NGOs are very worried about a further planned cut in public development aid

Sandrine Simon, director of health and advocacy at Doctors of the World, criticizes a decision that goes "against France's commitments" in this sector. She expresses her "deep concern" and "incomprehension".

In France, where public development aid has been reduced in recent years, the cuts envisaged in the 2026 draft budget amount to 700 million euros, for an allocated amount of 3,7 billion euros.

And Ms. Simon lamented a paradox between the political commitments "in favor of global health, for example" displayed by Paris and declining public funding.

"Every time even a million euros is cut, we know that there are thousands, even millions of people behind it who are affected," warns Anne Bideau, Director General of Plan International France, recalling a "downward trend in public development aid almost everywhere in the world."

"We know that the consequences will be dramatic, so we are extremely worried," Ms. Bideau told AFP.

In early 2025, the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), under the impetus of Republican President Donald Trump, had caused an international shockwave.

But the end of USAID had highlighted a fundamental trend: the amount given by 32 rich OECD countries and the European Union to development aid decreased in 2024 by 7,1% (in real terms) to $212,1 billion, according to an OECD estimate, a first in six years.

"Repeated crises"

"We have repeated crises, Sudan, Gaza etc. There is an increase in needs and there is a reduction in aid," laments Stéphane Doyon of Doctors Without Borders, an NGO that is not funded by the French government.

In France, this cut, which could reduce payment appropriations from around 4,4 billion to some 3,7 billion euros between the 2025 draft budget and the 2026 draft budget, is justified "by the necessary effort on public finances - and not for ideological reasons as in the United States," a diplomatic source told AFP, noting that it has not yet been voted on.

Between 2024 and 2025, the proportion of the decrease in payment credits was 39%, the same source points out.

"Between the 2024 budget law and the 2026 draft budget law, we would have a 50% reduction in public development aid," calculated Coordination Sud, which brings together French international solidarity associations.

With concrete consequences for NGOs that rely on state support.

"We were hoping to receive money from the French Development Agency, which has just announced that they will not support us next year," explains Sandrine Simon of Doctors of the World, at a time when the NGO itself is planning its 2026 budget with "a very high level of uncertainty, far beyond that of previous years."

At Plan International France, French public subsidies decreased by 44% during the last fiscal year of their deferred financial year, which ended at the end of June.

The NGO "had to interrupt" five projects, "essentially providing support or emergency aid for girls and children in general," according to Anne Bideau. Among them was an education and vocational training project in northern Benin, which directly benefited more than 2.500 children and young people, as well as 500 adults.

In the worst-case scenario, with massive budget cuts, more than 22 million people could die from preventable causes by 2030, according to a study conducted by Spanish, Brazilian, and Mozambican researchers. The results, submitted in mid-November to the journal The Lancet Global Health, are awaiting peer review.

Sandrine Simon thus fears "a resurgence of the HIV epidemic, probably more tuberculosis", "diseases on which there had been notable progress in recent years (...) but which we risk losing in the coming years if we do not reverse the current trend".