Ukraine Is Crowding Out the World’s Foreign Aid

Europe’s largest donors of foreign aid have responded to the war in Ukraine by making vast commitments to Ukrainian refugees. But in some countries that assistance has reportedly been drawn from existing foreign-aid budgets that have been reduced in recent years. The result, say some activists and welfare organizations, is that aid to Ukrainians has come at the expense of millions of others around the world dependent on the West for food, basic health care, and education.

More than 300 million people, half of them children, are in need of desperate aid in some of the world’s poorest and most conflict-ridden regions. But they seem to have been deprioritized since Russia’s Ukraine invasion. Aid cuts come at a time when the impact of climate change and a steep rise in prices attributable to the war in Ukraine have further worsened living conditions of vulnerable populations. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), 80 percent of the people in need of humanitarian aid live in 20 nations. 

“It is vital that support for refugees fleeing Ukraine not come at the expense of millions of refugees and other people in crisis around the world,” the IRC told Foreign Policy via email. 

But the rise across Europe of far-right political parties—parties that oppose Arab and African immigrants but have seemingly embraced Ukrainian refugees owing to religious and racial affiliation—has deeply influenced the continent’s political calculations. Many governments have responded to these new political pressures by chopping foreign aid while increasing spending at home. Among those are traditional donors such as Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. 

Foreign-aid accounting rules have also worked against traditional aid recipients. Under the rules of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the costs of hosting refugees are included in the foreign-aid contribution of a nation. Activists argue this has had a perverse effect: Instead of assisting others, donor countries are providing themselves a fiscal stimulus at home by setting up new welfare programs for refugees. 

Denmark’s spending on Ukrainians has reportedly been diverted from its 50-million-crown pledge in support to Syria, 70 million crowns meant for Mali, and 100 million crowns intended for Bangladesh. Sweden reallocated over 4 and a half billion Swedish crowns from foreign aid to pay for refugee reception within Sweden, according to Concord, a platform made up of 81 Swedish civil society organizations. Asa Thomasson, a policy advisor at Concord, told Foreign Policy that the divergence was “not a reasonable use of foreign aid” since it was used to pay for costs incurred at home.

The IRC said the poorest people were being punished twice over: by the reduction in aid and by the divergence of funds to host Ukrainians. “When donors host refugees, as European states are now, those costs can also be counted as ODA [official development assistance]. So even when ODA is not cut by a donor, less may be going overseas.” 

Syria, Ethiopia, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo did not even receive half their requested aid funding this year, and even though half of the populations of Somalia and Afghanistan are facing the prospect of famine, human rights organizations have been scrambling to garner the support they require. Ukraine, however, has made large requests and had them funded in record time. It took Somalia, for instance, nearly an entire year to receive 68 percent of its requested funding, whereas humanitarian targets for Ukraine were achieved at the same levels in a matter of six weeks. A recent report by Development Initiatives, a global organization that uses data to fight poverty, said average coverage for crises between 2012 and 2021 was 47 percent, but since Russia’s Ukraine invasion this year, it has fallen to 30 percent.

Activists say that while they have welcomed the readiness of European countries to help Ukrainians, it has also exposed double standards when it comes to sheltering refugees from Arab and African nations.

There are solid grounds for such assessment. Denmark has had a tough stand on Arab immigrants and has been widely criticized for declaring Syria safe for refugee return. But it promptly reversed its strict asylum policy to host Ukrainians. Mette Frederiksen, the country’s prime minister, justified the reversal and said her policy had always been to support refugees from neighboring nations.

Norway has earned record profits from oil sales as prices of oil spike globally in the fallout of the Ukraine war. Yet at first it decided to reduce contribution from just over 1 percent of its gross national income to 0.75 percent. The announcement made humanitarian agencies furious. Gudrun Bertinussen, acting head of politics and society with the Norwegian Church Aid, said Norway may earn 1,500 billion kroner from oil sales this year in comparison to 830 billion the year before. “You can get a bit dizzy with numbers,” she told Foreign Policy over the phone.

But finally, the government caved in and announced to put in place “a new mechanism with funding from oil revenues with the intention to bring the ODA level back to 1 percent,” Bertinussen told Foreign Policy a few days later. 

Swedish civil society, too, is livid that its government is unwilling to share some of the state wealth, but there is no reversal of policy in Stockholm just yet. “If Sweden, one of the richest, most peaceful countries on Earth and consistently close to the top in all international rankings of economic and human development, cannot ‘afford’ international aid, then what hope is there for this planet and its people?” Thomasson said. 

Sweden’s new government is backed by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats and has cut over $1 billion in aid that had been earmarked for refugees. Annelie Borjesson, the president of the United Nations Association of Sweden, said this could have a debilitating impact on various programs being carried out by the United Nations. “One specific example is the work of the United Nations Population Fund to fight child marriages,” she told Foreign Policy. 

It is hard to ascertain the full impact of budget cuts and divergence of funds on specific programs since governments have not been transparent about which specific causes would be abandoned to meet refugee costs. But there is no doubt that the future of millions is on the line. 

Thomasson said a report in which Concord’s members asked U.N. institutions about the possible impact of aid reduction, a 30 percent cut in core support would mean “2 million people without access to clean water, 2 million fewer children without their right to attend school, and 4 million teenagers without access to sexual education and contraceptives.” 

Birgitte Lange, secretary-general of Save the Children Norway, added that over the last two budgets the Norwegian ODA for education has almost been cut in half, impacting the prospects of 500,000 children. “Half a million dreams of learning and thriving are ruined,” Lange said. In 2020, when the United Kingdom reduced its ODA from 0.7 percent to 0.5 percent, at least 40,000 war-afflicted Syrian children had to give up education. London had said it would cut all “non-essential” aid without clarifying what qualified as nonessential. 

The decision was made under Rishi Sunak as chancellor, who since becoming the country’s prime minister has further redirected aid toward domestic programs. According to the Centre for Global Development, the U.K. also spent a large chunk of the reduced aid to house Ukrainians. The IRC told Foreign Policy that the aid cuts by the U.K., “traditionally the second largest donor,” have been “sharply felt’’ around the world. The cuts are having a “devastating impact” on programs in places like Africa, former Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Observer. “The money we have, a large part of it, has now been siphoned for Ukrainian refugees and others. Therefore, the actual amount of money that we’ve left for pure development in places like Africa now is very little,” he said. 

To make up for the deficit, philanthropists have come forward. “The European budgets are deeply affected by the Ukraine war and so right now the trend for aid is not to go up,” Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said last month. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $7 billion toward aid in Africa.

One of the main reasons European countries provided aid was to mitigate factors that turn people into refugees in the first place. A reduction in aid might prove to be an own-goal for far-right political forces as denial of basics to millions might encourage them, too, to leave their countries and march to Europe. There is consensus among activists that Ukrainians must be helped in every way possible, but the bill must not be footed by the poorest in other parts of the world. 

Correction, Dec. 14, 2022: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed information derived from the International Rescue Committee to another source. It also misattributed a quotation from Asa Thomasson.