Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The Trump Administration's recent cuts to humanitarian work overseas stands out for their size and scope, but they don't stand alone. Even before the start of President Trump's second term, international aid from developed
nations was on the decline. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that in twenty twenty four, international aid was down roughly seven percent, and the OECD estimates that the dismantling of USAID and other changes made by the Trump white House will contribute to another drop in international aid in twenty twenty five by as much as seventeen percent. An organization that's seen the impact of that decline up
close is the International Crisis Group. For the last thirty years, ICG has been working to prevent war and conflict and to resolve it wherever where it's happening.
It's an organization that is round about one hundred and fifty with our staff throughout the world.
Comfort Hero is the International Crisis Group's President and CEO, so.
You'll find colleagues based as far as Carracus right through to Taipei, from as high up as Ukraine right down to South Africa as well. It is very much an in country operation.
ICG is an independent organization that relies on staff working on the ground around the globe to inform its policy recommendations.
The methodology of crisis groups that you speak to all sites, it's very vital in shaping the policy options, in defining the way forward, that you've captured the views of all the actors that are crucial to the conflict, from those who are fighting, to those who are the victims, to those who are influential as well.
At the start of the year, International Crisis Group released a list of the ten conflicts it's watching. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza around there, so we're the conflicts in Me and mar and Sudan. ICG also highlighted relationships where tensions have been escalating, like the relationship between the US and China and the US and Mexico. Aro says that what this signals is that we are in a new and more dangerous age.
Not only is it perilous, but it is chapter defining. We are literally closing down a period where liberal international order was very much the area in which Crisis Group was born. In the institutions, the norms of principles that shaped our birth are all crumbling. Some of them are disappearing pretty fast. Institutions are breaking. So for me, this is more than a perilous moment. A chapter is firmly being shut and it's quite uncertain what we're going to be birthing them into the future.
I'm David Gera, and this is the big take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, Comfort Ero, the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, on how a new era of conflict is intersecting with the rise in nationalism and populism in the global competition for attention and resources. Comfort Hero has been working in international crisis response for decades and I wanted to know, as she tracks conflicts all over the world, what variables they have in common.
I mean, you know, Crisis Group, we're very careful to try and provide a blanket narrative to explain the different wars that we're looking at. I think that's one of the reasons why Crisis Group was created, to make sure that you are looking at the specific context of its conflict as well. But if you're asking me to find a through line in all of this, from Venezuela to know Haiti to the Sahel to the Horn to Manma.
It's hard to ignore power the politics a local regional at the core of all of these conflicts as well, and territorial grab is now back in Vokee as well. So I think that's also another trend line that we're seeing, and that the guardrails that would often define how states cooperate with one another that is also on the verge of collapse as well.
When you look at all the conflicts that are taking place, there are some that do attract more interest and attention, and I wonder how much that preoccupies you. What does get the world's attention and what doesn't.
The heart of the mission for Crisis Group when its founders created it was that it wasn't going to be an organization that just focused on the headline conflicts, the ones that were at the top of mind for decision makers and the ones that the media latched onto. It was going to be an organization that focused on off the radar, forgotten those that are often that don't capture
the hearts and minds. And that is a reminder of the pressure on Crisis Group as well that our job is to make sure that those conflicts are that don't quite make the cut for the decision making for the policymakers who have limited capacity, limited bandwidth, that you remind them. And I think what concerns me more and more today is not that these are forgotten conflicts, but they're deprioritized.
So good example, you know Ukraine was top of mind since the invasion and by Russia in twenty twenty two. Now fast forwards the seventh of October, and it seemed to be a tussle between who was going to grab the attention in Ukraine or what was happening in Gaza. And now today you add that into the mix of Sudan. Now when you look at the statistics on Sudan, it is today the worst humanitarian crisis. It is competing for
attention as well. So it is a competition for who gains the attention not just by international actors, but even by regional powers, even the regions themselves, regional leaders, regional hegemons, those who are influenced or that are close to the region. They struggle because they're not only dealing with the region, but also what is different thirty years ago for crisis group is that today all those key actors that you would depend on to help shape the outcome of a
conflict themselves are in crisis. So I think of Nigeria, for example, I think of South Africa for example. You know, I think of Brazil for example. When I think of India and China, and they all have a different levels of crisis. Is that they're having to cope with, including those on their borders as well. So it's a real competition for bandwidth and capacity to address these issues.
Up next, how that competition for a shrinking pool of resources is playing out on the ground. On his first day back in office, President Trump imposed a ninety day pause on all US foreign aid. In March, his administration dismantled the US Agency of International Development, slashing tens of billions of dollars in assistance to developing nations. Those cuts have been contested in court. Earlier this month, a US appeals court ruled the White House can cut foreign assistance
funds approved by Congress for this year. I asked comfort Era, the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, about the effects of those changes in the places where her organization works.
We're still trying to assess the impact, but I think there are various levels of impact. One is the immediate misery and the uncertainty about where the next money was going to come from. In terms of eight, because while the focus has been on USAD, we've got to not forget the overall context of the fate of international aid. So in Europe, for example, Europe has already chloring back its EID money. France, for example, eighteen percent cuts in
its own eight budget. Germany itself ten point seven percent last year twenty twenty four, there's already a decline seven point one percent decline already an international aid. This year we're looking at seventeen percent. So there is a global decline in international aid and to sadly see that crumble overnight has a shocking effect.
One thing Ero morns is the loss of expertise, the knowledge and skills at USAID and other aid agencies.
