Aid vs. empowerment: The economic siege on feminist advocacy

The clatter of sewing machines and the steady heartbeat of handicrafts hums relentlessly at the Rouh Initiative in Alexandria, where Egyptian and refugee women are stitching together new livelihoods, actively choosing to work over the passive wait in aid queues.

But this hard-earned autonomy came under threat the day director Nada Fadl received a terse message. Financial support for the organization would soon be slashed, collateral damage from the escalating US–Israeli war on Iran.

“They told us the reduction was due to the war in Iran,” Fadl told Al Manassa. She noted the bitter irony that the ongoing genocide in Gaza had a less immediate impact on the NGO’s funding than this latest war, severely stalling their official registration efforts to support refugees and their Egyptian hosts.

The initiative relies primarily on UN support, a lifeline recently destabilized by Donald Trump's decision to sever most US funding for foreign aid. Compounding this, the USAID canceled more than 80% of its programs, radically altering the global support map.

Geopolitical tensions are now casting a shadow over small initiatives. According to a UN Women survey report published in October 2025, which surveyed 428 organizations, more than one-third have been forced to suspend programs concerning women's rights—particularly those dedicated to ending violence against women and girls. 

Over 40% of these organizations were forced to scale back or halt life-saving services, such as shelters, legal assistance, psychosocial support, and healthcare, due to sudden funding gaps. Furthermore, 78% of the surveyed organizations reported a decline in survivors’ access to essential services, while 59% noted an increase in impunity and the normalization of violence.

Emergency relief over sustainable agency

A month into the war, it was estimated more than 1,900 people have ​been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran, according to Maria Martinez of ​the International Federation of Red Cross and ​Red Crescent ​Societies (IFRC) on March 27.

Furthermore, the UNHCR indicated in March that between 600,000 and one million Iranian families were forced into temporary displacement due to the conflict that erupted on Feb. 28, a figure estimated at approximately 3.2 million people.

The prevailing emergency response mechanism, which abruptly reroutes funding from sustainable development to immediate relief, creates an existential crisis for programs supporting vulnerable groups, particularly women and refugees, Fadl explained.

Mai Saleh, Director of the Women, Work, and Economic Rights Program at the New Woman Foundation (NWF), confirmed that structural support for women is reliably one of the first casualties of wars. 

“Displacement, refuge, and relief become the priority in funding instead of economic and social rights, and this pushes the files and gains of the feminist movement backward,” Saleh told Al Manassa.

While the Rouh Initiative’s funding has not yet been officially terminated, Fadl internal projection points to imminent cuts. “And then we won't find alternative donors,” she noted.

“Simply put, if we have ten entities supporting us, all ten will redirect their funding to the new conflict zone and not just one or two,” she continued. As a leader fighting to sustain the hundreds of families who rely on her initiative, the math is daunting.

“When Trump cut aid last year, I was serving 6,000 women; that number has already dwindled to 3,000, and I am afraid it will drop by more than half following this latest reduction. All our meetings now consist of a single question with no clear answer: how will we survive the next stage?”

Gaza and the diversion of funding

For some organizations, the financial crisis is not just collateral damage, but a direct consequence of their political advocacy. When the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA) took a firm stand against the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza, it paid a price: funding for the organization’s anti-trafficking project was abruptly suspended.

The suspension appeared to be a form of punishment for CEWLA’s Board of Trustees’ Chair Azza Soliman. Soliman had signed a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire, the boycott of Israeli goods, and the severance of diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv.

CEWLA had been receiving funding sourced from the German government, which in 2024 reaffirmed a Bundestag a resolution prohibiting financial support for any organization that supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement or is deemed to question Israel’s right to exist and spread antisemitism.

“We were among the first organizations punished for their stance on Gaza,” Soliman told Al Manassa, adding that the decision was a “direct political punishment,” a potentially years-long funding drought.

Soliman pointed out that the erosion of support for civil society began well before the US-Israeli war against Iran, driven by the rise of far-right governments across Europe. Multiple compounding crises in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Sudan have steadily redirected international resources, forcing groups to scale back their reach.

“As civil society organizations, we are facing reduced support and the cancellation of projects amid international tensions, while also struggling to secure local approvals without any explanation being provided for the refusals, which is disastrous,” Soliman said.

“The biggest challenge is sometimes maintaining the work team itself,” she continued, adding that organizations may suddenly be unable to pay staff salaries despite years of capacity-building.

The impact of halting American aid

In February 2025, civil society organizations suffered a major blow after the US administration canceled 92% of USAID’s foreign assistance programs, which have an annual budget of $42.8 billion and are estimated to account for about 40% of global humanitarian aid.

As a result, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) did not receive the planned $377 million for basic maternal healthcare, protection from violence, treatment for rape survivors, and other essential services in more than 25 crisis-affected countries, significantly affecting related humanitarian and feminist work worldwide.

In Egypt, civil society organizations froze a range of development projects implemented in partnership with the UN, especially in the fields of primary healthcare and women's empowerment.

Even large international institutions were not spared from the aid cuts. “The World Health Organization (WHO) is no longer able to provide services related to sexual and reproductive rights,” Saleh noted.

Such funding previously supported projects aimed at empowering women and local communities. “Non-American organizations that relied in part on US funding have also been forced to scale back their support,” she added.

"I won't be able to provide consultations or psychological support, and there is no coverage for personal status issues or violence; we are limiting our services to legal consultations," the NWF member said, as the NGO's services were impacted by funding cuts.

A state of uncertainty

Najwa Ibrahim, Executive Director of the Edraak Foundation for Development and Equality (EFDE), said the outlook for funding to feminist and civil society organizations remains unclear, with no information yet on how it will be allocated in the next phase.

“There are three programs so far that we either participated in or reached the shortlist for,” Ibrahim told Al-Manassa. “Either the funding was cut, or the entire grant was suspended indefinitely, because Western countries, especially European ones, have started reducing funding and redirecting it toward their own military spending.”

Only about 17% of humanitarian aid targets gender equality, compared to around 50% in the peace and security sector, according to UN Women data in 2025.

Funding constraints come as NATO countries commit to significantly higher defense spending, pledged to increase defense and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, marking a broader shift toward higher military priorities among member states.

Adaptation solutions: Networking and partnerships

The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Recommendation on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of All Women and Girls, adopted in 2024, calls for increased funding for gender equality and women’s empowerment programs, as well as greater financial support for local women’s rights organisations.

This did not resonate on the ground, prompting civil society organisations to increasingly collaborate with one another to sustain service delivery and reduce costs. As the Executive Director of the Edraak Foundation explains: “We started doing events through partnerships to save costs. Campaigns are done jointly, with each organisation contributing its own team.”

The participation of several organisations in a single targeted campaign further expands impact, according to Ibrahim, whose work now relies on low-cost activities such as webinars, online events, and jointly produced research papers, alongside efforts to establish a referral system in which each organisation takes on five to ten cases, sustaining operations by maximizing available resources.

As for local funding options, Ibrahim argued they cannot be relied upon due to being limited availability, with donors choosing tangible support over awareness or empowerment initiatives.

Furthermore, Soliman, said local funding has declined sharply amid the economic crisis, with small individual donations becoming unsustainable and support from businessmen and the private sector largely absent.

As humanitarian needs rise in conflict-affected communities, community-based and empowerment programs are being deprioritized, raising questions about the sustainability of local initiatives amid recurring crises.