politics
US Terminates USAID Program, Cuts Funding for Gaza Women's Group That Served 50,000
A Gaza-based women’s organization lost all USAID funding in early 2025 as part of broader agency changes under President Trump. The group now supports 50,000 people this year with reduced capacity while demand surges amid collapsed courts and institutions.
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A women-led organization in Gaza that provides legal aid, psychosocial support, a gender-based violence hotline and humanitarian assistance reached 50,000 people this year after losing all U.S. funding in early 2025 when Washington ended a five-year USAID program.
The group was two years into the program, which was worth roughly $1 million a year, when funding was cut entirely. ” The organization secured other funders and continued operating at reduced capacity while absorbing sharply higher demand.
One woman told The Independent she gave birth in Khan Younis after an ambulance dispatcher said services responded only to injured people. A neighbor used a horse-drawn cart to transport her during labor. Her daughter was born into a conflict that had already killed her son and left her husband too ill to work.
She had endured the pregnancy while malnourished, anemic and lacking vitamins. “Our suffering is immense. My daughter was born amid this tragedy,” the woman said. Months later she located the organization through word of mouth. It provided her with a mattress and access to a psychotherapist.
The war in Gaza began after an attack inside Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 that killed around 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. Israel’s response has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians according to health officials in the enclave.
A 2025 report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights documented the near-total collapse of Gaza’s Sharia courts, which once held exclusive jurisdiction over divorce, custody, inheritance and guardianship. The report said courts and archives were destroyed, thousands of legal case files lost, and judges and staff killed or displaced.
At a UN human rights hearing in March, a representative of Palestinian women’s organizations said dispute resolution had shifted to displacement camps and makeshift mediation sessions even under rubble. A lawyer working with the organization through ActionAid said violence had moved into that vacuum after judicial headquarters were destroyed in airstrikes and courts suspended entirely.
