers are at least 25% more efficient than shipping and distributing in-kind aid. They empower people with choice and stimulate local markets. Yet in this crisis, as efficiency became paramount, the system bizarrely cut cash's share of spending from 23.3% to 17.7%. Contrast this with the Turkish Red Crescent, which scaled its cash programming to 85%, delivering €400 million in assistance with speed and dignity. The tool for survival was in our hands, and we used it less.

The Engine of Impact: Pooled Funds.

When speed and local reach are critical, pooled funds deliver. The Start Network routinely stretches every $10 million in funding to cover $18 million in needs through smart, collective risk-pooling. In Myanmar, the country-based pooled fund proved it could shatter the glass ceiling for local actors, channeling an unprecedented 75% of its resources directly to national NGOs. This isn't a theory; it is a proven model for getting money where it's needed, fast.

The Architecture of Failure
The Disease of Duplication and Distance.

The system's addiction to protecting institutional turf has led to a costly and dehumanizing architecture of failure. HQ bloat is bad enough. But this disease travels from Geneva to the field. While UNICEF's own audits warned of disproportionate headquarters growth, that same siloed thinking forces families in Afghanistan to navigate a soul-crushing bureaucracy: register with WFP for food, then register again with UNHCR for cash, then register again with UNICEF for health services. Each agency maintains its own database, its own staff, its own overhead. Sure, this redundancy wastes millions. Worse? It costs the eqivelent of entire country programs that could be fully funded with the waste.

It is the ultimate inefficiency: a system designed to sustain itself, not the people it claims to serve.

What IASC Must Do Next Week
Five Decisions That Will Define the Future
Enough. No more task forces, no more working groups, no more 'deep concern. The IASC meeting cannot end with another vague communiqué expressing ‘deep concern.’ The leaders gathered have one job: to make five binding commitments that will form the foundation of a new, resilient humanitarian system. Based on the brutal evidence of the last six months, these actions are non-negotiable.

1. End the Tyranny of Inefficiency: Mandate Pooled Funds.

The single greatest source of waste is the fragmented, competitive, bilateral funding model. This must end. The IASC must hardwire efficiency into the system by mandating a system-wide shift to pooled funds on a non-negotiable timeline:

2. Tear Down the Silos: Unify the Basic Needs Response.

A hungry child is a hungry child. It's time to end the absurd and wasteful fiction that a refugee needs different food than an internally displaced person. All agencies must work under a single, unified system for delivering basic needs. One assessment. One registration. One delivery system. Anything less is a choice to perpetuate waste.

3. Make Cash the Default, Not the Exception.

The fastest, most dignified, and most efficient way to help people is to give them the resources to help themselves. The system must stop treating cash as a niche "modality" and recognize it as the default response. Trust people to know what they need. Define clear standards, and give them the choice.

4. From Subcontractors to Partners: Empower Local Action.

The era of paying lip service to localization is over. The crisis proved that local organizations are the true frontline, yet they were the first to be cut. This structural discrimination must be reversed. The IASC must demand that pooled funds have mechanisms for direct access and require that international actors engage local groups as equitable partners, not as cheap subcontractors.

5. Redefine Success: Measure What Actually Matters.

For too long, the system has measured its own activity reports filed, meetings held, dollars processed. This must stop. The new system must be accountable for its real-world impact. The new metrics must be simple, radical, and focused on human outcomes:

Speed from crisis onset to delivery of aid.
Percentage of funds that reach affected people.
Satisfaction ratings from the people receiving assistance.

October 1st: The World After USAID
In less than three months, the institution of USAID, a global workforce and repository of knowledge built over decades, is slated for executive erasure. Forget budget cuts. This is the sudden termination of a central pillar of the global order.

If the Choice is Status Quo: The Great Diminishment.

October will bring a managed, predictable, and soul-crushing decline. The system will look familiar, the same logos on the vehicles, the same acronyms in the reports, but it will be a hollowed-out version of its former self. It will be a ghost architecture, its capacity reduced by 40%, haunted by the 79 million people it was built to serve but can no longer reach. It is the future as a faded photograph.

If the Choice is Incremental Reform: The Fragile Stability.

