Paper details

Paper authors	Alemayehu B. Hordofa
In panel on	Adjusting to a Changing Humanitarian System: Practices from the Global South
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Humanitarian action in Ethiopia is in flux due to changing domestic and global contexts. Domestically, Ethiopia underwent significant political reform in 2018 and has been grappling with turbulent crises stemming from emergencies triggered by climate-related shocks, conflict, and other economic or health-related issues. According to OCHA, 28.6 million people are dependent on humanitarian aid, including 4.5 million IDPs uprooted from their homes predominantly due to armed conflict and violent clashes along ethnic, economic, and religious lines. Externally, the humanitarian action in Ethiopia has been increasingly unstable due to policy changes in donor countries. Even before the demise of USAID, humanitarian funding in the country has been visibly inadequate due to donor fatigue, competing humanitarian crises in other countries, and other factors. The demise of USAID, following Donald Trump’s executive order on January 20, 2025, further exacerbated the humanitarian response gap and exposed long-term structural problems in Ethiopia’s humanitarian governance, including a lack of genuine investment in strengthening local and national capacities, as well as an accountability gap in the aid sector. This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in Ethiopia, analyses how humanitarian governance in Ethiopia is evolving in response to changing global contexts. It particularly analyses the overall impact of the USAID funding cut on the humanitarian architecture in Ethiopia and the local response to this changing international context. The context of humanitarian governance in Ethiopia is ever-changing, complex, and dynamic, providing a particularly important opportunity to understand the broader impact of the USAID demise on humanitarian governance in global south.

Back