*This piece draws on six interviews with practitioners and civil society leaders across South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, the findings reflect their experiences and those of their close partners.
Across the Horn of Africa, women seeking support in the midst of increased violence, conflict and displacement are finding fewer safe spaces, overstretched frontline workers, shrinking legal pathways, and fewer opportunities to access care and protection. For many organisations working in conflict-affected communities, funding cuts have manifested in the form of closed facilities, reduced outreach, suspended prevention programmes, weakened justice mechanisms, and communities losing access to already fragile support systems.
Beyond the Horn of Africa, humanitarian funding cuts are reshaping the aid landscape across the world. Since 2025 the United States and some other high income countries have drastically cut aid. In 2025, the Trump administration announced huge cuts in US funding (a 27 per cent cut in spending and 62 per cent in obligations between 2024 and 2025) and shuttered the key US agency that managed about 40 per cent of the world’s humanitarian relief. Between 2025 and 2026, the United Kingdom announced aid reductions estimated at roughly 39 per cent compared to 2023 spending levels, while Germany, Canada, and France also reduced international aid budgets.
These cuts have had severe implications for gender-based violence and women’s protection programming, sectors that had already been chronically underfunded. UN Women reported that less than one per cent of official development assistance globally is currently directed toward efforts to end gender-based violence and cuts have had a strong impact. A global survey they conducted of 428 women’s rights and civil society organisations found that more than a third had already suspended or shut down programmes addressing violence against women due to funding gaps, while over 40 per cent had reduced or closed life-saving services such as shelters, legal aid, psychological support, and healthcare assistance.
For conflict-affected regions such as the Horn of Africa, the consequences are particularly dire. Funding is shrinking as humanitarian needs are increasing. The Horn continues to face multiple overlapping crises driven by armed conflict, displacement, political instability, food insecurity, and climate-related emergencies. Across the region, women and girls remain disproportionately exposed to violence, exploitation, and insecurity. The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) estimates that 42 per cent of women in the region have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, significantly higher than the 33 per cent estimated to have experienced the same globally, though in both cases, the real figure may be higher due to underreporting.
Humanitarian systems across the region have long depended heavily on external donor support to sustain not only emergency aid, but also legal assistance, mental-health-related services, community outreach, protection monitoring, and women-led civil society initiatives. As one practitioner in South Sudan noted, the current moment reflects not simply a temporary funding shortfall, but “a structural shift in the way aid is delivered.”
In the Horn, the erosion of women’s protection systems is highly visible in the gradual disappearance of the frontline spaces and services that survivors rely on in moments of crisis. Across interviews, practitioners repeatedly described a pattern of shrinking outreach, closed facilities, reduced staffing, and the weakening of already fragile referral systems. In South Sudan, women-led organisations spoke of shifting toward agriculture and climate-related programming simply to stay operational. In Ethiopia, organisations reported that dozens of USAID supported projects had already shut down or significantly reduced operations. Meanwhile in Somalia, more than 75 GBV-related facilities were reportedly forced to close, reducing already limited access to services for displaced and vulnerable communities.
The consequences extend beyond the loss of individual projects. Practitioners across the region described the weakening of reporting and referral systems that allow survivors to seek support and access justice. In South Sudan, local organisations described how funding shortages contributed to the collapse of hotlines and reporting and referral mechanisms as organisations reduced operations. Several practitioners noted that reductions have left some areas with no coverage at all, leaving significant gaps in outreach and protection monitoring in peripheral communities. In some cases, legal aid activities have continued only in limited form, and legal representation and broader access to justice mechanisms have become increasingly hard to sustain.
This is especially severe in conflict-affected and displaced communities where access to healthcare and protection services were already limited. In Ethiopia, organisations working in Tigray described the shut-down of mobile health clinics, shortages in dignity kits, and disruptions to HIV-related care for survivors of sexual violence. Practitioners reported cases in which survivors were unable to access clinical services within the critical 72-hour window following sexual violence because facilities had closed or transportation support was no longer available. In displacement settings, reduced humanitarian presence has also meant fewer opportunities for women to safely report abuse or access psychological support.
The systems designed to provide protection, visibility, care, and accountability for women are becoming smaller, more fragmented, and increasingly difficult to sustain.
Prevention and community-based programming are also shrinking across the region. Group counselling sessions, safe-space activities, and outreach programmes have been reduced or suspended altogether. Practitioners warned that while these activities are sometimes viewed as secondary to emergency response, they are often essential for identifying risks early, supporting survivors over time, and maintaining trust between communities and humanitarian actors. This is particularly concerning in conflict settings where violence against women is often used to intimidate communities, punish opponents, and deepen fear and displacement.
Several practitioners interviewed for this piece warned that the weakening of these systems risks creating an environment where violence becomes increasingly normalised and underreported. In South Sudan, one practitioner described the cuts as “opening the way to impunity,” particularly in areas where access to justice was already fragile. Others pointed to the loss of field presence and conflict analysis capacity, limiting organisations’ ability to understand patterns and respond early.
The current funding crisis is forcing difficult conversations about dependency, localisation, and the future of programming and response. Practitioners and civil society actors interviewed for this piece repeatedly described the fragility of systems that rely on short-term and inconsistent funding to sustain long-term support for women and vulnerable communities. In regional workshops held in Kampala, they highlighted the need for more locally driven, community-based, and sustainable approaches to protection programming.
Organisations and frontline workers are attempting to adapt in order to maintain at least part of their services. Some organisations in South Sudan described growing reliance on volunteer-networks and coalition-based models, and community-led initiatives in which local community members are trained to act as first responders for GBV prevention and response, creating informal support networks that can continue functioning even when organisations lose funding or are forced to reduce their presence. Others spoke of “mainstreaming” women’s protection concerns into broader peacebuilding, food security, or community resilience programmes as dedicated funding for women’s rights and GBV programming has become more difficult to secure.
Yet across the interviews the dominant picture remained one of shrinkage. Practitioners described organisations reducing operations, suspending programmes, laying off staff, closing facilities, and increasingly relying on overstretched frontline workers and volunteers simply to continue functioning. Many warned that as vital as community engagement and mutual aid is, community-led initiatives cannot replace sustained investment in women-led organisations and long-term protection systems. Several practitioners also expressed concern that shrinking support for women-led organisations is steadily weakening women’s presence, leadership and organisational capacity.
Protection systems take years to build and moments to dismantle. While the long-term implications of the current funding crisis are still unfolding, there is a growing concern that many of these losses will not be easily reversed. Rebuilding trust, outreach networks, legal pathways, and community-based support mechanisms is often far more difficult than sustaining them in the first place.
