Cutting overseas aid: an affront to solidarity and the common good.

People hold placards outside the US Agency for International Development building in Washington February 3, 2025, protesting the Trump administration’s moves to shut down the US foreign aid agency. Photo: OSV News/Kent Nishimura, Reuters.

This week, our CEO, Dualta Roughneen, argues in the Irish Catholic that cutting overseas aid is an affront to solidarity and the common good. Read below an abridged version of the article. The full piece can be read here

Are we suffering from an excess of empathy that creating compassion fatigue? In an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, the internet – and our fixation with social media and doomscrolling– means we are bombarded with never-ending stories of gloom.

Domestically, we have a housing crisis and a homeless emergency, we have a health crisis, we have a mental health crisis; internationally there is a refugee crisis or crises, we have Ukraine, we have Gaza, we have climate change, we have the wars we barely hear about but never seem to end.

Despite living in an era of greatest prosperity, we feel like we exist in a world of ceaseless crisis. We are living in one of the wealthiest countries at probably the most prosperous period in world history, yet doom lives around every corner. Are we becoming inoculated to the real crises that exist in the world?

Donald Trump’s decision to pause and then cut a very large portion of the US government’s overseas aid was met with little in the way of popular outrage. Keir Starmer’s announcement shortly after to reduce UK aid from 5% of GDP to 3% encountered very little resistance. The world moved on very quickly.

Inside the aid-sector, the reaction was much different. It has turned international assistance on its head. The sector has entered crisis mode yet we have struggled to articulate a strong and compelling argument about what this will mean for the most vulnerable across the world. It is hard to understand why. The examples brought forward by Elon Musk discrediting international assistance gained far more traction than the counter-arguments even if they were cherry-picked for maximum impact.

Two of my proudest moments in over twenty years working in international aid demonstrated to me the power of overseas assistance in general but in particular the power – and benefits – of United States assistance. The Nepal earthquake of 2015 devastated a huge part of the country. People were killed immediately but millions lost their homes, their livelihoods, their education and much more.

When the second earthquake hit two weeks later on 12th May, I was very close to the epicentre, benefitting from US Marines helicopters who were flying me – and food and tents – to people high in the mountains. Immediately after the quake hit, they were ready to go again to pick up anyone injured and fly them to Kathmandu for treatment. They invited me to go with them to assess the damage but I declined, rather leaving space for anyone injured to be picked up. They took off and, on their way back, they met cloud cover and heavy mist, crashing into an outcrop of the Himalayas. 5 civilians, 6 United States Marines and 2 Nepalese Soldiers, lost their lives.

In 2014, when the ebola crisis in West Africa was its peak, there was a real fear that the epidemic would go completely out of control and devastate vast swathes of the region. As it was over 11,000 people died but it could have been much, much worse. If it weren’t for the funds, the logistics, the organisation and the heavy lifting of the US government in Liberia and to a similar extent, the UK government in Sierra Leone, the outbreak could have been a lot worse. I was there and I can testify to the impact that the US and the UK had in curbing the epidemic and bringing it under control.

In both these examples, NGOs and the international aid sector played critical roles in harnessing the strength and funding of the different governments.

There are four main principles of Catholic Social Teaching: the dignity of the human person, subsidiarity, the common good, and solidarity. These underpin what should be the core reasons for supporting developed countries’ overseas assistance programmes. These are accompanied by the pursuit of peace and care (the preferential option) for the poor. This is not very different to how many aid policy makers understand the moral argument for aid in itself but the language and reasoning of aid agencies is becoming lost in a type of moralising that is alienating to the average Joe/Josephine.

We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Aid – like everything human – is imperfect, it is flawed, but if we turn our backs on it, we turn our backs on our responsibility for what Catholics call corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to give shelter to travellers, to visit the sick, to visit the imprisoned, and to bury the dead

Works of mercy are grounded in the virtues of faith, hope and charity, but of course we are called to justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, which require us to question the practical outcomes of how we approach our work.

In Donald Trump’s decision to obliterate the United States overseas assistance the virtues of prudence and temperance feel egregiously absent. He has used a cudgel where a scalpel would be most useful.

Lost in the midst of these ideological and somewhat philosophical battles, are the stories of real people. Amidst the constant narrative of crisis, and culture wars, are individuals with their own stories. What is lost will be vital life-saving assistance for people affected by war and natural disasters, or support for people in places where their governments either don’t have the will or the means to put systems in place that give them equal access to rights – and certainly not the standards of living we are used to here in Ireland.

The Catholic principle of subsidiarity recognises the human dignity of each individual and the right to be involved in his/her own development. Cuts to development assistance will impact civil society in the poorest areas from having the resources to exert some control over their own lives. Taking CBM’s own work, supporting organisations of people with disabilities, with resources to engage with their communities, governments, and other actors, to lobby for policy and legislative changes where they might otherwise be ignored, in countries where civil society is not supported, where democracy is weak and often where people with disabilities are disregarded in the competition for scarce resources, is hugely important. This is what the aid sector calls localisation in many respects. At CBM, we support OPDs, locally, to set their own agenda rather than imposing our own values. International development assistance is pivotal for people with disabilities, but also other often marginalized groups, to gain a toehold at the table.

Aid for us, isn’t just about saving sight – we know that this is necessary, urgent and immediate – but also supporting people to engage in the process of their own country’s development and in the spaces where decisions are taken and made. Cutting overseas development assistance risks taking away the one support that makes the invisible visible. We only need to think back to our own past where invisible people became forgotten people. People may honestly differ on whether this is the best use of taxpayers’ money, and it is not as easy to sell as emergency assistance, but it can be just as important to the real person or persons who otherwise would be just a number.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and Levite determined that they owed nothing to the injured man lying on the road. They crossed the road to avoid engaging.  The Samaritan may not have borne any responsibility for the situation that he encountered but he knew he could not, in good conscience, walk away. In a globalised world, we are no longer complete strangers to people who are a continent away. We can – and do – argue until the cows come home about where justice is owed in our globalised world, as history is contested and blame apportioned and restitution owed – by whom and to whom and to what extent.

Whether we consider overseas aid as charity or the subject of justice distracts from our Christian obligations and is to dance on the head of a pin.  We can talk ourselves to death arguing about what is owed to justice and what are our obligations but turning our backs should not be an option.

Pope Benedict brought justice and charity together with great articulation: “While it is true that human solidarity inspired by love goes beyond justice – because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other – it is never without justice, which leads us to give the other what is ‘his’, what belongs to him by virtue of his being and acting.  Indeed, I cannot ‘give’ the other what is ‘mine’, without first giving him what belongs to him in justice.”

Separately he emphasised that “[n]ot only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is ‘inseparable from charity’, and intrinsic to it.”

When viewed in this way, we cannot forget that charity goes beyond justice, that delivering charity does not obviate that justice must also be served – and no matter which way we look at international aid or charitable giving to those living in less prosperous or more volatile countries, walking away shouldn’t be countenanced. If you believe that aid, as currently practiced, does more harm than good, fix it.

Luke 12:48: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."