Published January 20, 2026, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC)’s report “A Year of Harms: The Impact of US Foreign Aid Cuts on Women and Girls in Humanitarian Crises” is the first of its kind to shine a light on the disproportionate impact women faced a year after the US abruptly cut billions of dollars of aid, sending crisis-affected areas into disarray.

“The US aid cuts ushered in a new landscape of harms for women and girls in humanitarian crises,” said Sarah Costa, Executive Director of WRC. “These cuts didn’t simply reduce funding; they also shattered lives and livelihoods and dismantled the foundations of stability in crisis-affected communities.”

The report draws on cases of humanitarian crises in 32 countries to analyze how the funding cuts weakened infrastructure for women’s leadership, health, and protection.

WRC found impacts they describe as “systemic shock,” explaining that rather than see these effects as short-term, the impact instead signifies the dismantling of “interconnected systems of care and protection for women and girls that had been built over decades.”

The report details how funding cuts shook the landscape through different sectors. Nearly half of women-led and women’s rights organizations were forced or expected to shut down. Hundreds of clinics have closed, leading to deaths and leaving millions of women without care. Three million women and girls in humanitarian settings lost access to services for rape and sexual assault response.

These findings are only a snapshot of the many shared by WRC in their full report.

“When health, safety, and education services disappear overnight, systems collapse and lives are destroyed, leaving individuals and families struggling to rebuild,” Costa said.

The report covers a mere year after the funding cuts, and the damage will only continue to compound. WRC highlights the need to invest in documenting the long-term impacts. They call for the rebuilding of humanitarian response with local leadership for gender equality at its core.