Important staff on the ground collecting the data. They have a clear sense of where assistance is needed. They're seeing the refugee flows to understand what's happening in the country, and they're able to assess and prioritize where those needs are. So that it happened so far so quickly, I think is what's shocked a number of people.
It begs the question who will fill that vacuum? If you're describing and bearing in mind what you just said, which is its early days yet and everyone's still trying to assess what the impact is going to be. Are you seeing other states other groups assume some of that responsibility or see that as advantageous for them to do.
Look, let me say two things before answering your question. I mean, look, it's been devastating, it's been shock and when you think about the loss of significant aid. When I think about the Civil Society Group INS, very local civil Society Group INS in Sudan, and the work that they were doing, how they quickly converted themselves to provide kitchen soups, to provide humanity and aid where international agencies
couldn't get through. When I think about a support that's been given by various actors in Gaza, when I just
think about the global scale of this. At the same time, I think there are a group of people who have been watching the international aid industry, and I use that word very carefully, and I've been concerned about inefficiencies, about overbloatedness, about the overlap, the duplicative nature of some of the UN agencies, for example, So there was a number of concerns and of course a big debate about reform as well.
So I hope that what in mergers in the next few years is a more resilient architecture that really is able to work with both local and regional actors as well.
You travel a lot and recently went to bangladest.
I am here at Coxis Bizarre in the southern eastern tip of Bangladesh on the border of Mihnmart to focus on the world's largest refugee camp housing one point two million Bahingas who fled from Myanmar.
Could you describe what it looks like and maybe more than that, sort of what's happening there, what you saw and why it's so.
Yeah. It wasn't until I landed in Cocsig's Bizarre that I finally heard what they had been saying to me, which was that this was the largest refugee camp in the world. I was shocked by that.
The vastness seven, yes, the vastness.
But to be told that it was the largest refugee camp as well, because you know, having worked in Africa for many years and also lived in Nairobi, which was also the home for the largest camp because of Somalia.
This was a shock to me as well. So even for me a crisis group where we spend a great deal of our time warning international actors and thinking through it was a reminder to me that you know that out of the sort of the usual places that is often in the headlines in terms of humanitarian displacement and refugee crisis, in terms of humanitarian catastrophe, it was a reminder to me as well. And I had the opportunity
to visit the camp itself. I was there at a time where the debate was high about the future funding for the camp. I was there also at the time when Bangladesh, of course, is going through its own transition.
In August of twenty twenty four, Bangladesh's Prime Minister, Sheik Hasina was ousted after fifteen years in power. The country is currently being led by an interim government and the next national elections are scheduled for February twenty twenty six.
The question was how Bangladesh is going to manage its transition and also deal with the Rahinga crisis that's on the border. So it was a moment to understand Bangladesh's own role, the fate of the UN that is going through liquidation crisis of its own, regardless of what's happened to USA, but also watching the mushrooming of all these various non state actors in Me and Mah who have been able to resist the junta.
Since a twenty twenty one coup, a military junta has ruled Me and mar but hundreds of armed groups within the country have resisted, carving out autonomous.
Pockets, effectively states within a state, governing different parts of their society. But also in the midst of that, it's just the untold misery that you don't hear in the headlines, the sexual violations, the rape, the way in which young men are recruited, and the sustainability of the war in these refugee camps as well. So it was a tsunami of issues that you could see. You could tell the story of me and mal just by being in that camp. Just listen to the voices was quite devastating as well.
I just want to wrap up by asking you about something you said at the top, and that is that you've seen definitive empathy globally. Are you optimistic that will return.
I think for us to get back to that level of empathy, the organizations like Crisis Group are going to be crucial in explaining why it matters why you should care about the crisises, not just the Gazas and the Ukraines, which have a sort of a larger international peace and security, but for humanity's sake as well. So I worry that it's going to be hard to regain that. I also say, thirty years ago liberal international order, the interventionist impulse that
you saw for a number of Western countries. They are not necessarily on the front line in the way that there are other actors that are involved as well. But even journalists are facing a picarious moment in their ability to get access. They're often blocked from being able to bring those stories to you as well. So I think even getting journalists to be able to do their work effectively,
that's going to be crucial to the empathy. But societies themselves, societies that you'd often turn to for assistance, for aid, for support also going through their own crisis is as well. Some of these countries themselves require that aid to be turned inwards as well. You know, you've got the poverty in parts of the countries that we would often turn to for assistance, I mean, rich advanced societies. They're going through different levels of crisiss migration, populism, a cost of
living crisis, deficit crisis as well. More than any other time, it's very clear to me that there is now an overlap between the domestic of international. You have to be able to explain to your domestic constituency why it matters for you to be concerned about the fate of other civilians caught in crisises elsewhere.
I imagine someone in your position could be tempted to despair looking at all that's happening around the world, and how do you forestall that from happening? What gives you grounds for optimism as you again survey the whole world and how many conforts are taking place all over it.
Because I think in the end of the day, and it is the essence of crisis group that in every crisis there is a window of opportunity. The job of crisis group is to latch onto those windows and oh the door, and keep that door open, keep it open, and maybe wide it as well. And that's what keeps me hopeful because it's very easy to despair and that center of fatalism and you can't afford to have that.
And also just watching my colleagues as well, and it's a privilege to wake up every morning to one hundred and fifty different people providing you with information, and not just information, but at the end of every piece of information what they see as the the possibilities and just the creativeness as well. And in the moment of despair and anxiety, that you have people who are willing to think through creatively what's possible. I don't have the right therefore to despair basically as well.
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerra. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode, make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.