Norway said on Monday it would sign multi-year funding agreements with six humanitarian NGOs, several of which were hit by the sudden freeze in practically all US aid spending.
The Norwegian funding will improve the NGOs’ financial mid-term visibility but will not replace the US funds, having been designed to work in parallel.
The Norwegian government announced it would allocate a total of 1.9 billion kroner ($171 million) per year to six NGOs for “rapid, flexible and targeted emergency aid” over the five-year period from 2025 to 2029.
“The need for emergency aid has reached an unprecedented level and global funding for humanitarian efforts is more uncertain than it has been for a long time,” International Development Minister Asmund Aukrust said.
The six NGOs include several which recently announced major cuts in their humanitarian efforts following President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze practically all US aid spending.
Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), which specialises in demining operations, said last week it would be forced to more than halve its staff and lay off 1,700 employees in 12 countries.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which received around 20 percent of its budget from the United States in 2024, also said it would have to suspend activities in nearly 20 countries at the end of February.
“This agreement means a lot for NRC, as it provides much needed predictability and flexibility,” Camilla Waszink, head of NRC’s Partnership and Policy, told AFP in an email.
“However, this is part of already budgeted Norwegian humanitarian funding and will therefore not address our many US-funded programmes now stopped due to the foreign aid freeze,” she added.
Norwegian People’s Aid echoed that sentiment.
“This agreement has been planned to work in parallel with the US funds that NPA has received up until now, and will not alleviate any of the effects the US aid freeze has on our projects,” NPA spokesman Hakon Odegaard said.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order freezing US foreign aid for 90 days, except funds for Israel and Egypt.
He said the move was to determine if the aid was in line with his views on abortion, family planning, diversity and inclusion.
A US judge last week temporarily lifted the freeze.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has a budget of $42.8 billion, representing 42 percent of humanitarian aid disbursed worldwide.
According to the United Nations, 300 million people were in need of humanitarian aid in 2024, compared to 78 million in 2015.