10 million children will die by 2030 because of aid cuts
Extreme poverty in the world could have been ended had the USA and other countries not reversed their oversees aid policies in 2025, the head of the charity and NGO Trócaire has said.
Sean Farrell, who took up the position of CEO of Trócaire only eight months ago, has worked all his life in overseas aid and social justice projects.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic he said: “Since 1990 an amazing transformation has been underway. In the space of 30 years, massive inroads has been consistently made in tackling extreme poverty and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
“In 1990, approximately 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty (over a third of the global population at that time). By 2024, that number had fallen dramatically. 800 million people remained in extreme poverty (about 10% of the global population).” Mr Farrell believes that the world had it continued with pre-2025 aid policies would have lifted the final 800 million out of extreme poverty.
He adds: “Many countries invested in tackling child mortality and this was remarkably successful. More children (and especially girls) attended school, healthcare was expanded, water access improved globally, and rights advanced across so many countries. The scale of this achievement is difficult to comprehend. Never before had so many people improved their living standards so rapidly in such a short historical timeframe.”
But then, he says, the US decided to cut USAID with Elon Musk closing down charitable programmes around the world overnight, but it wasn’t just the USA. “We saw the draconian aid cuts across the world. Started in 2025 by the US but also delivered by countries such as the UK, Germany, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Japan.
“So now, for the first time in three decades, we are seeing the numbers travel in the wrong direction. Instead of talking about further gains in the fight against global extreme poverty, we now see the figures rising in many places as the aid cuts combined with conflict and a climate emergency push millions back into poverty. Recently published data projects over 20 million deaths as a result of aid cuts by 2030. Half of these will be children.”
“Over 30 years, we made so much progress. And there was a pathway to ending extreme poverty. It was not just a story of statistics but a story of families and communities living longer, healthier and more dignified lives. We could, at least for the first time in all of our lives, begin to envisage a world where people living in extreme poverty is not part of our human story.
This journey was not easy and we were all aware that the last mile would be the toughest. But there was momentum, progress and hope. But for some reason, many leaders in 2025, abandoned and betrayed decades of progress, success, hard work and real effort. And the question we must ask is ‘why?’”