ACCORDING to a recent report by Devex Newswire, which covers the foreign aid and development financing ecosystem, conditions attached by Donald Trump’s administration to United States foreign aid have led to a number of longtime beneficiaries rejecting the funding, with potentially dire consequences for important projects in different parts of the world. Our own government, which has demonstrated an eagerness to accept any US assistance, or even nonbinding promises of assistance, despite the inclusion of conditions that may be unfavorable to the Philippines, should pay attention to these developments, and consider whether the cost of sacrificing principles is fairly compensated by the supposed benefits of the aid.
As reported by Devex last week, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Norwegian People’s Aid, which has spent over three decades clearing land mines and explosives around the world and has primarily relied on US funding for its operations, recently rejected $41 million in American aid, deeming the conditions attached to that money to be unacceptable, as well as largely irrelevant to its actual work of demining. Another smaller but similar faith-based NGO in Denmark called DanChurchAid also announced that it would reject $4 million in US funding if the Trump administration does not grant a waiver from the attached conditions.
Turning their backs on the conditional US assistance will come at a great cost to both organizations. Norwegian People’s Aid said it would result in the loss of about 1,700 jobs, the closure of a demining program in Palau, and cutbacks to ongoing projects in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Iraq. DanChurchAid said the loss of funding would put its demining projects in Libya and Lebanon at risk of suspension or closure.
The problem is the Trump administration’s euphemistically named “Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance” policy, which was promulgated shortly after Trump returned to office in January 2025 and quickly moved to dismantle the main American foreign aid organization, the US Agency for International Development (USAid). Under the policy, any organizations receiving US foreign aid assistance must adhere to the asinine social policies championed by the Trump regime, which include a prohibition on support for organizations that promote reproductive health and abortion services, gender identity and gender-based support (such as for women entrepreneurs), and any form of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), along with most environmental and climate change-related activities.
For both organizations, the US conditions are not necessarily directed at them, or the work they do in removing landmines and the other detritus of past wars, but rather their networks of local NGOs and other groups. Norwegian People’s Aid, for example, said accepting the US conditions would compromise its work with more than 200 partner organizations, including groups advocating abortion and family-planning access, combating racism, and climate action.
Gry Ballestad, Norwegian People’s Aid director of policy and communications, was blunt in his judgment, as reported by Devex. “You have to put your foot down at some point,” he said. “And there are costs, sometimes, to standing up for what you think is the right thing to do.” From the perspective of the Philippines, and especially in the context of the recent upgrade of the country to “upper-middleincome” status by the World Bank, no one here should feel that we are so mendicant that we need US financing for key initiatives at any cost. The government could, if it chose, pick through the US conditions and decide which ones it wanted to accept and which ones it did not. For example, the anti-abortion orientation of the current US government might not be unpalatable, as abortion is illegal here, and a significant proportion of the population is decidedly against it. But other current policies of the US, such as the “anti-DEI” orientation, and the rejection of recognizance of climate and environmental issues, run directly counter to our state policy, much of it enshrined in the Constitution.
Regardless, whether we “officially” agree with a position of the US government or not is not the point. Are we to tacitly accept what amounts to the Trump regime’s dictation of our social policy through the mechanism of foreign aid? We are fairly confident that the answer of almost everyone in the Philippines would be “no.” Nor would we accept such from any other country, and we would be right not to do so. While our relationship with the US, regardless of the nature of the government there at any moment in time, is friendly and fruitful, maintaining it should never come at the cost of compromising our own principles.