October will begin a period of painful triage. The system won't collapse entirely, but it will be a landscape of permanent construction and unresolved trade-offs. Targeted efficiencies will create pockets of success, proving that reform is possible. But with the fundamental architecture unchanged, the system will be perpetually shoring up a cracked foundation. It will achieve a fragile, diminished stability, constantly vulnerable to the next major shock.

If the Choice is Radical Transformation: The Painful Rebirth.

October will be chaotic. The transition will be turbulent as legacy systems and old habits fight for survival. But beneath the noise of resistance, something new will be taking root. For the first time, significant funding will flow directly to local organizations, unleashing new energy. Unified cash systems will reach families faster and more efficiently than ever before. It will be difficult. But by mid-2026, the world will see a system that is not just a smaller version of the past, but the difficult, messy, and revolutionary birth of the future.

The Human Ledger: An Invoice for Inaction
For six months, we have talked of systems, structures, and funding flows. But forget the dollars. The real cost gets recorded on a human ledger, in entries of hunger, fear, and loss. Stories? Try invoices. Bills for our collective failure, delivered to the door of the IASC.

Nikash Tara – “Some days I just don’t eat”
When WFP warned it would cut the monthly food voucher for more than a million Rohingya from $12.50 to $6, barely the price of a dozen eggs, Bangladeshi camp residents like Nikash Tara, a mother of three, braced for hunger. “Sometimes, I skip meals so my children can eat,” she told Arab News ahead of Eid-al-Adha, describing meat as a once-a-year luxury for her family. Context: The planned cut follows an earlier reduction that already pushed child malnutrition above 15 percent, the highest rate ever recorded in the settlement.

Valentina Yagmurova – Displaced at 92 with nowhere to go
As shelling intensified in March, Valentina Yagmurova, 92, was evacuated from her home to a UNHCR transit centre. Now, she sleeps on a cot in a temporary shelter because the agency, its cash reserves erased by the U.S. aid freeze, had to put its programs on hold. She is one of nearly 9,000 traumatized people who have passed through the same centre since January, arriving, in the words of UNHCR’s Karolina Lindholm Billing, “with little or no belongings.”

I've seen too many Valentinas in too many transit centers. Each one a testament to our collective failure. Abstract case studies? No. These are human consequences of the very systems the IASC leaders are paid to steward. These are the faces that should haunt the conference room in Geneva next week. As Tom Fletcher stated with brutal clarity: "People are dying right now because of the aid cuts."

The only remaining question is what the Inter-Agency Standing Committee will do about it.

Conclusion: The Kunduz Test Is Over
Six months ago, Tom Fletcher’s "Kunduz Test" was a provocative thought experiment for a complacent system: "How does the impact of everything we're doing compare to simply giving cash directly to women in Kunduz?"

Today, it is no longer a test. It is the only question that matters, and the brutal audit of the last 180 days has delivered a verdict.

The evidence is in. We know that a dollar channeled through a pooled fund can have double the impact of a dollar spent through legacy systems. We know that cash is not just more dignified, but at least 25% more efficient. We know that local organizations, when finally trusted with real resources, deliver with greater speed and context than a system that was never built for them.

The answer to the Kunduz test is clear: she wins. The current system, by its own metrics, loses.

And she cannot wait for another six months of deliberation. Neither can the 52 million people facing hunger across West Africa, the 4.5 million Syrian refugees watching their services evaporate, or the 100 million displaced worldwide.

The IASC has six days to decide its path. But they must understand that when one-third of your house has already burned to the ground, rearranging the remaining furniture is not renovation, it is an act of profound, unforgivable denial.

The leaders who meet next week are not just choosing a policy; they're choosing their place in history. They will be remembered as the architects who had the courage to rebuild from the ashes, or as the caretakers who presided over a managed decline into irrelevance.

Six months ago, the system faced a crisis.

Next week, it makes a choice.

There won't be a third chance.

Discussion Questions
Which scenario is your organization preparing for, and what if IASC chooses differently?
If pooled funds deliver proven efficiency, what legitimate reasons exist for maintaining bilateral funding dominance?
How can we preserve institutional memory when 12,000 humanitarian workers have already been terminated?
What would genuine "reform" look like in your context, and what stops you from implementing it today?

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