Less Development Aid, More Risks: The Cost of Withdrawal

Author :

Frédéric Apollin et Charlotte Millereaux

08/01/2026

Funding NGO

Climate breakdown, epidemics, food insecurity, conflicts, rollbacks of rights… The planet is burning and crises are piling up. Yet it is in this context that the government plans, for the fourth consecutive year, to cut France’s official development assistance (ODA) budget. The document submitted to Parliament on July 15 provides for a new cut of 300 million euros for 2027, bringing the total amount of credits lost by ODA since 2024 to 3.7 billion euros — a drop of more than 10% compared to 2026.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t budgetary economizing, it’s relentless targeting! Over the past three years, the development assistance budget has been one of the main contributors to the effort to reduce the public deficit. Since 2024, its funding has already been cut by more than 3.5 billion euros, a 60% decrease. While ODA represents only 0.8% of state spending, it will still bear nearly 8% of the overall budget-reduction effort in 2027. Treating this budget as a simple adjustment variable, supposedly painless and without consequences for our daily lives, is a serious mistake.

ODA is not spending like any other. It responds to humanitarian crises, supports populations affected by natural disasters, and strengthens access to fundamental rights and essential services: food, water, health, education, and social protection.

What happens elsewhere has an impact here! Who can still believe that health, food, climate, security, or human-rights crises stop at borders? Development aid genuinely strengthens our collective security, stabilizes regions, and prevents crises whose consequences we could otherwise suffer.

The human repercussions of these budget cuts are beginning to be documented, and the results are chilling. Millions of people will see their rights rolled back and lose access to basic services. A recent study estimates that the decline in French funding could be associated with 3.5 million additional deaths by 2030. And the cost of this disengagement goes far beyond the question of solidarity alone.

Beyond their human impact, these cuts are also weakening an entire sector of activity and significantly undermining its ability to act among vulnerable populations. From January 2024 to June 2025, French international solidarity associations had already reduced or closed 1,280 projects around the world, affecting more than 15 million people. At the same time, 10,000 jobs were eliminated. Today, one organization in three describes itself as strongly, or even very strongly, threatened in its short-term survival due to concrete difficulties: cash-flow strain, risk of insolvency, and no visibility on their activities beyond one year.

Committed to international solidarity, our organizations are doing everything they can to keep their work going. But the contraction in funding is unprecedented. Every euro withdrawn by the French state also causes the loss of additional funding, both public and private — particularly European — that this national support used to help mobilize. The entire leverage effect of public development aid is now under threat.

This trajectory raises a question of consistency. For several years, the President of the Republic and successive governments have made numerous commitments to international solidarity, notably through the 2021 programming law, as well as at many international meetings and interministerial gatherings. It must be acknowledged that the budgetary decisions made — and those now being considered — run directly counter to these commitments.

And as if the budget cuts weren’t enough, the funds that remain are increasingly being redirected toward short-term national political priorities. By assigning ODA an ever-growing number of objectives that are increasingly removed from human development — controlling migration flows, fighting drug trafficking, supporting French businesses — there is a real risk of diluting its core mission and weakening both its coherence and its impact.

Proposals are on the table to support the financing of international solidarity, once again drawing on solidarity taxes on airline tickets and financial transactions. They are backed by numerous members of parliament and civil-society organizations — it is time for the Government to take them up.

The moment has come to react and mobilize in defense of development aid. As Jean-Louis Bourlanges, former chair of the French National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, once put it, development aid is « as much a matter of national interest as it is a matter of solidarity. »

Weakening it in a lasting way would mean reducing our capacity to honor our commitments, to prevent crises, and to defend our interests in an increasingly unstable world. At a time of major global imbalances, the Government is choosing to deprive itself of its means of action for crisis prevention and stabilization — a deplorable choice.

Frédéric Apollin and Charlotte Millereaux.

Article from the Coordination SUD blog

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